Nuggets Fans Got This For Free* 🏀 #shorts

Season ticket holders got a pretty good deal this past weekend. The Nuggets held their NBA season tipoff event at Ball Arena, and if you had season tickets, you walked in free. I went expecting a standard meet-and-greet type situation — maybe some players waving from a stage, a few photo ops, and that's it. It was a bit more than that.

The whole roster showed up. Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr., Christian Braun — the guys you actually want to see. And the energy in the arena felt different from a regular game night. No one was rushing to beat traffic. People were just hanging around, close to the floor, closer to the players than you'd ever get during an actual game. That part surprised me.

What Actually Happened Inside

The rookies did karaoke, which sounds like it could be painful to watch, and honestly it kind of was — in the best way. There's something funny about watching a 20-year-old NBA player try to commit to a song in front of thousands of people. Rocky the mascot was there, the NBA Finals trophy made an appearance, and the players were genuinely spending time with fans rather than just posing for fifteen seconds and moving on. Murray was one of the guys who seemed most comfortable with the crowd, which tracks if you've watched him play. He feeds off that stuff.

The Finals trophy is worth seeing in person if you haven't. It's bigger than it looks on TV and sitting next to it for a photo felt a little surreal given what this team pulled off. Denver doesn't have a long history of championships, so that hardware still means something here.

The Catch

The "free" part has an asterisk, and a real one — this was for season ticket members only. If you're not locked into season tickets, you weren't getting in. So this isn't a drop-in event for casual fans. That said, if you are a season ticket holder and you skipped this, that was a mistake. It's the kind of access you don't get during the regular season when the arena is packed and the players are focused on the game.

Parking downtown around Ball Arena is the usual situation — it's fine if you know where you're going, slightly annoying if you don't plan ahead. The 16th Street Mall area has options and Skyline Park is close by if you want to walk from further out and grab some air before or after.

What This Season Could Look Like

The Nuggets have nineteen theme nights planned for 2024-2025 — Grateful Dead night is on the list, which is either your thing or it isn't. But if events like this tipoff are any indication of how the organization is treating its fanbase this year, the season experience around the games might be as good as the games themselves. That's not something you could say about every team in this city across every sport.

Denver's been a basketball city for a while, but the championship run made it feel different. You notice it at events like this — people aren't just showing up because it's something to do on a Saturday. They're there because they care about this specific team and these specific players. The Jokic and Serbia vs. Team USA storyline from the summer kept Nuggets fans fired up well past the offseason, which probably didn't hurt the energy in that building either.

If you're already a season ticket holder, keep an eye on what the team announces for the rest of the year. And if you're on the fence about tickets, the regular-season games combined with access to events like this one make the case a little easier. Ball Arena is a good place to watch basketball — good sight lines, the crowd gets into it when it matters — and this team is still worth watching.