It took the blankety-blank Golden State Warriors to Create Ben Ouaglal a Denver Nuggets season-ticket holder. Seriously.
Quick backstory: Ouaglal, a native of Paris, and Anne Schulte, who hails from Evergreen, lived in the Bay Area for a half-dozen years before moving to Denver last October. While in California, the pair fell in love with a young Golden State squad, then a power in the NBA Western’s conference.
“And he was thinking of getting tickets to the Warriors,” Anne chuckled as she headed to the Nuggets pregame fan tailgate outside the Pepsi Center early Saturday night, a few hours before tipoff of Game 1 of Denver’s first playoff series since the spring of 2013. “But he didn’t. And then they took off. ”
Y’all know, as they say, the rest of the story.
“That squad had David Lee and (Leandro) Barbosa, they were scrappy men,” Ben remembered. “That altered. Now they’re all superstars. ”
And hey, fool me once …
“I brought him back (to Colorado),” Anne said, “and introduced (Ben) to this group. And this group reminds me a great deal of (those) Warriors. ”
At the beginning of the 2014-15 campaign, Steph Curry was 25. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, two more pillars of an oncoming NBA dynasty, were only 23. Fast forward to 2018-19 and the thousands of fans partying along Chopper Circle, posing for pictures next to life-size cardboard cutouts of Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris, both 24. The Nuggets, the second seed in the West, have the youngest squad still kicking in the NBA Playoffs and have been exploited by pundits as with the pieces — and possible — to produce a dynasty of their own.
“So this time, we’re committing,” Ben chuckled. “We initially did the winter (ticket) bundle and then I really liked the soul at the Pepsi Center. And you could see, through the season … the fans pushing the group when they needed it the most. ”
Given a chance, Ouaglal wasn’t going to turn his back on a stock double.
“Yeah,” Ben stated, “we decided to become season-ticket holders for next year. ”
A few yards off, Eddie Encinias of Arvada was ready to welcome Ben and Anne to the celebration, rocking a white baseball sweater in Avs colors with the Nuggets’ retro Maxie Miner logo stitched to the front.
“I’ve been waiting six years now,” stated Encinias, a Nuggets lifer whose passion for Mile High Basketball stretches back to the salad days of Alex English, Fat Lever and Dan Issel in the mid-1980s. “Melo (Carmelo Anthony) broke our hearts, man. I’m not that. I still cry over that. It was terrible seeing him go. ”
However, Encinias is living proof that, even when a franchise player leaves city, you can — finally — fall back in love with a roster again.
“This (year’s team) is my favorite Nuggets group of all-time,” he said. “The Alex English teams, those teams in the ‘80s, were so amazing. The Doug Moe (trained ) teams, man, they were great. But this is my favorite Nuggets group.
“With these men, I think there’s something special about each of the personalities. (Paul) Millsap, Jamal Murray, Jokic — only seeing Jokic play, he’s going to be the greatest big that’s ever played. So we’re seeing history made. He’ll go down as the best center to have played the game. ”
Encinias sees Jokic and the Nuggets emerging from a tough San Antonio series in seven games, and that house court at the Pepsi Center must have enough juice to counter any mojo veteran Spurs coach Gregg Popovich brings to the table. Hopefully.
“The last regular-season match (against Minnesota), the energy was so crazy,” he said. “So I think it’s only going to spill right into this (series). It’s going to be extreme.
“And individuals that are new to town don’t actually remember them getting bumped off (in the first round) annually. So there’s a new energy here. I hope they fall in love with this group. It’s something everybody. ”
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