Eight-year-old LJ Jones thought his grandfather, Ralph Simpson, was hiding a secret from him. So he demanded an answer.
“Grandpa, can I ask you a question?” Simpson, 73, recalled his grandson saying, imitating the boy’s serious tone.
“Grandpa,” said the boy. “Someone said you were famous.”
Simpson had to laugh. After all, he’s not the most famous Ralph. It could be Ralph Lauren, or Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nor is he the most famous person in his family. That would be his daughter, Grammy Award-winning soul singer India Ari.
“Grandpa is not famous,” Simpson told his grandson. “I played for the Nuggets and also played professional basketball.”
Still LJ wanted to know, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Simpson was a starter for the Denver Nuggets of the American Basketball Association from 1975-1976. They were the only Nuggets group to reach the championship round before this year’s team made it to the NBA Finals. In the 1975-76 season, the team lost six games to the New York Nets led by Julius Erving in the ABA Championship Series. The ABA and NBA merged before the 1976-77 season, and the Nuggets spent the next 47 years in basketball purgatory, inspiring a few teams but not making the finals.
The Nuggets are one win away from winning the championship for the first time in franchise history. As they try to end the series in Game 5 at home against the Miami Heat on Monday, they will be cheered on by some of the players who played for the ABA title.
“Having the Nuggets in the Finals was pretty cool because it brought back a lot of memories for people who didn’t know there was an ABA team in the Finals in Denver,” said backup Gus. Gerard, 69, said. 1976 final team player. He then laughed and added: “The only thing that annoys me is that all the highlights are shown and it’s always the same thing, the great Dr. J, Julius Erving, dunking left and right.”
Like the Nuggets today, the 1976 team routinely demoralized opponents with a nearly unstoppable offense, but it often felt like an underdog. Denver’s veteran team also struggled in obscurity for much of the season.
a Sports Illustrated May 29, 1976 article, lamented that “Denver games aren’t nationally broadcast” and that “Denver box scores aren’t on most sports pages.” The article noted that some “mainstream media” still refer to the Nuggets as the “Denver Rockets,” which was their name until 1974. The franchise changed its name because it planned to move to the NBA, which was already using the Rockets name. Taken by Houston.
The 1975-76 Nuggets had the best record in the ABA. Leading them were three of his future Hall of Famers: Bobby Jones, Dan Issel and David Thompson. Thompson, nicknamed Skywalker, was the top pick in the 1975 draft by both the Virginia Squires in the ABA and the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA. However, he chose to sign with the Nuggets instead.
“David Thompson, I used to stand and watch him during games,” said Byron Beck, 78, who played all nine ABA seasons and his first NBA season in Denver. , you realize, “Ah!” And he’s already done something great. “
They won the ABA Championship as players with the Oakland Oaks in 1969, the Men’s NCAA Division I Basketball Championship as coaches at the University of Kansas in 1988, and the NBA Championships as coaches with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. was coached by Larry Brown, who won the
From 1975 to 1976, the ABA went from ten teams to seven teams and only one division. The All-Star Game pitted the Nuggets against other team’s All-Stars.
Claude Terry, then a Nuggets reserve guard, said he remembers riding a station wagon to the All-Star Game with his wife and two children. “He was probably wearing old Levi’s and shoes that didn’t get dirty in the snow,” he said.
“I don’t even remember being interviewed during the game,” he added.
That season, the Nuggets packed out the new McNichols Arena, which opened in 1975, with the pending NBA merger in mind. Demolished in 2000. Gerrard remembers being swarmed for autographs and invited to free meals at restaurants like the Colorado Mine Company.
“It was like the best prime rib I’ve ever had in my life,” Gerald said.
While I was excited, I was also worried. Preparing for a merger with the NBA weighed heavily on players who knew that only four of the ABA’s seven teams could survive.Nuggets, Nets, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs to stay in NBA
“Most of us didn’t have full-length contracts,” Terry said, adding that the players were “not nervous, just trying to figure out what to do next.”
Terry said the upcoming changes meant players no longer understood what it meant to play in the final season of the ABA. Had social media existed at the time, Terry said, he might have paid more attention to its importance.
The Nuggets won seven games against the Kentucky Colonels in the first round of the playoffs. Then he faced the New York Nets, who have Irving, the best player in the series. Denver lost Game 1 at home. They faced a home elimination in Game 5, but won despite Irving scoring 37 points. Simpson and Issel led the team with 21 points each, while Gerrard scored 12 off the bench.
I knew if I could push through Game 7 in Denver, I would win. But Irving led a furious fourth-quarter comeback in Game 6 to win the game and the championship.
“We should have beaten them,” Simpson said. “We had a better team. Even Julius Erving thought we were. But they attacked us.”.“
As the years went by, some members of the Nuggets team became more and more disconnected from the franchise, although they kept in touch with each other. Most of them left Denver to pursue non-basketball careers.
Thompson and Gerrard had a well-known battle with drug addiction. Gerald later became a substance abuse counselor. He currently works for the Fayette County Government in Pennsylvania, where he continues to help people recovering from addiction. Thompson attended a Nuggets fan event and played in Game 2 of the finals in Denver. He and Jones played for the Nuggets until 1978 and founded a religious nonprofit in North Carolina.
Isser is still most associated with the franchise. He played for the Nuggets until 1985, returning as a caster a few years later. Issel has twice coached the Nuggets and twice served as the team’s president. In 2001, he apologized to his fans for using racial adjectives against Mexicans and resigned shortly thereafter.
This year, Isser brought his five grandchildren to Game 1 of the finals, where Denver won 103-94 at home.
Simpson watches the game at home and invites his grandchildren to a pizza party to watch the game with him. He wasn’t able to play in Denver in his NBA debut season because he was traded to Detroit, but was traded back to the Pistons the following season. He keeps in touch with the ABA and his NBA alumni by being active with the National Basketball Retirees Association.
For Denver, the 47-year drought to return to the Finals has baffled him.
“We have some really good players,” said Simpson, who briefly coached at a small school and was a pastor in Denver. “I’m really surprised that I haven’t won a title yet.”
The Nuggets have tried to stay focused on the task at hand this year in pursuit of their first win as a franchise. Just as the ABA Nuggets didn’t think about history, neither do these Nuggets use the franchise’s long drought as inspiration.
“I don’t know much about it,” Denver’s Bruce Brown said. “Who was on that team?”
He said he tries not to think about what the championship means for the franchise and the city of Denver.
“It makes you too happy and too anxious,” says Brown. “I’m just trying to stay in the moment.”
An attempt to make history for the 1975-76 team has faded as the years have gone by, but Brawn and his teammates are now set to complete the journey they started.
