Nuggets 4th quarter at Ball Arena be like 🏀 ⛏️ #shorts #nuggets #denver

If you've been to a Nuggets game, you already know what I'm talking about. That moment right at the start of the fourth quarter when the lights drop, the video board fires up, and the whole arena kind of collectively wakes up — it's one of the better crowd moments in Denver sports. I've been to a handful of games over the past couple seasons and that stretch of the night consistently delivers, even when the Nuggets don't.

The video itself — the one they run as the fourth quarter tips off — runs through the season's best highlights. Jokic doing something that shouldn't be physically possible for a man his size, Jamal Murray hitting a pull-up that had no business going in, MPJ catching a skip pass in rhythm. It's cut well. It builds. And the crowd responds to it every time in a way that feels less like a produced arena moment and more like something organic. That's harder to pull off than it sounds.

What Actually Makes It Work

Ball Arena does a few things right that a lot of venues get wrong. The sightlines are good from most sections, the sound system hits without being overwhelming, and the video production — especially in moments like this — is legitimately well done. The fourth quarter intro has become its own ritual for regular attendees. You start watching the clock tick toward the end of the third just waiting for it.

The 2022-2023 version featured Murray, Jokic, Porter, Aaron Gordon, and Bruce Brown prominently, which made sense — that was the championship run, and the highlights were real. Gordon hitting corner jumpers, Murray going off in clutch moments, Jokic doing the Jokic thing. It's easy to forget how good that team was to watch in real time until you see those clips back to back in a dark arena with 19,000 people around you.

Not every game ends with the same energy, of course. The Nuggets have had some rough fourth quarters in that building — the loss to the Hawks a while back, the Game 4 collapse against OKC where they couldn't buy a bucket and the bricks were piling up fast enough to build something — but even in those games, the intro video does its job. The crowd believes going in. What happens after that is on the team.

The Experience Beyond the Game

If you're making a night of it downtown, the area around Ball Arena has enough to keep you busy before tip-off. Larimer Square on 14th is about a ten-minute walk and worth the pre-game stroll if you want somewhere to eat that isn't the arena concourse. Lucky Strike on the 16th Street Mall is an option if you've got time to kill and want something casual — bowling, food, easy parking access.

Parking downtown on game nights is the thing everyone complains about, and they're not wrong. Getting there early helps. So does knowing where the garages are before you go, because circling blocks in a 20,000-person traffic pattern isn't fun. Light rail from Union Station is the move if you're coming from the right direction — it drops you close and cuts out the whole parking situation entirely.

Games go fast when the team is clicking, and slow and frustrating when they're not. Either way, that fourth quarter video is going to run, and for two minutes at the top of the period, the whole arena is going to be locked in. It's become one of those small things that makes attending in person feel different from watching at home, which is the point.

If you haven't been to a game at Ball Arena, the fourth quarter intro alone is worth noting. It's a small thing, but it's done well, and it's the kind of detail that makes you feel like the organization respects the people who show up. Get there for tip-off, stay through the fourth, and take the train if you can.