The journey for the Nuggets is just beginning. The adventure is close to ending for me.

A 24-year-old novice sportswriter, who had been a reporter covering civil rights issues in the South, saw his first Denver Rockets game with 3,155 bystanders at the Auditorium Arena in downtown Denver on Nov. 22, 1970. The Memphis Pros won the ABA game 141-121.

As a still naïve 76-year-old Colorado newspaper columnist and national TV commentator he watched on June 12, 2023, as the Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat 94-89 to win their first NBA championship.

Long time and 4,500 games coming.

ANALYSIS: Denver Nuggets have options to add to championship roster ahead of NBA Draft

The eccentric Charles O. Finley, owner of three-time World Series champion Oakland A’s, bought the Pros in 1972, and I spent three days with him at a Chicago hotel near his office. Finley told me he was changing the Pros’ nickname to “TAMS’’. I said: “What?’’ “TAMS for Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Southern Illinois.’’ I replied: “But Southern Illinois is so far away.’’ “OK. Forget that part. I’ve got another new name. I’m naming you general manager.’’ “I can’t be the GM. I’m 26, and I can’t manage anything.’’ I turned down the offer. The TAMS were TERRIBLE.

In May 1974 I accepted the sports columnist position at the Rocky Mountain News after leaving The Memphis Commercial Appeal and deciding not to join The Atlantic Constitution. Rocky editor Michael Balfe Howard requested that I also cover the ABA team, which had just changed its own nickname to the Nuggets (the original moniker for the team when it was in the original NBA in 1949 for only one season) and hired Carl Scheer (not me) as GM and Larry Brown as head coach and assistant Doug Moe (who both had played for the New Orleans Buccaneers, the franchise that became the Memphis Pros).

Nikola Jokic changes tune at almost family-friendly Denver Nuggets championship celebration

Even though college superstar David Thompson was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks and the Virginia Squires in 1975, the Nuggets stole him away from both, and also outbid Atlanta for center Marvin “The Human Eraser’’ Webster (who signed for $1.5 million over five years). On July 9 Thompson agreed to the biggest rookie contract in sports history (six seasons, $3 million) in Denver, and Scheer invited me for dinner at the fashionable and famed Laffite’s on the corner of Larimer and 14th. When wine was brought to the table, the 20-year-old Thompson, days away from turning 21 and being able to legally drink, asked for a milkshake. The restaurant sent a waiter to a nearby fast-food joint, and we clinked wine glasses and a paper cup.

The Nuggets also signed Thompson’s teammate and best friend, diminutive Monte Towe, from NCAA national champion North Carolina State. I asked the two to come to the gym where the Nuggets practiced, and I brought a 48-inch yardstick. Thompson was fabled for being able to vertically jump 42 inches. I had Towe kneel with the measuring device and Thompson leap. On the third try he reached 44 inches. Legend became fact.

Before the season started the Nuggets also acquired Dan Issel when the Baltimore Claws (who had been with the defunct Memphis Sounds) were about fold the franchise. I drove Dan and his wife Cheri to a Glendale Asian restaurant on their first night in Colorado. “What are a couple of old ABA guys from Kentucky and Tennessee doing in Colorado?’’ Issel laughed.

“You’ve come to a special city and an incredible team. You got Larry and Doug, David and Marvin, and Bobby Jones was drafted last year. The Nuggets are going to win the championship.’’

Brown told me several days later: “We can whip any team in the ABA or the NBA. We’re better than the Celtics.’’

The 2023 Nuggets actually became airborne in 1975.

With the ABA condensed to only six teams, the Nuggets had a 60-24 record that season, defeated the ABA All-Stars, prevailed in a best-of-seven series against the Kentucky Colonels and met the New York Nets and Julius “Dr. J.’’ Erving in the ABA Finals.

The Nuggets lost the first game at Big Mac when Erving elevated for a baseline jumper just before the buzzer as Jones’ sneaker suffered a rubber blowout. The Nets won 120-118. The Nuggets won Game 2, lost the next two on Long Island, made it 3-2 back in Denver and possessed a 22-point lead in Game 6 on May 13, 1976, in New York before the Nets’ brutal brunt force led to the title. It would be the last of the league.

Upon returning to Colorado, I got a call from cable TV founder, Denver businessman and former Utah Stars owner Bill Daniels who said the NBA had approved the annexation of four teams from the ABA, and the Nuggets would be included. Nuggets vice president Bob King, off the record, confirmed the treaty.

I wrote the exclusive merger story, but the national media and the NBA denied my report was true, and my own newspaper barely believed me.

On July 17, 1976, the two leagues officially announced they would become one.

Coach Brown said to me then: “We didn’t win the ABA championship, but the Denver Nuggets will win the NBA championship.’’ Brown’s prophecy took quite a while.

The long wait was over, and the heavy weight was lifted Monday. Congratulations, Nuggets.

They are great and grand world champions, and I feel good my own self.

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (15) briefly picks up the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award while holding his daughter Ognjena after a 94-89 win over the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday, June 12, 2023, at Ball Arena in Denver. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)

Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette