“If you aren’t humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility, and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you.”
– Anand Mahindra
Humility is such a gift. Most hockey players miss most of their shots. Soccer players too. If a baseball player even bats close to 50% over an extended timeframe, he is revered. 40% over a season is one of the sport’s great rarities. Basketball players who shoot over 40% from the three-point line are sought after. But if they shoot 40% at the rim… it’s time to have a chat. For the most part, even the most successful of athletes gets plenty of opportunities to be humbled.
In my line of work, a 10% success rate tends to breed success. The months or years you double, triple, or occasionally even (gulp) quadruple that rate are the moments you and similarly inclined professionals sit and whisper about over the warm light of your geeky electronic devices. You’d better be ready to fail. A bunch. Humble pie has more than a whiff of fecality. But it turns out to be pretty damned healthy in your diet.
But I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more humble than I did several years ago when I started writing for Denver Stiffs, thinking myself knowledgeable about the team or the game. I’ve worked hard to keep learning over the time since, but I’ve also come to recognize my own strengths and weaknesses in the space. Join any group of fans and experts, and you’ll come to find you might know a little less than you thought you did. Sometimes a LOT less than you thought you did. Done right, it can be a tremendously healthy experience. Done poorly… Well, see “fecality”, above.
So, in the spirit of things you may or may not know about Denver Nuggets trivia new and old, here are a few random facts and bits of fun about your favorite basketball team. Quiz show style. Answers will be stashed a ways below. No cheating. Did you bring a number two pencil?
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1) Which Denver Nuggets player has taken on his middle name, with his given first name being Houston?
2) Which Denver Nuggets former player turns 65 on Saturday?
3) What’s the largest division the Nuggets have ever played in?
4) Who was the shortest Denver Nugget to regularly lead the team in rebounding in a game?
5) Which Denver Nuggets player turned 21 Saturday before last?
6) Which Denver Nuggets player was born on the same day as the 35th All-Star Game? (Hint: Nikola Jokic played in the 66th All-Star Game this last year)
7) Which Denver Nuggets player served one of the top-10 longest suspensions in league history?
8) Who was the first head coach of the Denver Nuggets? (Bonus question: who was the first head coach of the Denver Rockets?)
9) Speaking of head coaches, who had the shortest stint at the head of the Nuggets bench, whether interim or not?
10) Who had the highest winshare on the Denver Nuggets winningest team? How about VORP?
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Answers
1) Newest Nugget Jerami Grant. Very cool to be choosing between two cool names.
2) No, it is not Andre Miller. Only his game is that old. It’s David Thompson. Happy Birthday, Skywalker!
3) Seven teams were in the Nuggets division in 11 of the seasons between 1989 and 2004.
4) Fat Lever. 6’3”.
5) Michael Porter, Jr. A legal adult on June 29th.
6) Paul Millsap, born on February 10th, 1985. The All-Star game was played that day at the Hoosier Dome, and the West won 140-129.
7) Carmelo Anthony. No, really. A 15 game suspension earns him the Number Nine spot in that ugly top 10, against his eventually-beloved Knicks.
8) The one and only Larry Brown, but that was probably an easy one for many of you. If you knew Bob Bass was the head coach of the Denver Rockets, then I both applaud you and ask you to go outside and get some sun.
9) Michael Cooper was the interim head coach for the Nuggets in the 2004-05 season for all of 14 games. Coop went on to head coaching stints with the NCAA, WNBA, and BIG3. Cooper’s 14-game interim stint narrowly edges the 16-game interim stint Gene Littles put in between Dan Issel and Bernie Bickerstaff. Cooper won 4 of his 14 games, Littles 3 of his 16.
10) In the 2012-13 season that saw your Nuggets post a 57-25 record, Kenneth Faried put up a 7.8 winshare, with most of the other starters within spitting distance of that total. When it came to VORP, Andre Iguodala had a 3.7. The closest player to him was fully a third behind, Danilo Gallinari at 2.5.
Did you have any fun? Any humble pie in there for you, or did you know each and every one? Did you go Google them and come back? You know that’s like cheating at solitaire, right? I tried to make them of varying difficulty, but may have only gone as deep as my current knowledge and research run. Which obscure Nuggets fact did I leave out?
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