As the Nuggets shine in the NBA playoffs, can you remember the original Denver Nuggets? They captured the 1939 national basketball championship and first put Denver on the map as a sports-crazy town.
Basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, was physical education director of the Denver YMCA shortly after he created the game in 1891. Naismith wanted a team sport that people could play indoors. He had no idea how quickly basketball would bounce into popularity as folks rigged up bushel baskets, waste baskets and most any kind of baskets and started shooting.
In 1932, Denver first fielded a team in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), a national organization that urged local companies to sponsor teams and held an annual tournament. The Denver Piggly Wigglys, affectionately known as the Pigs, were sponsored by the grocery chain of that name. The Pigs played in the old Auditorium (now elegantly reincarnated as the Ellie Caulkins Opera House).
By offering free use of the Auditorium, Denver captured the 1935 AAU national championship tournament.
That year, the team’s name was changed to the Denver Safeways after that grocery chain bought Piggly Wiggly. When Safeway dropped sponsorship in 1938, crushed fans feared losing both the team and the AAU tournament. Sports promoters hastily organized the Denver Nuggets, but failed to find an exclusive sponsor. Team backers secured employment for individual players with local sponsors such as the Brown Palace Hotel (whose logo would look great on Chauncey or Carmelo).
The Auditorium broke all attendance records with the ongoing national championship. The turnaway crowds gave Denver its original claim to fame as a sports town, according to Metropolitan State College of Denver history professor Dolph Grundman. His book, “The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball,” claims that “AAU basketball was the biggest form of sports entertainment in Denver and its only source of recognition in the national sports community.”
The Denver Tourism and Convention Bureau realized this major attraction and began to promote the team. In exchange, the players personally unfurled a 20-yard-long banner before all their games: “Come Up to Denver.”
Led by player-coach “Jumping” Jack McCracken, the Nuggets breezed to victory in the 1939 tournament and were wreathed in national acclaim as one of the greatest basketball teams ever. The Nuggets graciously turned over their championship trophy to Denver Mayor Ben Stapleton, “because Denver has given this team such wholehearted support.”
Shining nuggets, of course, first brought 100,000 people to Colorado 150 years ago. Whether today’s Nuggets make it to the top or not, they are adding luster to a golden history.
Tom Noel welcomes your comments at drcolorado@auraria.com.
