“The King is dead. Long live the King!”
– first proclaimed in 1422, as Britain’s Charles VII succeeded Charles VI
I remember the moment the Denver Broncos won their first Super Bowl. Colorado’s first major championship had barely preceded the Broncos big win, but to have the state’s sport darlings finally atop the heap and igniting their fanbase was a moment frozen in time in the memory of this Broncos fan.
At least I thought it would be frozen.
It was a scant two days after the Super Bowl victory that the local sports voices started questioning the Broncos chances for the following year, and weeks before the team started all of its offseason planning. A few months later, draftees and all rookies are starting to prep for the season, and training camp is right behind. The moment that was supposed to be frozen in my memory was a great one, but it had melted away into the next year with the speed of a snowman in St. Augustine. Wham-bam-thank-you-Shanahan, and all of a sudden we were right back to what have you done for me lately?
It was eye opening, to say the least. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I expected they would cease all NFL operations the moment the right team had finally won it all, but hey… no one said reality was my strong suit. Through my protestations, the league decided to keep making money.
Never was the speed and brevity of a Championship offseason more painful for one Colorado sports fan than the 114 days that went between the Denver Nuggets winning it all a year and a couple weeks ago and their early October Training Camp. A heady summer flew by, and just three and a half months later. my team that finally had their ring had to go back and try to do it all over again. It hardly seemed like enough time to savor it, especially missing faces that had been so crucial just a few months prior.
But yet another season rolls along, and for this brief moment in Nuggets history, it’s unsure that all five pieces of the Nuggets Championship starting five will be back next year. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has declined the player option year of his deal, and will deservedly take his two championship rings out to what sounds to be a hot market for his services. If that number climbs to a level too high for Denver to feel good about matching and still being able to compete with… well…
Nuggets GM Calvin Booth was actually pretty direct and clear on the subject, both praising KCP and lamenting the possibility, but also praising and setting forth the metrics behind last year’s sixth man Christian Braun. While all of what’s still to come here is out in the ether, Nuggets Nation is alight with opinions ranging from “all is lost” to “we’ll be fine”. But the memory of a KCP who said he wanted to be a “Nugget forever” in a postgame interview after one the last home games of last season would feel like a pretty sudden and huge vacuum in Nuggets space should he suddenly just be gone. One more piece of a memory that feels like it was just a few hundred days ago… right?
Avs fans feel that championship phantom limb, just one more year removed. Hell, even a Boston sports fan has to occasionally feel the pain of going without a championship… right? Yesterday was your ring, today is your parade, and tomorrow is right back to what have you done for me lately?
Knowing the wheel is spinning right back around, maybe you even take the moments to savor the journey when you got close, or even when you got a little bit further than the time before. One of these years, even the Rockies will hang a banner up at Coors Field, and a few months down the road, the Yankees and Dodgers will just be favorites all over again. If you’ve got a moment to savor in the mix, do it while you’ve got it. Whether KCP is back this next year or not, that clock is ticking, right alongside all the rest. The shooting guard is dead. Long live the shooting guard.
