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      Carmelo Anthony Retires From NBA After 19 Seasons

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      Anthony, known as one of the top scorers in league history, had struggled in recent years and did not play the 2022-23 season.Carmelo Anthony, the former Knicks star and one of the greatest scorers in N.B.A. history, announced his retirement on Monday, calling the farewell after 19 seasons “bittersweet.”Anthony, 38, last played in April 2022 as a reserve for the Los Angeles Lakers and spent the final few seasons of his career in more limited roles.“Now the time has come for me to say goodbye, to the court where I made my name, to the game that gave me purpose and pride,” Anthony said in a glossily produced video posted to social networks on Monday. The video included career highlights, with the song “All That I Got Is You” by Ghostface Killah featuring Mary J. Blige in the background.Anthony said he was “excited about what the future holds.”Thank you #STAYME7O pic.twitter.com/4au8cOd13s— Carmelo Anthony (@carmeloanthony) May 22, 2023
      The Denver Nuggets drafted Anthony third overall out of Syracuse in 2003 after he led the school to a Division I N.C.A.A. national championship. Anthony might have been drafted higher if not for a player he would form a close friendship with: LeBron James, who went first overall to Cleveland.Anthony immediately demonstrated his prowess for scoring. His elite footwork, burly physique and quick release on his jumper from anywhere on the court made him difficult to guard. Paul Pierce, the Hall of Famer, said earlier this year that he would have rather guarded Kobe Bryant or James than Anthony.Anthony led the Nuggets to the playoffs in his rookie year. He jab-stepped, up-faked and posted up his way to 10 All-Star Games and six All-N.B.A. teams. Anthony ended his career with 28,289 total points — good for ninth in N.B.A. history. He also won three Olympic gold medals and one bronze.Anthony against LeBron James in 2012. Both players were drafted in 2003, with James picked first overall and Anthony picked third.Barton Silverman/The New York TimesMany Knicks fans are particularly fond of Anthony, who was born in Brooklyn and pressured the Nuggets to trade him to New York in 2011 so he could team up with a fellow All-Star, Amar’e Stoudemire. The move gave the fan base some optimism after a decade of incompetence from the front office.The partnership never fully bore fruit, thanks mainly to injuries to Stoudemire. But Anthony did provide memorable performances at Madison Square Garden, including a game in 2014 in which he scored 62 points, a franchise record. Anthony also led the Knicks to one of their only playoff series wins of the century, in 2013 against the Boston Celtics.All told, Anthony played for six teams: the Nuggets, Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Portland Trail Blazers and Lakers.Anthony’s career had several speed bumps.He developed a reputation for lax defense and hogging the ball. His former Nuggets coach, George Karl, wrote in his 2017 memoir that Anthony “only played hard on one side of the ball.” And while Anthony’s teams reliably made the playoffs, he made it as far as the conference finals only once, in 2009 with the Nuggets.Anthony with the Denver Nuggets in 2011.Amy Sancetta/Associated PressLike many All-Stars before him, Anthony struggled to adjust to a drop-off in his game as he entered the back half of his career. After the Knicks traded him to Oklahoma City before the 2017-18 season, he appeared to have the best chance of his career to win a championship because he was teaming up with Paul George and Russell Westbrook, perennial All-Stars. But he scoffed at the idea of coming off the bench, and many fans blamed him when the team fizzled out early in the playoffs.Soon, Anthony’s career was hanging in the balance. He appeared in just 10 games for Houston in the 2018-19 season before he was sidelined and later traded to Chicago, though he never played in any games for the Bulls and was quickly waived. He revitalized his career in Portland over the next two seasons by accepting the bench role that he had laughed at in Oklahoma City. He ended his career playing next to James in Los Angeles.Off the court, Anthony became increasingly outspoken on social issues, including police violence, after appearing in a homemade video titled “Stop Snitching” early in his career. The video discouraged people from talking to the police about crimes.After George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020, Anthony formed a philanthropic investment fund with Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade to invest in communities of color, as well as to push for causes like changes to the criminal justice system.In his retirement video, Anthony said that he did not believe his legacy to be his on-court feats because his “story has always been more than basketball.”“My legacy? My son,” Anthony said, addressing his teenage son, Kiyan Anthony. He added: “Chase your dreams. Let nothing hold you back. Let nothing intervene. My legacy now and forever lives on through you.” More

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      Nikola Jokic Has Mastered the Art of Slowness

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      Providing unhurried but timely play, Jokic, the two-time most valuable player, has the Denver Nuggets on the cusp of the N.B.A. finals.LOS ANGELES — After watching Nikola Jokic repeatedly lumber down the court, hold a basketball above the defense like a freshly picked grapefruit, wheel, pause, and sling a tightrope pass that led a teammate to an open shot, a question came to mind.What is the best one-word descriptor for this guy, a player steadily distinguishing himself as unlike any in N.B.A. history, now on the verge of taking the Denver Nuggets to the finals?Is Jokic …Fundamental? Yeah, that partly hits the mark.Is Jokic …Efficient? Hmm, there’s more than a kernel of truth in that.Is he …Intelligent? That’s true, though it’s an assessment that comes with baggage. Jokic is white, and, yeah, he’s a physicist on the court, but so are LeBron James and a host of Black players who do not get nearly enough credit for their smarts.What about …Slow? Well, now we are on to something. Here we find his special sauce.It is the speed with which he plays, or, rather, the lack of it, that sets him apart in the fast-twitch N.B.A. Jokic, the two-time league most valuable player, could write an instructional book about the game he has come to master: Basketball and the Fine Art of Slowness.This particular faculty is not entirely about sprinting pace. Jokic can move fairly quickly in spurts. It is just as much qualitative. When he is on the court, no matter the circumstance, he seems to control time. He moves where he wants, when he wants, while every other player is slicing around the court in a frenzy.On Saturday night, as the Nuggets and Lakers starters gathered on the court at Crypto.com Arena before tipoff in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, it seemed like every other player was jumping up and down or fiddling nervously with their uniform or hunting for someone to high-five.Jokic just stood at center court, focused, waiting. It brought to mind something Jeff Van Gundy, the former N.B.A. head coach who is now a television analyst for ESPN, told me before the game, describing the towering Serb. “He looks completely unruffled. Jokic is the epitome of the John Wooden quote, ‘Be quick, don’t hurry.’”“He’s an absolute marvel,” Van Gundy added.Wait, this guy, a marvel? Jokic is muscular but hardly ripped. He stands nearly 7 feet, weighs almost as much as a subzero refrigerator, and has arms that might as well be pterodactyl wings. He is 28, still in the middle of the prime years for physical prowess, but he might trip while trying to jump over the Sunday paper.And yet he dominates the N.B.A.He has been a presiding force in this season’s playoffs, his consistently high level of play matched only by Miami Heat guard Jimmy Butler. Seven triple-doubles in 14 games. Six games with more than 30 points. A 53-point masterpiece against Phoenix in the conference semifinals. Then he practically won Game 1 against the Lakers by himself.But as Game 3 of that series began on Saturday, Jokic struggled to find a rhythm. Uncharacteristically, he scuffled for a while, and was saddled by foul trouble. Then, with the Lakers briefly taking an 85-84 lead early in the fourth quarter and James beginning to recall his younger self, a switch went on inside Jokic.Suddenly, there it was, the whole arsenal. Deflections, rebounds and orbital jump shots. Scooping, angling passes. Jokic dribbled up the court, a commanding, surveying point guard. He methodically backed down a Lakers defender. Time seemed to grind to something near a standstill. Then Jokic spun, twirled, and sped briefly to the basket to knock in a soft layup as if it were a one-inch putt.This was Zen: Wait patiently, clear the mind, calm the body, see the opening, strike. That’s Jokic.When Jokic is on the court, no matter the circumstance, he seems to control time. Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDenver pulled away, Jokic (and his sidekick Jamal Murray) in full flight. When Jokic catapulted in a 25-foot 3-pointer with about three minutes left, the Nuggets surged ahead by 10 points. Eventually they won, 119-108.How did he become such a master?Jokic turned pro 11 years ago in his native Serbia when he was a rawboned 17-year-old. His coach, Dejan Milojevic, now an assistant with the Golden State Warriors, recalls Jokic operating in those days with the same uncanny understanding. He moved without haste, at what Milojevic prefers to call “the speed optimum for Nikola.”What Jokic needed, at least at the start of his professional career, was the strength or stamina to prosper. His old coach claims that Jokic had to undergo a crash conditioning course because he couldn’t complete even two push-ups. Once he got in shape, the blossoming began.But getting in shape and being well coached can’t be the whole story. If so, there would be 1,000 players like Jokic.Is there something about how he is wired?“The way he tracks information around him, knowing where everybody is on the court, making perfectly timed passes all the time to open teammates, takes a special mental ability,” said Greg Appelbaum, director of the Human Performance Optimization Lab at U.C. San Diego, where scientists study athletes’ cognition.“Prospective inference” Appelbaum called Jokic’s capacity to stay one, two, and sometimes three steps ahead of the action on a 94-by-50-foot hardwood swath.Prospective what?An analogy can be found in a cheetah’s amplified ability to scan terrain and extrapolate the possible escape routes of prey. In sports, it’s the skill to predict the future movements of opponents and teammates, said Appelbaum, shortly after watching Denver’s Game 3 win. “It sure looked like Jokic did that tonight.”It did, indeed.Of course, no matter the cause of his mastery, none of it happens if Jokic takes himself off balance by rushing. That’s the foundation.Speed defines our society. Faster, faster, faster is the mantra — sometimes for the better and, as it is becoming increasingly clear, often for the worse. But watching Nikola Jokic provides an antidote: the enduring power of taking one’s time. More

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      Denver Nuggets Role Players Get to Be Stars, Too

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      The Nuggets can sweep the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, and it’s not just because of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. The role players have been just as important.LOS ANGELES — To win a championship in the N.B.A., a team almost always needs at least one transcendent player.But the championship journey will also depend on how well a team’s role players do their jobs.The Lakers, with 17 titles, know this well. Would they have won in 2010 without Metta Sandiford-Artest, or in 2002 without Robert Horry? Shaquille O’Neal, who won three championships for the Lakers with Kobe Bryant, often talks about the importance of the “others” — the players who aren’t stars.The Lakers franchise has found itself on the unpleasant side of the calculus this year. In the Western Conference finals against Denver, Los Angeles has the weaker supporting cast. The Nuggets, who lead the best-of-seven series, 3-0, are not just beating the Lakers with the talents of Nikola Jokic, a two-time N.B.A. most valuable player, or Jamal Murray, their dynamic guard. Aaron Gordon’s toughness, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s poise, Bruce Brown’s versatility and Michael Porter Jr.’s persistence are helping them get it done.On Monday, the Nuggets will try to complete a sweep of the Lakers to go to the franchise’s first N.B.A. finals. There have certainly been moments when Jokic and Murray have carried Denver, but a critical part of the Nuggets’ success is that they haven’t always had to do that. When Murray and Jokic ebb, the team’s role-players flow, and together they beat back any tide the Lakers have sent at them.Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said forward Aaron Gordon had “checked his ego” to fulfill his role for the team.Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press“There’s a lot of guys that can go get it,” Gordon said. “So we just go with the hot guy.”Jokic is the engine that powers the Nuggets, but Gordon also called him “one of the most unselfish basketball players.” Jokic is averaging a triple-double in the playoffs, with 29.9 points, 13.2 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game. But even when he isn’t at his best, his mere presence changes the game. That happened on Saturday, in the Nuggets’ 119-108 win in Game 3 with the Lakers. Jokic had just 5 points and 2 rebounds at halftime, then got into foul trouble by committing his fourth less than halfway through the third quarter.“There wasn’t a panic,” Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said. “It was: ‘OK, he’s out. That means somebody else has to step up.’ I think that’s something our team has done time and time again.”The Nuggets’ players have not just accepted roles that require them to defer to others, but embraced them in service of winning a championship. Jokic was the team’s only All-Star this year and no Nugget made an All-Defensive team; Jokic has never played with someone who made those teams while playing with him.On Saturday, Caldwell-Pope scored 12 points in a critical third quarter when Jokic was in foul trouble and Murray had cooled off after scoring 30 points in the first half.The last time Caldwell-Pope played in the Western Conference finals, it was 2020 and he was a Laker tasked with defending Murray. The Lakers beat Denver to win the West, then bested Miami to win the title. Caldwell-Pope knows what it will take for Denver to win this year.“We’re No. 1 in the West for a reason,” Caldwell-Pope said. “I believed it from the jump that we could win a championship. That was everybody’s mind-set. We knew how we could jell together and play together.”Bruce Brown had 15 points for Denver off the bench in Game 3.Ashley Landis/Associated PressDenver’s Jeff Green, who played 23 minutes on Saturday, has been on nine teams in the past eight seasons. Porter, whom the Nuggets drafted in the first round in 2018, missed most of last season with a back injury. He scored 14 points and led the Nuggets with 10 rebounds on Saturday. Brown, who had 15 points off the bench, signed with Denver last summer.Gordon, drafted fourth overall by Orlando in 2014, was once best known for his impressive showing in the league’s dunk contests. His stats on Saturday didn’t look all that impressive — 7 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists — but his defensive contributions were key. He blocked a shot late in the third quarter that helped the Nuggets maintain the lead.“He has checked his ego at the door,” Malone said. “He knew coming into this year with Jamal and Michael back that his role would be different, and he never fought that.”That isn’t always the case on ambitious teams, and this N.B.A. season provided examples of the friction that can emerge. Golden State’s younger players, for example, clamored for more playing time. But Denver, which led the West for much of the season, is an example of how good it can be when the system works.“Everybody realizes when we need something, we need a spark,” Murray said. “Could be Joker, could be me, could be Bruce, Jeff off the bench — whether it’s a chase-down block or a charge or something. Everybody has something they can come in and impact the game with.”The Lakers were another example of a team that struggled to satisfy everyone in their roles this season. In February, they traded away Russell Westbrook, who had been unhappy in a bench role. He had joined the team less than two years ago in a multi-team deal that also sent Caldwell-Pope to the Washington Wizards from Los Angeles. Moving on from Westbrook was part of a larger effort to add several new role players, who have had many electrifying games. But against the Nuggets their shortcomings have been clear.The Lakers’ role players struggled in Game 3. D’Angelo Russell, left, was just 1 of 8 from the field.Ashley Landis/Associated PressThe starkest example was D’Angelo Russell, who scored just 3 points on 1-of-8 shooting in Game 3 and committed three turnovers.Lakers Coach Darvin Ham could offer only this about the performances of the Lakers’ role players: “I thought they did the best they could, all of them.”But sometimes it takes more, like what Sandiford-Artest gave the Lakers in the 2010 N.B.A. finals against Boston.In Game 7, Bryant, the team’s leading scorer during the regular season and the playoffs, made only 6 of 24 shots. The Lakers had mostly relied on Sandiford-Artest for his defense as a past defensive player of the year, but in that game he scored 20 points and hit a crucial 3-pointer with less than a minute left.On Saturday, Sandiford-Artest sat across from the Lakers’ bench, a powerful reminder of how important role players can be to win a championship. More

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      Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic Issued Foul for Shoving Suns Owner Mat Ishbia

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      Nikola Jokic was issued a technical foul, but wasn’t ejected, when he briefly tangled with the owner Mat Ishbia on the sideline.Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic on Monday was fined $25,000, but not suspended, for making contact with the Suns owner Mat Ishbia while trying to grab a ball away from him in a scuffle at courtside Sunday.Jokic had scored a career-high 53 points in the Nuggets’ 129-124 loss to the Suns in Phoenix in Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinals series. But all the postgame chatter was about his confrontation with Ishbia and the owner’s apparent flop at the ensuing contact.With two and a half minutes left in the second quarter, momentum took Josh Okogie of the Suns and the ball into the front row. Okogie wound up sprawled across some fans while the ball ended up in the hands of Ishbia.Jokic tried to grab the ball, hoping to inbound and restart the game quickly with a five-on-four advantage. Ishbia resisted, and the ball popped away to some other fans a few feet away.Jokic’s forearm then made contact with Ishbia, who, perhaps remembering his days as an end-of-the-bench player at Michigan State, seemed to sell the contact hard, throwing his hands in the air and falling into his seat.Jokic was assessed a technical foul.“Jokic came to get the ball, grabbed it away from the fan, then after that he deliberately gave him a shove and pushed him down, so he was issued an unsportsmanlike technical foul,” the game’s refereeing crew chief, Tony Brothers, said after the game.Brothers said Jokic was not ejected because “he didn’t just run over and hit a fan; there was some engagement, so I deemed the technical foul the appropriate penalty.”The Suns won the game, tying the best-of-seven series at two games all.“The fan put a hand on me first,” Jokic said after the game. “I thought the league was supposed to protect us. Maybe I’m wrong.”“He’s a fan — I know who he is, but he’s a fan isn’t he?” Jokic added, acknowledging he was aware he had tangled with Ishbia. “He cannot influence the game by holding the ball.”Ishbia had seemed ready to move past the incident on Twitter Monday morning: “Suspending or fining anyone over last night’s incident would not be right,” he wrote. “I have a lot of respect for Jokic and don’t want to see anything like that.”The Nuggets were eager to do the same. “I think it’s crazy that Nikola got a technical foul in that situation,” Coach Michael Malone said. “He’s going to get the ball, and some fan is holding on to the ball like he wants to be a part of the game. Just give the ball up, man.”Told the fan was Ishbia, he said, “I really don’t care.”The incident hardly slowed Jokic, whose 53 points came on 20-of-30 shooting. He had 11 assists as well.Jokic won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2021 and 2022 and was runner-up to Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers this season. But in his eight years with Denver the team has only one trip to the conference finals and has not made it to the N.B.A. finals. As the No. 1 seed in the West this season, hopes are high in Denver that will change. Game 5 is Tuesday night in Denver, with Game 6 on Thursday and Game 7, if necessary, on Sunday. More

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      The Nuggets Are in the Playoffs Again. Hold the Champagne.

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      DENVER — It was 1976, 39 years before the arrival of Nikola Jokic, when the Denver Nuggets had their last best chance to win a championship.Hair was big, shorts were small. The ball was red, white and blue. The Nuggets had the American Basketball Association’s best record, again, and a roster with three future Hall of Famers.But the New York Nets had Julius Erving, who led them to an upset in the finals. As the fans at the Nassau Coliseum rushed the court, the announcer shouted, “It’s pandemonium!” Because it was the 1970s, and of course he did.Not to worry, Nuggets fans. There would be more chances. Oh, so many chances.The Nuggets are up to their 38th postseason chance now. No current team in major American pro sports has been to the playoffs so many times without winning a championship, according to Elias Sports Bureau.That might make the Nuggets the best franchise to never win it all.There are sadder teams in American sports, some with longer championship droughts and in decaying cities that could use more luck than Denver. For most of their titleless years, the Nuggets were good, and they were fun. They just cannot get the ending right.The next best chance for the Nuggets comes now, eight years after the Denver arrival of Jokic, the two-time reigning most valuable player. Behind the 6-foot-11-inch human Swiss Army knife, the Nuggets earned the No. 1 seed in the N.B.A.’s Western Conference for the first time.Rocky, the team mascot, has been a well-known part of the Nuggets since 1990. These days, though, the most beloved Nugget is Nikola Jokic. Theo Stroomer for The New York TimesMaybe this is the year. A city awaits.For now, the ghosts of “almost” are everywhere.They are in Lot C next to the football stadium. They are at the downtown performing arts center at 13th and Champa.And they are in the current arena, near the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, where 19th-century miners set off the Colorado gold rush that would shape a city and a state and, one day, give a basketball team its name: Nuggets.A Miner With a PickaxStart in 1974, or 41 B.J. (Before Jokic). That’s when Carl Scheer arrived in Denver as general manager, with a friend and coach named Larry Brown. They came to invigorate a seven-year-old A.B.A. franchise called the Rockets.“Larry and I both felt that Denver was like a sleeping giant,” Scheer told a Denver magazine in 1979. “It was just beginning to shed its Old West, cowtown image.”The Rockets played downtown, at Auditorium Arena. It was part of a massive blond-brick complex completed in 1908, in time for that year’s Democratic convention. (William Jennings Bryan, if you must know, was on his way to losing the presidential election a third time.)The arena might be most famous as the site of Led Zeppelin’s first American concert in 1968. (A newspaper reviewer was not impressed by Robert Plant’s singing or John Bonham’s drumming.) Less famously, two nights later, the Rockets beat the Los Angeles Stars.The Nuggets were a middling American Basketball Association team in 1972 when they hosted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the N.B.A.’s Milwaukee Bucks in an exhibition game. Four years later, the Nuggets were a powerful force in the N.B.A. Associated PressThe Rockets had some good players, like Spencer Haywood his rookie year, but went through five coaches in five seasons. By 1974, they needed a reboot. And the name had to go, if Denver hoped to ever play in the N.B.A. There already were Rockets, in Houston.Where to find a name? In the 1930s, Denver had a top amateur team called the Nuggets. That team eventually became part of the National Basketball League, which combined with the Basketball Association of America in 1949 to form the N.B.A. The Denver Nuggets were one of the 17 original N.B.A. teams — the worst one. They did not return for a second season.But in August 1974, Scheer unveiled a new/old name and a logo: a bearded cartoon miner holding a pickax in one hand and a basketball in the other. He wore tube socks and a prospector’s hat with a flipped-up brim sporting a “D.”The groovy new Nuggets struck gold. That first team went 65-19. It lost the division finals.But things moved fast, and the Nuggets moved up. In 1975 came a new home, McNichols Arena, named for a mayor. The first show was a Lawrence Welk concert; the best show was the Nuggets. They a-one and a-two’d their way to a 28-game home winning streak on their way to the league’s best record.They had Dan Issel, a charging, gaptoothed forward they called the Horse. They had the rookie David Thompson, a gravity-testing guard they soon called Skywalker, like the hero in “Star Wars.” They had Bobby Jones, the slick defensive forward with shooting touch. All three would go to basketball’s hall of fame.Denver hosted the 1976 A.B.A. All-Star Game, and Scheer created a slam-dunk contest. (“To take the pressure off the backboards and rims, we’re going to alternate sides,” the public-address announcer said, in perfect Barnum-ese.) Artis Gilmore, George Gervin, even Thompson couldn’t keep up with Dr. J.That spring, Erving led the Nets to an upset of the Nuggets in the last A.B.A. final.In 1976, the Nuggets had three future Hall of Fame players and the A.B.A.’s best record, but they were upset in the league finals by Julius Erving and the New York Nets. Weeks later, both franchises were invited to join the N.B.A. Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated via Getty ImagesIt would be hard to fathom that the Nuggets would never return to a league finals. That off-season, the summer of the nation’s bicentennial and Colorado’s centennial, the N.B.A. added four A.B.A. teams. Denver was the prize.They were 52-30 during their first N.B.A. season, including 36-5 at home. They lost their first playoff series. But they made the postseason 11 more times in the next 13 years.Every time, they fell short.“There are 22 teams in this league,” Scheer said in 1979, “and to be the champion you need good luck and good fortune. The most important thing is to stay competitive year after year, and then hope that you get luck and momentum going for you at the right time.”The right time never seemed to come.Issel, Several Other Guys, and IsselLot C is on the southwest corner of the second-generation football stadium that everyone still calls Mile High.There is no sign that McNichols Arena once squatted here. Big Mac, people called it, and it was kind of shaped like a burger.There is no foul line where Dr. J took off for his most momentous dunk in 1976, no marker stating that this was the home of the original Colorado Rockies (an N.H.L. franchise that left to become the New Jersey Devils), no hint of the sideline that Nuggets Coach Doug Moe patrolled for more than a decade in his disheveled, profanity-laced glory.There is no plaque commemorating the 1990 Final Four (U.N.L.V.) or the first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993. Nothing to note all the big-name rock concerts, the indoor-soccer franchise (the original Avalanche), the arena-football team.Just pavement.But there is a view. Looking east from Lot C is the Denver skyline — the gold-domed state capitol, 17th Street’s “Wall Street of the Rockies” lined with towers built of oil money, the skyscraper on Broadway meant to evoke a cash register.The skyline looks nothing like the Lego-like one on the Nuggets’ rainbow-colored uniforms from the 1980s. Divisive at the time — Where is the miner?— they are now the N.B.A.’s coolest throwbacks, evoking the go-go era of Moe’s high-scoring teams.Caramia Casias and Carter Beller wear Nuggets gear inspired by the 1980s versions of the Nuggets jersey.Theo Stroomer for The New York TimesTheo Stroomer for The New York TimesAll nine of Moe’s teams, through the 1980s, made the playoffs. In 1982-83, they averaged 123.2 points per game despite making only 24 3-pointers. The next season, they played the highest-scoring game in league history.“No one believes that we had zero plays on offense, but Doug would just scream at you, ‘Don’t hold the ball!’” Bill Hanzlik, who played on those teams, said. “It was pass, move, cut. That style of ball was fast, up and down, and we dominated at home. Fans really loved it.”Great players came and went. Alex English arrived to become the team’s career leading scorer. Thompson was traded amid headlines of cocaine addiction. Kiki Vandeweghe was traded for Fat Lever, Calvin Natt and Wayne Cooper. Through it all was Issel, the Horse, the best-known Denver athlete before Elway got rolling in the stadium next door.“The Nuggets were as popular as the Broncos,” said Vic Lombardi, who grew up in Denver, was a Nuggets ball boy in the 1980s and became a local sportscaster and radio personality. “They were just as successful, just as competitive and got just as much attention.”The teams shared a habit of being great to watch but not good enough to win in the end. The Broncos rattled the old stadium in the fall, aspirations crumbling in January. The Nuggets raced down the court on cold winter nights, their hopes melting in the spring.In 1990, they finished 43-39. Things seemed fine, in a Groundhog Day kind of way.But the Nuggets fired Moe — the start of 12 coaching changes in 15 years. If you believe in sports jinxes, Moe’s firing might be one.Or if you believe in phantoms, consider the gutting of the old Auditorium Arena about the same time.The interior was turned into the lavish Buell Theater. And on the same snowy November Friday night that the theater opened to rave reviews with “The Phantom of the Opera,” the Nuggets were at McNichols, opening the season with the first of 58 losses — 120 losses over a two-year stretch. They were more cursed than Carlotta.Dikembe Mutombo was a bright spot for the Nuggets in the 1990s, when the long-stable franchise had eight coaching changes and a string of forgettable seasons. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThe rest of the 1990s did not go well. The skyline jersey was ditched. There was an anthem flap, a brief Dikembe Mutombo-led resurrection, and eight coaching changes that began and ended with Issel.But the 1990s were great for other Denver sports. A top N.H.L. team came gift-wrapped from Quebec, was christened the Avalanche and immediately won a Stanley Cup — the first major championship for the city. The Broncos and Elway finally won a Super Bowl, then another. The expansion Rockies arrived and attracted big crowds at a gem called Coors Field.And in 2001, early in a seventh-straight losing season for the Nuggets, Issel called a postgame heckler a “Mexican piece of (expletive)” and soon skulked away.Denver was rolling, without the sad little Nuggets.Jokic Is Here. What Can Go Wrong?Nikola Jokic was 4 when Pepsi Center opened in 1999. (Named then for a canned beverage, it is now Ball Arena, named for a canning company.) It went up on the west edge of downtown, near Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway, named for the original mining-camp settlement along Cherry Creek.The lane that leads to Ball Arena is called Chopper Circle, for the longtime Nuggets trainer Chopper Travaglini. That’s how popular the Nuggets were: even the trainer had streets named for him. He also opened a sports bar that is still there.Theo Stroomer for The New York TimesTheo Stroomer for The New York TimesInside the arena, in the rafters, the Nuggets are represented on one end, the Avalanche on the other.The Avs, as they’re called, have three Stanley Cup banners, including one from their first season in Denver and one from last season. They hope to repeat this spring.The Nuggets have no championship banners, but nine division championships and a lot of retired numbers: Issel, Thompson, English, Lever and Mutombo among them. And there is a banner for Moe, marking his 432 victories.George Karl was hired as the coach in 2005. He led the Nuggets on a Moe-like run of nine consecutive postseasons, the first six with Carmelo Anthony. They were good, fun to watch and almost always lost in the first round.Karl’s last team, 10 years ago, had a mishmash of talent that somehow got to 57 wins, a franchise high in the N.B.A., and were 38-3 at home. Only in hindsight does a first-round upset by the Warriors, with kids named Curry, Thompson and Green making their first playoff appearances, make any sense. Karl was fired.Karl fell in love with Denver as a visiting A.B.A. player in the 1970s — the oil-booming downtown, the vociferous fans, the fast-paced style of the early Nuggets, even their logo and colors. He still lives in Denver, and fans revere him, despite years of almosts and not quites.“Fans do get anxious, they do get angry, they do get fanatical,” Karl said. “But they have a lot of respect and love for the game of basketball here in Denver.”A year after Karl’s firing, in 2014, the Nuggets used a second-round draft choice, the 41st overall, on a 19-year-old from Serbia named Nikola Jokic. He was 6-foot-11 and played in the Adriatic League.Draft experts shrugged. Nuggets fans barely noticed. Jokic quietly joined Denver in 2015, the same time as another new coach, Michael Malone.Jokic made the all-rookie team and eased into superstardom — his game and humility draw comparisons to Tim Duncan — and by 2019, he had ARRIVED, in all caps. He was a do-everything All-Star leading the Nuggets to the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed. (They lost in the second round.)In 2021, Nikola Jokic became the first Nuggets player to win the league M.V.P. This year, he could be the first N.B.A. player since Larry Bird to win it three times in a row. Dustin Bradford/Getty ImagesMomentum has been building since. In 2020 came an unexpected playoff run. (Denver lost to the Lakers, again, in the conference finals.) In 2021, Jokic was named the league’s most valuable player, the first in Nuggets history. (The team lost in the conference semifinals.) In 2022, he was M.V.P. again. (The Nuggets lost in the first round.)This season, Jokic nearly averaged a triple-double — double figures in points (24.5), rebounds (11.8) and assists (9.8). The team that revolves around him has gelled, especially guard Jamal Murray and forwards Michael Porter, Jr., and Aaron Gordon, all in their mid-20s.And now, for the first time since joining the N.B.A. in 1976, the Nuggets will have the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs — home-court advantage for every round before what would be their first-ever N.B.A. finals.Not since that last year in the A.B.A., that first year in McNichols Arena, right after Lawrence Welk opened a squatty little paradise since paved into a parking lot, have they been so well positioned for a postseason.Expectations are tempered. These are the Nuggets, after all. No basketball team spoils the promise of spring quite like them.But Lombardi, the ball boy turned sportscaster, is adamant.“If the Denver Nuggets win a championship,” Lombardi said, “I contend it would produce the largest downtown parade this city has ever seen.”Could it be in 2023? Jokic is 28. The Nuggets are the best team never to win a title. There is gold to be mined, if they can finally discover it.The Nuggets share a city and an arena with the N.H.L.’s Avalanche, who won a Stanley Cup in their first season in Colorado in 1996 and their third championship last season. The Nuggets, with a far deeper history, are still looking for their first title. Theo Stroomer for The New York Times More

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      Golden State Falls to Denver for Another Road Loss

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      A loss to the Nuggets dropped the champions to 9-30 away from home.DENVER — As various members of the Golden State Warriors began to filter out of the visiting locker room at Ball Arena on Sunday night, Klay Thompson sat silently on a folding chair with his head bowed. He fiddled with a wristband. He was still wearing his game shorts.Thompson has coped with adversity, losing two seasons to injury. But the N.B.A. has a way of humbling even the most determined players. And in the glum aftermath of the Warriors’ 79th game of the season, Thompson was left to dwell on errant shots and missed opportunities. He was not alone.The Warriors are a tough team to figure out, and their 112-110 loss to the Nuggets on Sunday was another jumbled effort in a season full of them. They were thrilling and connected, then sloppy and disjointed. They led by as many as 15 points in the second quarter, then allowed all that good feeling to evaporate.“We stopped playing,” Coach Steve Kerr said. “We just lost our focus on both ends, gave up a ton of offensive rebounds, missed box outs. Offensively, we had several mindless possessions in a row, throwing the ball away, a bunch of shot turnovers — just bad shots.”Teams have wildly different agendas at this late stage of the season. The Nuggets, who are on the cusp of clinching the top seed in the Western Conference, have the luxury of prioritizing health. Nikola Jokic, the league’s back-to-back most valuable player, missed his third straight game with calf tightness.“There really is an injury there, and it’s just us being smart about it,” Michael Malone, Denver’s coach, said before Sunday’s game. “The type of injury he has, the worst-case scenario is he plays and it creates a much bigger issue where he’s out for an extended period of time. And I think we all realize that we’re only going to go so far when Nikola is such a big part of what we do.”The Warriors, on the other hand, are desperate to avoid the play-in bracket as the defending champions. With the top six seeds in each conference assured playoff berths, the Warriors (41-38) are now tied for fifth with the Clippers in the West after Sunday’s loss. Kerr likes the addition of the play-in — “It keeps things really interesting all the way down the stretch,” he said — but that does not mean he wants to be a part of it.The Warriors have three games remaining. After playing host to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday, they will go on the road to face the Sacramento Kings on Friday and the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday.“We need to win out,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said, adding: “It’s just understanding there’s a sense of urgency with these last three games, and not only the wins but the vibe you create going into a playoff series, because that does matter — finishing strong, finishing with a sense of purpose. You want to feel good about yourself when you turn the clock to the playoffs.”The real challenge is that the Warriors play two of their final three games on the road, where they have been awful this season. The disparity between their record at home (32-8) and their record on the road (9-30) is a mystery without an obvious explanation.“We’ve got to have faith in ourselves that we can figure it out,” Curry said.No solutions surfaced against the Nuggets, though it did look good for the Warriors, at least for a while. They assembled one of their familiar master classes in ball movement in the first quarter.There was Draymond Green tipping a pass to Donte DiVincenzo for an-up-and-under layup. There was Thompson drawing a cluster of defenders on a drive before dumping a pass to Anthony Lamb for an open dunk. The ball zipped from teammate to teammate. Green had five assists in the first quarter, and the Warriors assisted on 11 of their 13 field goals, committing only one turnover.But sustaining that sort of effort has been problematic for the Warriors this season, particularly on the road. They missed all eight of their 3-point shots in the second quarter and committed five turnovers.“It’s kind of been a vibe of how it’s been on the road for us all year,” Curry said. “There’s a four- or five-minute stretch and the wheels just fall off. And you not only give a team momentum, but you give them belief that they’re supposed to win that game. And that’s a dangerous position to be in with the amount of talent that’s in this league, no matter who you’re playing.”Curry and Thompson combined to shoot 17 of 56 from the field, and Golden State committed 15 turnovers. Add it up, and it was the game that the Warriors had “no business” winning, Curry said.The basketball gods concurred. After Thompson’s 3-point shot with 4.5 seconds left caromed off the back rim, he rebounded his own miss. But his desperation heave at the buzzer was swatted away by Jamal Murray, who had a terrific all-around game for the Nuggets with 26 points and 8 assists.“The season has been like this all year,” Kerr said. “It’s been stops and starts. Just when you think we’ve got some momentum, we give it back.”As the visiting locker room continued to empty out, Thompson finally rose from his chair and packed for the trip home. The team bus was idling outside.“We just have to keep pushing,” Kerr said. More

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      Red McCombs, Car Salesman Turned Media Mogul, Dies at 95

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      A Texas entrepreneur, he co-founded the media giant Clear Channel, owned pro sports teams and created more than 400 businesses in a variety of industries.Red McCombs, a former Texas used car dealer who became a billionaire entrepreneur by venturing into an array of successful businesses, including the media giant Clear Channel Communications and several professional sports teams, died on Sunday at his home in San Antonio. He was 95.His family announced his death but did not state the cause.Mr. McCombs was a flamboyant wheeler-dealer who created more than 400 businesses across an array of industries, including oil, real estate, cattle, insurance, movies and racehorses, often selling them at a substantial profit. At various times he owned a pro football team, the Minnesota Vikings, and two pro basketball teams, the San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets.But his heart was in the automobile business, where he began as a standout car salesman in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1950. He went on to start his own dealership, and then expanded it into a network that at its peak in 1998 included more than 100 outlets, making it the largest car dealership in Texas and sixth largest in the United States.“I was an entrepreneur before I knew what the word was and certainly before I could spell it,” Mr. McCombs said in a 2006 radio interview. “New deals, new opportunities, new ventures are always a part of my life.”A University of Texas alumnus and a passionate Longhorns football fan, Mr. McCombs parlayed his love of sports into ownership of a minor-league baseball team in Corpus Christi in the 1950s.Then he bought the Dallas Chaparrals of the old American Basketball Association in 1973, relocated the team to San Antonio for the 1973-74 season and changed its name to the Spurs.When the A.B.A. and N.B.A. merged in 1976, he played a key role in having the Spurs included in the merger. He sold the team in 1982 and acquired the Nuggets, only to sell that franchise in 1985 for $19 million, nearly twice what he’d paid for it. He then repurchased the Spurs for $47 million before selling it in 1993 for $75 million (about $157 million in today’s money).In a statement on Monday, the N.B.A. commissioner, Adam Silver, called Mr. McCombs “a driving force in creating the modern N.B.A.”In 1998, Mr. McCombs purchased the N.F.L.’s Minnesota Vikings for $246 million, but grew impatient with futile attempts to build a new stadium for the team in the Minneapolis area. He sold the Vikings for $600 million in 2005.He also played a key role in bringing Formula One racing to Austin by investing in the Circuit of the Americas, the Austin track where the annual U.S. Grand Prix race has been held since 2012.In a statement on Monday, the Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, called Mr. McCombs “a true Texas titan across sports, media, business and philanthropy” who had “followed his dreams.”Mr. McCombs’s most lucrative venture was Clear Channel, which he co-founded with Lowry Mays in 1972, when they purchased a local radio station in San Antonio, KEEZ-FM, for $125,000. (Mr. Mays died in September at 87.)The two men continued to acquire radio stations, then television stations and billboards around the country. Aided by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which allowed media conglomerates to own an unlimited number of stations, they built the company into the world’s largest owner of radio stations; by 2000, Clear Channel owned more than 1,200.The company eventually expanded into event promotion, live music and sports management. Mr. Lowry oversaw the business, but Mr. McCombs was instrumental in seizing opportunities to expand, according to John Hogan, the company’s former chairman and chief executive.“He was steadfast in support of the notion that when the telecommunications regulations changed in 1996, we had to move quickly and aggressively, and that those who were slow and hesitant would get left behind,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview for this obituary.Though the company was often criticized for homogenizing radio programming in a way that eliminated much of the local flavor of independent radio stations, the formula was extremely profitable. When Mr. Lowry began to see signs that the internet would disrupt its well-oiled strategy, he and Mr. McCombs sold the company in 2006 for $17.9 billion to a private equity group led by Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners. As part of the deal, the group agreed to take on more than $8 billion in the company’s debt.The timing was perfect for selling. Clear Channel’s fortunes plunged almost immediately. In 2014, the company split into Clear Channel Outdoor, for the billboard business, and iHeartMedia, for the radio stations and other media properties.Red McCombs, left, arrived in Denver in 1983 after buying the Denver Nuggets basketball team. At right was Carl Scheer, the team’s president and general manager.Duane Howell/The Denver Post, via Getty ImagesBilly Joe McCombs was born in the tiny West Texas town of Spur on Oct. 19, 1927. His father, Willie Nathan McCombs, was a sharecropper and later an auto mechanic. His mother, Gladys McCombs, came from a family of farmers.Billy, whose shock of red hair earned him the lifelong nickname “Red,” showed an entrepreneurial bent as early as age 9, when he began selling bags of peanuts to migrant cotton pickers. He was 15 when his family moved to Corpus Christi, where he became a standout high school football player, eventually winning a scholarship to Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He left college to serve in the Army for two years before returning and enrolling at the University of Texas in 1948 on the G.I. Bill.But he dropped out to start a business career. He landed a job at the local Ford dealership in Corpus Christi and realized that he had found his calling. Just 22, he set a goal of selling a car a day and, by his account, managed to accomplish that feat for three years straight.In 1950, he married Charline Hamblin, who died in 2019 at 91. He is survived by their three daughters, Lynda McCombs, Marsha Shields and Connie McNab; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.After selling new cars for several years, Mr. McCombs realized that he could make more money selling used cars, he wrote in his autobiography, “Big Red: Memoirs of a Texas Entrepreneur and Philanthropist” (2010). New cars, he thought, were all alike, but “every used car is unique” and had a story to tell.“People like stories about the things they might be interested in buying,” he wrote.In 1957, at 29, he opened his first new car dealership, in Corpus Christi. But it sold Edsels, a Ford brand that would become synonymous with automotive failure. Though he sold many cars, he said, he knew that the brand would not survive. (The Edsel was discontinued in 1959.)“I was selling it myself and I could see the resistance,” he said. “We had to shoehorn everyone into it, and after I’d sold them to all my friends, I had nowhere to go. It was time to move on.”He moved to San Antonio in 1958 and there befriended Mr. Mays. The two soon began buying up radio stations, ultimately turning Clear Channel Communications into a behemoth. Mr. McCombs knew the power of radio and outdoor advertising from his experience with auto dealerships.He did his own radio and television commercials for 25 years, becoming a Texas celebrity along the way. He struggled for years with alcoholism and nearly died at age 48 after a serious case of hepatitis. He gave up alcohol then, and often spoke candidly about his addiction.In 2000, Mr. McCombs and his wife gave a gift of $50 million to the University of Texas business school — the single largest donation in the school’s history at the time. It was renamed the McCombs School of Business. He and his wife also donated $30 million to the university’s MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.Mr. McCombs was a major donor to Republican politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and President Donald J. Trump.Of all of his business achievements, Clear Channel was his most significant, Mr. McCombs declared in his autobiography. “I would never have thought I could ever have had a chance to do something like Clear Channel,” he wrote. “That’s why I don’t really believe in long-term plans. There was no way I could have ever planned Clear Channel.” More

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      NBA Christmas Day Games 2022: What to Know

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      The N.B.A. brings out its stars on Christmas. This year, there will be some new rivalries, too.The N.B.A. showcases its stars on Christmas Day, and this year there will be some big names to watch, like LeBron James, Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid.There will also be a new face in the mix (Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant is playing on the holiday for the first time) and a familiar one missing (Golden State’s Stephen Curry is out injured).In each of the five games, there is something to look forward to, from young players trying to make their mark to older foes avenging playoff losses.Here’s what you need to know.All times are Eastern, and all games will air on ABC and ESPN. The statistics were current entering Friday night’s games.Philadelphia 76ers at Knicks, noonJames Harden missed several games for the Sixers with an injury, but he’s back and helping them stack up wins.Matt Slocum/Associated PressAfter rocky starts, these teams are finally clicking. The Knicks surged up the Eastern Conference standings on the strength of a recent winning streak, while Philadelphia was compiling a streak of its own.They met on Nov. 4, with the Knicks winning, but Philadelphia didn’t have its two best players: center Joel Embiid and guard James Harden. That makes Sunday’s game the teams’ first true matchup. The Knicks have played on Christmas more often than any other team, but this is the first time they will have Jalen Brunson, their big free-agent signing of the off-season.Brunson, a guard who spent his first four seasons in Dallas, leads the Knicks in assists and is the team’s second-best scorer, behind forward Julius Randle. For the first quarter of the season, the Knicks struggled to string together wins. But then December hit, and they found their stride.That’s when fortunes improved for the Sixers, too. Harden had missed more than a dozen games with a foot injury but returned this month to produce several impressive games with double-digit assist totals. The Knicks will, of course, have to watch out for Embiid as well. Last month, in a game against the Utah Jazz, he had this wild stat line: 59 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists and 7 blocks.Los Angeles Lakers at Dallas Mavericks, 2:30 p.m.Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic is in his fifth N.B.A. season but has already been named to the All-Star team three times.Emil Lippe/Associated PressFans can seemingly always count on seeing the Lakers on Christmas — this is the 24th year in a row — but nothing else about the team has been that consistent.Even as LeBron James, who will turn 38 on Friday, continues to defy reason with his youthful play, minor injuries keep tugging him to the bench. Then there’s the major injury to center Anthony Davis, who is out indefinitely with a sore right foot. Other ailments have rippled through the roster, and the Lakers’ sub-.500 record reflects that. But it also reflects an aging team that got off to a terrible start (0-5) and hasn’t settled into a high-performing rhythm since then.All of that is to say: The Lakers have been a little bit all over the place.Dallas has been, too. Luka Doncic is playing and scoring more than last season, but the Mavericks are losing to bad teams right after beating good ones. The Lakers could fall into either category on Sunday. At the very least, it should be a fun game, with Doncic and James battling to see who can put on the best show. They are both capable of making even the earliest risers hold off on a midday nap.Milwaukee Bucks at Boston Celtics, 5 p.m.Jayson Tatum led the Celtics to the N.B.A. finals last season and has followed that up with high-scoring play this season.David Butler II/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBoston’s Jayson Tatum has responded to his disappointing appearance in the N.B.A. finals last season in the best way: by playing better than ever before. He’s leading the league in minutes per game (37.2), and he’s putting them to good use, averaging a career-best 30.6 points per game by making about half of his shots.The Celtics will face a Bucks team with a not-so-shabby star of its own in Giannis Antetokounmpo. Last season ended in playoff disappointment for him, too, with Milwaukee falling to Boston in seven games in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Sunday will be his first chance for a little revenge.The Bucks and the Celtics are jockeying for first place in the East, though they are fighting with different strengths. Boston has the league’s second-best offense, while Milwaukee has the third-best defense. The postseason is still a ways off, but it would be a surprise not to see one of these teams in the N.B.A. finals. Their Christmas matchup should help each team see what it needs to work on to make sure it’s the one playing for a title.Memphis Grizzlies at Golden State, 8 p.m.Ja Morant has made the Grizzlies one of the most exciting teams to watch in recent years. Brandon Dill/Associated PressNo one can argue that the Grizzlies haven’t earned this, their Christmas debut.Point guard Ja Morant is the speedy, soaring, confident heart of the team, but Memphis is more than its brightest star — and Morant would be the first to say so. He’s averaging a career-best 7.8 assists per game as he and his teammates keep the Grizzlies near the top of a tightly contested Western Conference.They finished last season as the No. 2 seed in the West and could have made a run to the conference finals if Golden State (and injuries) hadn’t gotten in their way in the second round. Sunday will be the teams’ first meeting since then.Both teams have dealt with their share of injuries this season, but Golden State has an especially big one: Stephen Curry has been out since he hurt his shoulder against Indiana on Dec. 14, and it’s not clear when he will return.Golden State is currently ranked in the bottom half of the West, but the intensity of last season’s playoff series with Memphis should carry over and make Sunday’s game a good contest nonetheless.Phoenix Suns at Denver Nuggets, 10:30 p.m.Denver’s Nikola Jokic won the Most Valuable Player Award the past two seasons.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesThe last game on a long day of basketball is easy to overlook. But Denver’s Nikola Jokic is sure to make at least one pass that will make staying up late worth it. That’s kind of his thing: One minute he has the ball, and then the next his teammate on the other side of the court does, and no one is quite sure how it happened. The Suns are a top-10 defensive team, but some things just can’t be stopped.Phoenix is also the league’s best on offense, which could be a challenge for the Nuggets, who are among the N.B.A.’s worst on defense. Suns guard Chris Paul is one of the best ever at getting the ball to his teammates. Paul led the league in assists last season, his fifth time doing so, and is averaging about nine per game this season.If this game’s late start isn’t a deal-breaker, it should be a nice chance to see some excellent passing and skilled shooters making good on the assist. More