Giddy Up!
By both qualifying for the postseason for the fifth consecutive season the Nuggets and the Avalanche have a chance to become double dip NHL-NBA champions for a historic first in North American sports.
Since the advent of the NHL in November of 1917 and the NBA in June of 1946 (same month I was born) the hockey and basketball leagues haven’t crowned champs from the same city in the same year.
The seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals could create a gargantuan dilemma at Ball-Puck Arena. Both are scheduled for Sunday, June 18.
One in the afternoon, the other at night? A nation turns its beaming lights on Our Dusty Old Cowtown?
Just imagine back-to-back parades on June 20 and more than a million people in downtown Denver.
There is, of course, much more for the Avs and the Nuggets to do before then.
At least eight other cities in the United States and Canada seek to accomplish that preposterous goal. The New York City metropolitan area possesses five franchises that could be in the NHL and NBA playoffs – the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, the Devils and the Islanders – and Los Angeles has the Lakers, the Clippers and the Kings that can advance. Toronto could be represented by the Maple Leafs and the Raptors.
Yet, Boston has the most favorable odds with the President’s Cup Bruins and the No. 2 seed Celtics.
And Denver is the home to the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche, one victory shy of 100 points and about to clinch a playoff spot, and the Western Conference’s top seed Nuggets.
The Nuggets might have to play the Lakers and/or the Clippers, as they did in the pandemic bubble season, or the Suns, who have beaten the Nuggets in the past two postseasons. Warriors, Pelicans or Grizzlies also possibly could be opponents, with the Celtics, the Bucks or the 76ers looming.
The Avalanche are destined in the West to confront those Golden Knights, who beat them before, or the Stars, the Oilers and the Kraken. If they are still alive and skating, the Avs could end up with the Bruins, the Devils, the Rangers, the Hurricanes or, just as a year ago, the Lightning.
Kings could be in the future for each.
The odds are overwhelming for dual titles, but nothing ever has come easy here. The Avalanche was the third major-league franchise for Denver after the Spurs of the World Hockey Association bolted in the middle of the night for Canada and the original Colorado Rockies of the NHL were stolen away by a New Jersey swamp salesman. But Denver, which had filched the Kansas City Scouts, much later pilfered the Quebec Nordiques and won a Stanley Cup in the team’s first season (1995-96), then another in 2001 and a third last season in a dominating dynamic.
The Nuggets joined the upstart National Basketball League in 1948 and finished last in the Western Division, then were absorbed by the National Basketball Association the next year, ending up with the worst record (11-51) before disbanding. The Denver Larks became the Rockets before playing in the first season of the American Basketball Association (1967) and, as the Nuggets, reached the finals in the league’s final year (1975) against the New York Nets.
A Nuggets rematch against the Nets of Brooklyn would be appropriate.
The Nuggets rejoined the NBA in a 1976 merger and are the only team of Denver’s five major professional sports franchises to not get to a championship series or game, unlike the Avalanche, the Broncos (with eight Super Bowls and three titles) the Major league Soccer Rapids (2010 champions) and the Rockies (2007 World Series). In 2016 the Broncos and the Major League Lacrosse Denver Outlaws, who shared the football stadium, were champions, and last year the Avalanche and the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League won championships. The Colorado arena football team and the Denver Racquets of World Team Tennis also took titles.
This is only the 10th time in 28 seasons the Nuggets and the Avalanche are back together in the playoffs.
Denver can become famous as Our Dusty Old Two Title Town?
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