The day the music died

Seven years, seven months…actually, almost eight months, if you’re keeping track. That feels right, but also way too short.

I started following the NBA around the 1996-97 season. I jumped on the Bulls bandwagon and will never regret it, but my favorite team was my hometown one, the Denver Nuggets. They went 21-61. The next year they were 11-71. I learned early on how few players actually made it big, even the most hyped. Antonio McDyess was one of the two real talents we had in those lean years, but his temperament and durability made him a disappointment. Still, I loved those teams: inside enforcers like Tommy Hammonds and Danny Fortson, the promising Bobby Jackson, the high-flying Darvin Ham, and even Nick Van Exel.

The other talent was a young point guard named Chauncey Billups who I once saw, in person, hit a three from about halfway between the three-point line and halfcourt to beat the shot clock. Like it was nothing. I remembered pulling for us to get him in the draft, but when he was on the team I didn’t recognize how good he could become, which probably made it easier to handle when we shipped him to the Magic.

Being a Nuggets fan, the draft was always the highlight of my year…until it happened. In 1998 I hoped against hope that the team would see the potential in Vince Carter, but we picked up the equally athletic Raef LaFrentz instead. I never thought I’d get over Carter, who I followed intensely in Toronto and whose dunks in the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest I can still recall, but five years later I would. Missing Carter gave us a shot at someone much better. (Besides, we should’ve taken Pierce or Nowitzki anyway.)

From there it was guys like James Posey, Nobody Blocks Your Shot Like Your Mamadou, and the immortal Tskitishvili. We were clearly destined to be terrible forever, though I was never quite comfortable admitting it.

Then came the one bright hope of awful NBA teams everywhere: LeBron James. I think he first popped up on my radar as a sophomore in high school, and it was a long wait for him to enter the draft, but he finally would in 2003.

I was so excited for the draft, I started reading up months before, particularly the prospect profiles on nbadraft.net, where I learned about Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony, who really wasn’t that far behind LeBron as a prospect. So all we needed was a top two pick, especially after Carmelo lead his team to the national championship and won the Most Outstanding Player trophy in the NCAA tournament.

On draft lottery night, of course, the Nuggets ended up with the third pick of the draft.

But almost immediately—I could be wrong, but I think it was the same night—I saw Joe Dumars, personnel man of the contending Detroit Pistons, who’d ended up with that second pick, on TV talking up Darko Milicic. Darko is exactly the kind of guy the Nuggets would have picked high in the draft: tall, with tantalizing potential, capable of scoring multiple times per game against 45-year-old Yugoslavian chain-smokers in Europe. Clearly, he was just one low-post move away from the All-Star Game.

It was pretty set going into draft night that Melo was ours, and I think it was on draft night that I saw Carmelo in a national ad campaign, I think with Kirk Hinrich and Chris Bosh for the new version of NBA Live. I couldn’t believe it—a Nugget was a star all across the country.

That first year might have been the most exciting NBA season of my lifetime. Everyone remember LeBron’s Nike ad, portraying his first game, where he froze up under the pressure, then exploded for an off-camera basket and flashed a smile? Yeah, he was ready, but I remember Carmelo having a fantastic season as well, and I remember the night of their first head-to-head meeting. Nuggets-Cavs games would be showpieces for years, I just knew it. Then the Nuggets made the playoffs, which they hadn’t done, ever, since I’d been interested. Carmelo had a rough game or two, and I remember one of my friends saying he choked, which struck me as just stupid. At that point, at his age, to do what he did? He’d accomplished more than even MJ had at that age, if you ask me.

You know how the rest of the story goes. For years, the Nuggets were exciting, and could compete with anyone, but they struggled to get out of the first round. (Didn’t keep us from some memorable moments, like when I went to Kobe’s first game back in Colorado after some legal trouble, when Carmelo scored a bunch and we blew the Lakers out.) Then, in late 2008, we got Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson, a move I didn’t appreciate at the time, mostly because I still though of A.I. as the 2001 Answer, but which was a brilliant move. Billups had proven himself as a clutch performer on the title-winning team in Detroit, which upset the Lakers in 2004 despite Darko.

The next spring was beautiful, the most exciting basketball run I’ve ever followed, when the Nuggets decimated the New Orleans Hornets, beat the Dallas Mavericks (thanks in part to Carmelo’s winning three in Game Three), then hung with the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals for a few games before L.A. closed it out. Nuggets fans debated who was more critical to the team’s success, Carmelo or Chauncey, and while I differed from most (Melo was finally coming around and deserved credit), it was so exciting just to discuss it. Plus there was the Birdman, J.R. Smith playing lights-out in the first two rounds, and the atmosphere at the Pepsi Center. It was incredible.

Yes, we lost to the Jazz last year, and with an aging Billups our window was tiny…but still. What a team! And somehow we got Ty Lawson, too, who could, just maybe, learn enough from the master that we wouldn’t miss him too much.

Well, tonight that all ended, as Carmelo and Chauncey were sent off to the New York Knicks. As a Tar Heels fan, hurray, we got Raymond Felton…but some guys should never leave their teams, and Chauncey defines that category. A star player in Denver, the best baller in CU history, and an NBA star who just wanted to finish his playing days here. (One of my friends thought he heard of the possibility of a buyout that would bring him back here…I hope that’s true.)

Regardless of that, this is my worst day as an NBA fan, and I’m not sure I will ever follow the league the same way again. Or at all. Don’t delude yourself into thinking we got fair value in return. We didn’t, the Knicks owned us, and it’s going to be a long road back. The Nuggets may even remain in contention to make the playoffs the next few years, but if you think we’re the threat we once were, you’ve lost your mind.

(Postscript: I always thought Carmelo's playoff struggles were overblown, as he had so many game-winning shots in the regular season and played fine in '09 when he had a team around him. Thankfully I went to a Bulls game at the Pepsi Center over Thanksgiving and saw Carmelo hit a buzzer-beater in person for the first time. He's legit.)