Is the Job Done? Not Until the City Celebrates the Nuggets Win

"The job is done," Nikola Jokic told ESPN after the Denver Nuggets clinched their first NBA championship in 47 years on Monday, June 12. "We can go home now."

Not hardly. Tens of thousands of fans — both those who'd been in Ball Arena for the fifth game of the finals and people who came for the party — flooded downtown to celebrate the win. In the mayhem that followed, buses were rerouted, and fans climbed light poles and pulled down parking signs in what's become an unofficial Denver tradition. And, sadly, there was a shooting after midnight in the 2000 block of Market Street.

The party will continue officially on Thursday, June 15, when the city hosts the Denver Nuggets Champions Celebration with a parade through downtown ending with a rally by the Denver City and County Building. The action will begin at 9 a.m. at Civic Center Park with GRiZ, Big Gigantic and Paws the Music performing live, as well as showings of Nuggets season highlight reels and live video from the parade after it starts at 10 a.m.

The Denver Nuggets Champions Parade will leave from Union Station, travel along 17th Street to Broadway, then turn south to Civic Center Park for a rally with Denver Nuggets players, coaches and management, including owners Stan Kroenke and Josh Kroenke; Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock and other civic leaders; the Denver Nuggets Dancers and PA announcer Kyle Speller; and OG mascot Rocky.

The celebration setup is largely a repeat of the party on June 3, 2022, after the Colorado Avs snagged their third Stanley Cup since the team arrived in Denver from Quebec City in the mid-1990s and was transformed from the Nordiques.
And how did the Nuggets' first unofficial celebration stack up with the inaugural Avs win party?

In its first season in Denver, led by Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Patrick Roy, the Avalanche made it to the Stanley Cup finals and went into game four at Miami Arena — yes, Miami — on June 10, 1996, with a 3-0 lead over the Florida Panthers. With Roy saving 63 shots, the two teams moved into a third overtime with a 0-0 score until German defenseman Uwe Krupp scored the game-winning goal for the Avs, giving Denver its first-ever championship from an NHL, NBA, NFL or MLB team.

Downtown, where Coors Field had opened just the year before, went wild. Very wild. "The party took an ugly turn around 1:15 a.m. when police used tear gas, Mace and batons to disperse about 3,000 unruly revelers who set fire to newspapers, climbed lampposts and overturned benches. Police Detective John Wyckoff said 15 arrests were made. Three people were hospitalized with minor injuries," the Associated Press reported at the time. "Hundreds of police in riot helmets broke up thousands of out-of-control fans who threw rocks and bottles through bar and store windows along the 16th Street pedestrian mall and near Larimer Street."

Westword had to move its newspaper racks after drunk Avs fans decided to use the paper as fuel for bonfires. Cops ultimately chucked tear gas canisters to disperse crowd members.

Charlie Brennan, then a general assignment reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, went out to report on the celebration. "The thing about that riot is nobody really saw it coming. I certainly didn't anticipate it. I don’t remember any conversations that day that we should expect it," Brennan told Westword last year.

"What I remember is that suddenly there was this pincer movement going on. The Denver PD had a flank of cops going up from 15th Street and the mall. All the rioters in that area fled, which I should have done. But I wasn’t rioting, so I didn't flee. As the cops closed in coming from both directions, I had in one hand a cell phone and in the other hand a notepad, and I raised both my hands up, holding the notepad and the cell phone, and I was yelling, 'Press, press!'" Brennan recalls. A cop then came right up to Brennan and blasted him in the face with pepper spray from ten inches away.

"I was immediately and completely disabled. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t see," Brennan says. "I still remember that as the most physically uncomfortable I've ever been in my adult life."

Although Denver sports fans had finally seen a victory, they weren't done with post-championship craziness, as Conor McCormick-Cavanagh reported.

After the Broncos won their first Super Bowl in 1998, fans went berserk in the city's worst sports riot. A year later, the city saw its second-worst sports riot after the Broncos won again.

And in June 2001, when the Avs won a second championship by defeating the Devils — the hockey franchise that left Denver as the Colorado Rockies in the 1980s to move to New Jersey — fans again went wild in the streets. "Sixty-three people were arrested and 50 were taken to detoxification centers. Most face charges of vandalism and disturbing the peace. The crowd was estimated at about 5,000," the AP reported.

When the Broncos won the franchise's third Super Bowl in 2016, the fans were relatively tame, and the good behavior continued with the Avs' third championship.

And after the Nuggets' first? "Let's celebrate safely, #Denver!," the Denver Police Department tweeted shortly after the win. Within a few hours, though, there were reports of shootings downtown including one incident in the 2000 block of Market Street shortly after midnight that resulted in "nine total gunshot victims," according to the DPD, as well as "a suspect who also sustained a gunshot wound." A second suspect is also in custody; the investigation is ongoing.

Find all the details on Thursday's celebration here.