A Denver Nuggets Training Camp Tale

Two weekends ago I was faced with a task all come to dread: moving. Not only was I moving but this was the first time I had moved out of an actual house where all the stuff inside of it was actually mine. An arduous task without a doubt and one that convinced me I'll never forego paying someone to move my stuff again.

However, my weekend of manual labor was not without it rewards. Amid the emptying of my crawlspace (an activity that all but assured the development of a hunchback in my old age) I came across a box which had, among other things, a black trash bag that felt as if it housed a basketball. My initial reaction was confusion, but quickly that turned to excitement as I realized there was only one basketball I had ever owned that I would have gone to some length to preserve. I slowly pulled off the trash bag to see my hopes confirmed, this was the basketball I had brought to the 1994 Denver Nuggets training camp as a kid where I scored a slew of autographs. To put the cherry on top, the ball was nearly in mint condition.

This got me thinking to how going to that training camp was essentially what ensured that the Nuggets would always be my favorite professional sports team. As a Colorado native I was naturally a big Broncos fan and I must confess, the Nuggets weren’t even my first favorite basketball team. That title belongs to Michael Jordan’s first three-peat Chicago Bulls. With Jordan retiring before the 93 season, the local Nuggets pulling off the greatest upset in franchise history in the 93-94 playoffs was an excellent way to fill the basketball void in my life. Five months after that it was the 94 training camp which, at the time, was held at the Air Force Academy.

I grew up about twenty minutes away from the AFA so my dad picked my sister and I up from school early and we headed down there to catch some of the action and hopefully some autographs along the way. What followed was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had as a sports fan.

For whatever reason, training camp for the Nuggets back then took place in the evening so we were able to arrive before the players did. Well, not before all of the players. The nice thing about professional basketball players is they're pretty easy to pick out in a public setting if you're looking for them. We were walking around Clune Arena after finding the main entrance still closed when we spotted a very tall, athletic man in the parking lot below, leaning against a car and talking to a couple people near a side entrance to the arena. As we walked closer, 9-year old me nearly peed my pants when I realized the man was in fact my favorite Nuggets player.

Laphonso Ellis: I loved Laphonso Ellis and was heart broken that he was going to be out for the entire season (I always thought Ellis had torn his ACL, but in doing some research I found out he actually had a stress fracture in his knee that ended up requiring surgery). If there is one silver lining for me with his injury was that it ended up giving him time before camp started on day one to sit and talk with me. I have no idea what we talked about. I was so star struck that the whole thing is a blur now.

Unfortunately, Ellis never regained his pre-injury form, though he did carve out a decent NBA career. In my opinion his injury is the worst the franchise has ever suffered. The promise that was the 94 playoff team was quickly derailed by a series of events that essentially began with Ellis injuring his knee in a pick up basketball game just weeks before training camp started. If you’re not familiar with Ellis, imagine if, in addition to his current skills, Kenneth Faried was also a viable threat on offense from the triple threat position.