Nuggets Coach's Old NBA Roster Photo Hits the Meme World

Popeye Jones has served as assistant coach of the Denver Nuggets since 2021, but lately the former NBA player and longtime coach has also been the subject of gold-star memes involving everything from Blue Origin's recent space flight to Sidney Sweeney.

Jones played for the Dallas Mavericks for four seasons in his eleven-year NBA career, but it's his 2002 season photo that's getting all the attention. Over the years, the image has occasionally circulated online as people discovered the wonky picture. In comparison to Jones’s actual stature as a respected player and coach, the old roster photo is pretty funny.

The image's recent resurgence is thanks to the Instagram and TikTok page @averagebasketballplayers, which uses the photo as the account profile picture and recently began joking that Jones is dating actress Sydney Sweeney before branching off to create more Popeye Jones memes. Shortly after, the page @friday.beers jokingly listed Jones as +10,000 to become Sweeney's next boyfriend to its 2.4 million followers, and included him among Future, Grimace and Tony Hawk in an astronaut meme making fun of the Blue Origin space fight.

The @averagebasketballplayers pages are dedicated to more obscure NBA knowledge with information about “literally just the most basic average guys that no one has thought about in ten to fifteen years,” according to page founder Joey Korman.

Korman says he made the 2002 Jones photo the profile picture for the page because of how funny it is, and people have really responded. You can even buy a signed copy of it on eBay for $40.

“I’m glad people like the content,” he says, noting former NBA All-Star Blake Griffin recently followed the account, which is the biggest NBA name who has taken notice so far. Several media members follow the page, as well.

Korman is a lifelong Chicago Bulls fan, so he has no connection to Jones or the Nuggets (though Jones’s son, Seth, did play for the Chicago Blackhawks for almost four years before being traded to the Carolina Panthers earlier this season).

Three weeks ago, when celebrity gossip blogs picked up on the fact that Sweeney had attended the wedding of Glen Powell’s sister, Korman seized on the opportunity to make more Jones-related content.

Sweeney and Powell were rumored to have had an affair back when the pair was filming Anyone But You, a 2023 romantic comedy. Because Sweeney recently split with her longtime fiancé, her attendance at Powell’s sister’s wedding reignited the dating rumors between Sweeney and Powell.

In the world of @averagebasketballplayers, Powell became Jones.

“I just kind of started playing around with Instagram stories, and Sydney Sweeney was going through a breakup,” Korman says. “I was like, ‘Alright, just throw Popeye Jones’s picture in there, and see what happens.’ And people liked it. That was really it. I don't have some elaborate story behind it.”

Korman made the content a running joke on his page, and a few other popular meme accounts began to pick up on the photo, igniting the latest social media cycle focused on Jones’s long-ago photo.

The memes are part of Korman's bigger mission of bringing attention to NBA players who may not have been stars but still impacted teams and fans. After leading the country in rebounds one season at Murray State University, Jones averaged 7 points and 7.4 rebounds across a decade-plus NBA career and still holds the record for the most rebounds in a single game for the Mavericks, at 28.

Maybe Jones can motivate one of the Nuggets players to live up to that number as the team vies for a championship this year. At the very least, it might bring some levity to the locker room during the playoffs.

Because who doesn't love a good meme?