Denver Nuggets

The Denver Nuggets are a professional basketball team based in Denver, Colorado. They play in the National Basketball Association (NBA). more...

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Home arenas

Denver Arena Auditorium (1967-1975)

McNichols Sports Arena (1975-1999)

Pepsi Center (1999-present)

Franchise history

A charter franchise in the American Basketball Association, the team was originally slated to play in Kansas City, Missouri before moving to Denver. They were named the Denver Larks before they changed their name and became known as the Rockets for their first seven years of existence, winning division titles in 1970 and 1975.

However, they tended to struggle in the postseason and failed to make a championship game during this span. They had a solid lineup led by Byron Beck and Larry Jones, then later by Beck and Ralph Simpson. During the 1969-1970 season, the team also had a controversial rookie named Spencer Haywood. Haywood was one of the first players to turn pro before graduating from college, and the NBA initially refused to let him play in the league. Haywood averaged 30 points in his only ABA season, then was allowed to sign with the Seattle SuperSonics to start a productive NBA career.

In 1974, a contest was held to find a new nickname for the Rockets. There was already a Rockets team in the NBA (Houston). The name Nuggets won, having been the nickname first used by the Denver 1949-50 NBA franchise. Their new logo was a miner apparently discovering an ABA ball.

With Larry Brown coaching, they had their best seasons in team history in their first two seasons as the Nuggets, with the team making the ABA finals in 1975-76. They would get no second chance to win a league championship, as the ABA folded after the 1975-76 season. The Nuggets were one of four ABA teams taken into the NBA, along with the New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers. The Nuggets and Nets had actually applied to join the NBA in 1975, but were forced to stay in the ABA by court order.

Led by Dan Issel, Bobby Jones, and David Thompson, Denver (and their memorable rainbow-striped jerseys) were quite strong early on in the NBA, as they won division titles in their first two seasons in the league, and missed a third by a single game. However, neither of these teams were ultimately successful in the postseason.

Brown left the team in 1979, helping usher in a brief decline in their team's performance. It ended in 1981, when they hired Doug Moe as a head coach. Moe brought with him a "run and gun" philosophy, a style of play focusing on attempting to score rapidly with little interest in defense, and it helped the team become highly competitive. During the 1980s, the Nuggets would often score in excess of 115 points a game, and during the 1981-82 season, they scored at least 100 points in every game. It was a novel strategy, but it rarely led to playoff success. (On December 13, 1983, the Nuggets and the visiting Detroit Pistons combined for an NBA record 370 points, with Detroit winning in triple overtime, 186-184.) Only once, in 1984-85, did they even make it to the Western Conference finals, and that year they lost in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org