Nuggets History and Alex English

[The Rebel]

I had spent the previous 20 minutes dominating an assembled media gathering/press conference during the third quarter of the Nuggets victory over the Brooklyn Nets, asking question after question. Eagerly awaiting answers and getting amazing payback with great answers. Yeah, I asked for a picture with the Hall of Famer ... and hero of mine. Wasn’t ashamed either. He is Alex English. Alex freakin English....

Should I have been ashamed though? No.

Chris Dempsey of Nuggets.com pointed out in his article and interview with the Nuggets greatest player, English’s dominance of Nuggets statistical categories is unrivaled. English was the leading scorer of the 1980’s. Think about that for a moment. Think of all the great players that dominated the 80’s in the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird era. It was English who was above and beyond in scoring. In fact ... the game below where English scored 51 happened when he was the age of 35!

http://www.denverstiffs.com/2017/2/25/14738546/alex-english-and-the-nuggets-history-problem

For some of us this is a long term problem that many of us have always wondered about. I am old enough to remember my uncle talking about David Thompson and how much he wanted to be like him. I remember watching many games with Issel, English, Lever, hell I even remember the ultimate garbage man Bill Hanzlick on the court and having met him and Wayne Cooper outside of Mcnicholes when I was a kid. I remember the series when they were up 2-0 against the Showtime Lakers and people did not seem all that surprised, f course then the injury bug hit the team and they were done. But why has that went away? Why is it never talked about?

I understand why Issel was chased off for a while, but what about the rest of the greats? I often get frustrated when the discussion on the history of the Nuggets always seem to end with the Mutombo teams, and realized that on many boards the writer is correct, people's knowledge of the Nuggets being good are only based on the Melo years. I had an argument with a guy who has been in Colorado for 20 years the other day, and he argued that the only time the Nuggets were actually good was during the Karl years, and that bugs the crap out of me. People only know about the fluke years where team ownership was bankrupt and somehow still managed to draft Mutombo and build a decent team around him and the team being based around one guy. People do not realize that for over a decade the Nuggets were considered a top team in the western conference, they are one of the last remaining ABA teams still in their city and played in the finals in the last year of the ABA. Why not tell the story of Spencer Haywood dominating the ABA as a Denver Rockets rookie before the Seattle team sued the NBA so that they could sign him to a big money deal.

I personally think that the Nuggets and Altitude should produce a series of documentaries on the special times in the history of the team. Jokic is not the 1st time the Nuggets have had a franchise level player, he has a chance to be special but the Nuggets had multiple special players in their history that often it feels like nobody knows about it.

End of rant, but a couple of questions for people.Do you think it would help the fan base grow if more people knew about the history? Do you think you would enjoy something like that? Why does it feel like the NUggets are trying to hide their history?

[NuggetsWY]

Of course it would help the fan base grow. If I didn't remember the Denver Rockets days and many others after, I would have stopped being a Nuggets fans in 2014 or maybe 2013. But don't hold your breath asking for some historical documentaries. The Kroenkes are not about to spend that kind of money.

[The Rebel]

Of course it would help the fan base grow. If I didn't remember the Denver Rockets days and many others after, I would have stopped being a Nuggets fans in 2014 or maybe 2013. But don't hold your breath asking for some historical documentaries. The Kroenkes are not about to spend that kind of money.

They should own the rights to all the old game footage, and how much do you think it would take to interview some of the greats? Hell I have a cousin that has won awards for short films, I may have to check into this.

You know in the 90s I was chasing girls, working, and trying to go to school for most of it, so I missed a lot of the worst of it. I remember reading the box scores all the time, and following the team, but I do not have real clear memories about most of those teams, and I am glad I don't. Prior to my late teen and young adult times I only cared about basketball and football, and so I studied the teams, I watched every game I could, and at the time could name every guy on my teams and even many of the deep bench guys around the league. When my daughter was born and I settled down with the wife I got back into the team about the time Kiki announced the original process (not that teams had never tanked but that had the balls to sell it to their fans). Many of the Melo era fans that were created are actually going through a similar phase as I did in the 90s, and that is part of the lack of support. A documentary on the history would give the new Jokic fans and the new era something more to base their support on, and help remind the Melo fans returning the real history of this team.

[NuggetsWY]

Back in the 1960s, I lived 1000 miles away and could only follow them in the paper and maybe once a year on TV, especially playoff time. Our local TV didn't even play very many ABA playoff games. For the first half of the 1970s, I was overseas and it was worse but I did get to spend 15 months at Fort Carson and made the drive for a few games until I started dating the lady that I am still married to. Priorities for a young man: a beautiful lady or basketball? It was tough, but she won out.

Think back to the 1980s when the NBA playoffs were delayed until 11:30 PM unless your team was playing. They NBA had a hard time getting any network to even want to broadcast games. So I saw few games.

However, throughout all of that, except the 4 years overseas, I heard most games on the radio - sometimes a distant Denver station that was somewhat hard to hear. Ah, to have grown up in Denver and been able to watch the Nuggets over the years - that would have been wonderful. Unfortunately I made other choices and have no regrets.

[skywalker33]

With no disrespect to Carmelo Anthony, Alex English had the sweetest shot I've ever seen, He was Mr Automatic, made the 80's so much fun to watch. He kinda made up for the trade that sent Bobby Jones to PHI.