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This post includes a reimagined and likely misremembered Denver Nuggets promotional song from the 80s and 90s along with a personal essay. I recommend listening to the song after reading the essay.
So Exciting
For a time, at the end of my cul-de-sac, lived a real-life NBA basketball player.
This seems outlandish now, but it was an era when a car dealership sales manger could live on the same street as the center for the Denver Nuggets.
Artis Wayne Cooper (Coop) played fourteen seasons in the NBA; five in Denver from 1985-1989. He was the Nuggets’ all-time leader in blocks when he left the franchise in ‘89 and was a cornerstone of the fast-paced Doug Moe teams known for running up the score in the thin air of McNichols Arena. Wayne Cooper was a great center that could defend, rebound, protect the rim and—when the opportunity presented itself—get buckets.
The 80’s Denver Nuggets were arguably the most exciting team ever to squeak their sneakers on the mile high hardwood until the Nikola Jokic era. Alex English, Fat Lever, Wayne Cooper, Danny Schayes, Dan Issel, Bill Hanzlik, T.R. Dunn, Calvin Natt—and a blustering, plaid panted Doug Moe on the sidelines all hold special places in Nuggets and early NBA/ABA merger lore.
These Nuggets made their way to the Western Conference Finals in 1985, only to be undone by the dreaded and superior Los Angeles Lakers, led by the immortal
and Irving “Magic “ Johnson.During this golden era of Nuggets basketball, or soon thereafter, a promotional song filled the local airwaves, accurately claiming that the Denver Nuggets were “so exciting” and that “you’re gonna love it”.
The song is lost to time and unavailable on the internet. A reference on a Reddit thread is the only evidence that I have (other than my memory) confirming the tune’s existence. Admittedly, my investigation was limited to web searches, social media outreach and asking a few friends if they remember it. I only recall the melody associated with one line: “So exciting…Denver Nuggets. You’re gonna love it…Denver Nuggets”.
With this memory, I attempted a reinterpretation and recreation of the song as presented in this post. Promotional NBA songs from the 80s are not my greatest musical aspiration, however, the endeavor evoked the most powerful force on earth: childhood nostalgia.
Basketball was never my sport.
My mother says that when she was pregnant with my unborn fetus living in her body (not the way that she describes it), she had a recurring urge to shoot hoops. An NBA All Star was definitely brewing in the womb, but by some cruel twist of fate, I never played organized basketball until college intramurals. D-league champs…baby.
I have some athletically inclined genes. My dad played college football for Alabama under Paul “Bear” Bryant when Ken Stabler was the quarterback. This is true, though it was for a short period of time and only during the spring game before transferring to Austin Peay State University (LET’S GO PEAY) where a scholarship was more readily available. Still…impressive.
Growing up as a child of the suburbs, in perhaps the most suburban suburbs that ever ‘burbed—just south of Denver, Colorado—I had advantages. For example, we had a basketball hoop installed in the driveway, and before that, mini-hoops of various sizes and quality. All were used somewhat frequently. Not as frequently as the Nintendo, but frequently.
I remember getting a regulation 10-foot basket installed, with a metal pole anchored in concrete just to the right side of the driveway. The backboard was plastic or composite; arched, not square, with a generic sounding brand that may have been Super Sport or Sport Shot or Pro Shots but it wasn’t any of those.
A thrilling moment came when the installer poured the concrete foundation to stabilize the hoop—the chance to inscribe something into newly laid concrete being irresistible to any child in the late 80s/early 90s. I assume this allure is still true and if it is not, something has gone terribly wrong with society. Unrelatedly—an officer would later visit this same suburban home investigating the vandalism of a recently poured neighborhood sidewalk and check for matched bike tire treads. That case is still cold.
The hoop installation took place on Cinco de Mayo. The significance of Mexican resilience was unbeknownst to me at the time but I remember the day as hot and I can see the “5/5” carved by a fingertip clearly in my mind. A basketball hoop is a common American suburban luxury, along with a driveway…and a cul-de-sac.
For a year or two, Wayne Cooper, starting center for the Denver Nuggets lived at the end of my cul-de-sac. Or should I say, I lived on Coop’s block.
My dad has a great way with people and bonded with Wayne Cooper over the shared experience of growing up in rural Georgia. This neighborly and authentic connection likely contributed to Wayne inviting me to go along to a Nuggets’ practice one day.
The invitation came while shooting on a mini-hoop in the driveway (before we installed the regulation hoop). Witnessing my raw talent must have caused Coop to stop.
Wayne pulled up in his car, rolled down the window and said hello to me and my dad. In the course of this friendly hello, he asked if I wanted to go with him to a Nuggets’ practice. Being quite young (maybe 8 years old), ill equipped to make such a decision and unsure of the level of awkwardness and anxiety it would entail, I refused. I regretted the decision almost immediately as I sensed disappointment from my father. I continue to regret that decision to this day. For example, this story would benefit from having attended the practice.
My father’s affable personality is one reason he sold automobiles successfully enough to live on the same street as an NBA player. Through company tickets we were fortunate to attend many Nuggets, Avalanche and Broncos games. Like the foundation for a driveway hoop, these experiences cemented my love of the local sports franchises over the years.
There isn’t much logic to the love of sport. The explanatory variable as to whether your beloved franchise is successful or not is the willingness of billionaire owners to spend money on athletic talent—as well as their ability to competently staff their investments with capable management, coaches and other personnel. There’s rarely a local affiliation with anyone associated with a pro franchise, yet the geographic location of the business inspires deep, passionate and unrelenting emotional connection.
Or, people just decide to like one team or another.
Without doing a literature review on the psychology of sports, I feel confident that the attachment to these commercial entities fills a part of the god-sized hole in which we shovel the nearest convenient mound of consumption.
Nevertheless, I persist in supporting, following and spending an inordinate amount of time watching and thinking about these franchises.
Heck, in college, I even worked for them for a time as an unpaid intern for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment at Pepsi Center (now Ball Arena). This “internship” primarily entailed rolling up the t-shirts to later be thrown out by the more prestigious in-game team at Nuggets and Avalanche games.
During the internship I was trusted enough with my acting skills to be featured in a few in-game sketches on the big screen. You may remember me from such roles as “guy who picks his nose when the camera is on him for a longer than expected time” or “guy in the visiting team jersey who refuses to kiss his girlfriend on the kiss cam”. Sadly, no awards are given to unpaid intern arena screen actors and I never even got my SAG card.
Additional highlights: I was able to be on the ice during Ray Bourque’s jersey retirement and got to hang out with Chris “Birdman” Andersen (before he got all those neck tattoos) while he practiced underhanded “granny” shots in the gym.
So, in a way, I did eventually get to attend Nugget’s practice.
These experiences and being able to go to work at the games was actually a pretty fun job. The upshot being that I provided free labor for Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Los Angeles Rams, and Arsenal of the English Premier League. As far as I know, Stan’s primary business acumen was marrying into inherited Walmart money. Good on you, Stan. I’m glad to have done my part to support your enterprises.
I’m dedicated to the current iteration of the the Denver Nuggets (2018-2025) perhaps more than any other team in my lifetime. There are a number of potential explanations for this...
First, the team is better than they’ve ever been. The current starting center, Nikola Jokic, is unquestionably an all time great. He’s so fun to watch play basketball and the combination of Jokic and Jamal Murray pushing this often marginalized franchise to an NBA championship in 2023 is something that I’ll never forget. I’ve always been a Nuggets fan, but this version of the Nuggets and Jokic made me a fan of basketball. I watch League Pass now, bruh.
An additional possible explanation to my dedication to the current Nuggets is that I am older and less interesting. I am willing to put more of my self-worth into the vicarious accomplishments of others. There may be other explanations as well.
The current Nuggets era also began when I lived in Washington, D.C. I started listening to Nuggets’ podcasts, including Locked on Nuggets featuring
on my commute. This obsession came with nostalgia for living in Colorado.And, I guess I miss my dad.
We became less close after I moved to D.C. and we still aren’t as close as we once were, even though I live in Denver again. I’m fortunate that he’s still around. I miss all those games we went to, all that yelling at the television and all that time spent in the driveway shooting pucks or shooting hoops. It’s a golden era that I’ll never get back no matter how good the Nuggets are, how bad the Rockies suck, how much I dislike his politics—or how near or how far we dwell in proximity to professional athletes.
I hope that we can find that connection again. I struggle with equating the privileges I enjoyed as a child with what I can or should be doing for my kids. These learned and socialized expectations for what I should be as a father carry a lot of weight and are difficult to overcome. However, the value of the experiences that I provide to my kids are not monetary—they are about connection and presence.
I’ll never live near a famous athlete, and its unlikely I’ll be able to provide the same kind of experiences, but I can be in my kid’s lives, go to some games, and maybe one day have them think of me as fondly as I think of my dad.
Go Nuggets.
RS
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