Denver and the improbable, inevitable Jokić are an NBA dynasty in-waiting

B efore Denver had the Nuggets, there were the Larks – the original name given to the city’s local basketball franchise on its foundation in 1967. The lark is Colorado’s state bird, so the original name made a certain sense, but a small, unimposing passerine that rarely leaves the ground always seemed like a difficult sell as the avatar of a team playing a sport in which height and flight are two of the key ingredients for success. Eventually, the Larks became the Denver Rockets, and the team’s final name change – to the Nuggets – came in 1974.

Height always loomed as the Nuggets’ decisive advantage in this finals series – height, and their possession of the world’s best basket player – but on Monday night, as Denver sealed their inaugural championship with a squeaky Game 5 victory over Miami, the team played in a manner that seemed to pay tribute to the franchise’s original mascot: rooted to the ground, at one with the floor.

These finals were always supposed to be a mismatch: Denver’s ectomorphs against Miami’s endomorphs, the supertalls versus the strip malls. But the final stanza went right to the mat – literally so, since for much of a pleasantly fried fourth quarter it seemed like both teams were more intent on playing horizontally rather than upright, and the final minutes devolved into a chaotic tumble of grappling, grabbing, spoiling, and rolling. In much the same way that the team’s star is an agent of basketballing chaos whose great strength is his ability to play against type, the Nuggets are champions because they have learned, over the course of these finals, to win ugly, to grow beyond the obvious advantages of their own superior verticality. The team of supertalls has learned to play with the