The Mile High City was spoiled for two seasons, when in 2022 the Colorado Avalanche brought home Lord Stanley, adding the hardware for the third time, while the Denver Nuggets added the Larry O’Brien to their case, last season.
This season, both teams appeared to be heading in the direction of adding once again to their trophy cases with both teams atop of their conferences behind the number one seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and the Dallas Stars.
The defending champs the Denver Nuggets blew past the Los Angeles Lakers in five games but met their match with the Minnesota Timberwolves who came out strong in the first two games in Denver beating the Nuggets by a combined score of 53 points. The reality check snapped Denver out of their slump, which led to three straight wins by the Nuggets in games 3-5.
The Nuggets lost in Minnesota by 45 in game six which led us to one of the Nuggets most infuriating game for fans in recent years in game seven. Despite an obvious shooting issue with Denver’s bench along with Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon who only contributed a whopping 11 points in game seven, the Nuggets still managed to lead Minnesota by 15 heading into the half (53-38).
Denver’s shooting woes were more apparent in the second half with Minnesota outscoring the Nuggets 60-47, leading to the defending champs 98-90 defeat. Jamal Murray ended the night with 35 points, one more point than Nikola Jokic. No other Denver Nugget was in double digits scoring.
On Friday night the Colorado Avalanche were facing elimination by the Dallas Stars who led the series 3-2 heading into Friday night’s game. Colorado won game five in Colorado on Wednesday, 5-3 to extend the series to game six. Despite a well-fought game that went into double overtime, the Dallas Stars proved to be too much for Colorado, defeating the Avs 2-1 on a overtime goal by ex-Colorado Avalanche center, Matt Duchene.
While fans were expecting much different results of both teams success in the playoffs this season, there’s certainly no doubt that both teams will continue to remain competitive moving forward in the City of Denver.
In other sports the Colorado Rockies had a slight shift in stars with a seven game winning streak that started in a series with the defending MLB champs, the Texas Rangers last week. The Rockies swept the Rangers in three games before heading to San Diego to sweep divisional foes, the San Diego Padres in three games.
Colorado’s winning streak came to a screeching halt against the San Francisco Giants over the weekend who beat the Rockies with a combined score of 10-28. The Rockies are in California this week to face the Oakland Athletics in a three-game series.
The Denver Broncos hadn’t even began OTA’s when second year linebacker Drew Sanders suffered a torn Achilles on Monday. OTA’s officially began on Tuesday in Dove Valley.
Denver’s first day of training camp is scheduled for July 28th and will continue through August 17th before their second preseason game against the Green Bay Packers.
