Denver, CO
Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokic’s failsafe, is now a Nuggets playoff hero
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Aaron Gordon was a high school basketball get-out-of-jail-free card. His athleticism was stress medicine for trapped teammates. His dexterity, a mulligan for inaccurate passes.
At Archbishop Mitty in the Bay Area, the varsity team believed in an unofficial doctrine.
“If you were ever in trouble — if I’m on the wing and I’m getting doubled — the failsafe is just: Throw it in the air,” Brandon Abajelo said, “and Aaron will go get it.”
One decade later, Gordon’s teammates still abide by that code. Even the consensus best basketball player in the world.
As Nikola Jokic backed himself into a proverbial corner Saturday by dribbling away from the basket, the Nuggets’ season was sinking into deep trouble. They had coughed up a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter. Their legs were cooked, like the stuffed chicken nuggets being used as props to heckle them at Intuit Dome. Overtime almost certainly would mean defeat in Game 4 of a first-round series they already trailed 2-1 to the Clippers.
Jokic hoisted a desperate shot — his signature “Sombor Shuffle” fade-away — thinking to himself, “this is going to be bad.” He was resigned to an overtime fate.
“I mean, to be honest, I didn’t want to give them enough time to shoot the ball,” he said. “So in my mind, I just wanted to wait (until) the last second and just jack it. So I did a couple dribbles. And that was a mistake.”
But Jokic has a failsafe for his mistakes. Throw it in the air. Gordon will go get it.
With the first walk-off dunk in NBA playoff history, Gordon might’ve saved the Nuggets’ season. For a few days at least, he instilled new hope and fended off the existential dread of a 3-1 series deficit. All he needed to do was correct the crooked parabola of Jokic’s shot. Elevating and snatching the ball above the rim, Denver’s power forward transformed an airball into a glorious rainbow. He plunked it in the pot of gold at the buzzer.
Nuggets 101, Clippers 99.
“AG was in the right spot,” Jokic said. “Like he always is.”
But did he arrive there too late? While Gordon navigated through chest bumps and embraces from teammates on an ecstatic beeline toward the locker room, scrutiny was already underway. By rule, the ball must be fully out of the shooter’s hands before the buzzer, or else the shot doesn’t count. In this unusual case, Gordon’s fingertips were attached when the ball was almost halfway through the net.
The replay-review process at Intuit Dome was its own spectacle. Every angle seemed to reveal a new truth and elicit a different reaction. Nuggets and Clippers players gazed up at the jumbotron together and tried to litigate the nanoseconds.
“We were debating back and forth about it,” Peyton Watson told The Denver Post.
Confidence on the Denver sideline depended on the individual.
“I knew it was good,” Watson said.
“I thought the game was over,” Gordon said, “so I was just trying to get off the court.”
“A lot of doubt,” Michael Porter Jr. said with a laugh. “It was like somewhere between the 0.1 (seconds) and 0.0 range.”
“I was walking off the court like, ‘I don’t think so,’” Christian Braun said, chalking it up to his tendency to assume the worst.
“I didn’t want to have excitement and then go down,” Jokic said. “I thought that it was close, but it was really, really close.”
That’s how the Nuggets do business in the playoffs these days. Twice last year, they needed dramatic shots from Jamal Murray to break the Lakers’ hearts. They suffered a 20-point collapse in a wild Game 7 loss to Minnesota. Their two wins in this series have been decided in overtime or at the buzzer. That 22-point lead was too simple.
Gordon has a heroic playoff moment worthy of his importance to Denver now. And it was the most fitting type of play — dirty work in the dunker position. He once claimed to have the “best hands in the business.” Mostly, they serve Jokic’s fondness for trying adventurous no-look passes at close proximity. But this time, Gordon bailed out an unpredictable heave that had zero intention of being an assist.
“One of the best things about him was the way he gets rebounds,” Gordon’s high school coach, Tim Kennedy, remembered. “His ability just to get a feel for where the ball is coming and get his hands on it. That competitive nature of his.”
Denver’s locker room was buzzing in the afterglow of the dunk. The next playoff game was on the television in the middle of the room. At halftime, ESPN relived the buzzer-beater from every conceivable camera angle. A small handful of Nuggets crowded around, teasing Gordon with fake amazement that he was on TV. Gordon remained seated at his stall across the room. He responded with a bashful smile.
His final stat line in Game 4 was productive but fairly modest, at least compared to the box-score contributions of Jokic and a couple of other starters — 14 points, six rebounds and five assists.
If those numbers don’t exactly jump off the page, maybe that’s the most fitting aspect of an instant classic.
“Aaron doesn’t care if it’s 12, 8 and 4 … as long as we win,” said Nuggets interim coach David Adelman, who also coached Gordon in Orlando. “And some nights, it’s 22, 12 and 6. If we lose, he doesn’t care. He wants to win.
“There are certain people in our league that I would define as championship pieces. I think we say that too much. He is one of those people. He is the definition of that, and he always has been, since he got to us.”
Originally Published:
The return of Denver Broncos football is getting closer.
In addition to facing their AFC West rivals at home and on the road, the Broncos will also face the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, conference rival Buffalo Bills and the title-contending Los Angeles Rams at home in 2026. On the road, Denver’s opponents include the contending San Francisco 49ers and conference-rival New England Patriots.
The NFL has given Denver three prime-time games this season, with national spotlights on Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football in 2026. SNF and MNF will be available to stream on FuboTV, and TNF is available to stream on Prime. In addition to those prime-time slots, the Broncos will also play in standalone windows on Black Friday and Christmas Day.
View the team’s complete schedule with dates and times below. Note that networks for nationally televised/streamed games are in bold.
- Week 1: Monday, Sept. 14, at Chiefs (MNF), 6:15 p.m. MT, ESPN
- Week 2: Sunday, Sept. 20, at Jaguars, 2:05 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 3: Sunday, Sept. 27, vs. Rams (SNF), 6:20 p.m. MT, NBC
- Week 4: Sunday, Oct. 4, at 49ers, 2:25 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 5: Sunday, Oct. 11, at Chargers, 2:05 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 6: Thursday, Oct. 15, vs. Seahawks (TNF), 6:15 p.m. MT, Prime
- Week 7: Sunday, Oct. 25, at Cardinals, 2:05 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 8: Sunday, Nov. 1, vs. Chiefs, 2:25 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 9: Sunday, Nov. 8, at Panthers, 11:00 a.m. MT, CBS
- Week 10: Sunday, Nov. 15, Bye Week
- Week 11: Sunday, Nov. 22, vs. Raiders, 2:25 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 12: Friday, Nov. 27, vs. Steelers (Black Friday), 1:00 p.m. MT, Prime
- Week 13: Sunday, Dec. 6, vs. Dolphins, 2:05 p.m. MT, Fox
- Week 14: Sunday, Dec. 13, at Jets, 11:00 a.m. MT, CBS
- Week 15: Sunday, Dec. 20, at Raiders, 2:25 p.m. MT, CBS
- Week 16: Friday, Dec. 25, vs. Bills (Christmas), 2:30 p.m. MT, Netflix
- Week 17: Sat/Sun, Jan. 2/3, at Patriots, TBD, TBD
- Week 18: Sat/Sun, Jan. 9/10, vs. Chargers, TBD, TBD
The team’s Week 17 showdown in New England is one of four candidates to be played in a Saturday window. Additionally, dates, times and TV networks for Week 18 will be announced following Week 17. The league will schedule two Saturday games and a Sunday Night Football matchup for the final week of the regular season.
Social: Follow Broncos Wire on Facebook and Twitter/X! Did you know: These 25 celebrities are Broncos fans.
Legend has it that there are space aliens and lizard people living in the underground tunnels at Denver International Airport (DEN). But if it’s true (and why not?), the reptilian and otherworldly beings will soon need to find a new place to hang out.
That’s because DEN airport is planning to repurpose some of its subterranean real estate into pedestrian walkways that can serve as alternatives to, and backups for, the airport’s troubled train system.
At DEN airport, trains connect the main Jeppesen Terminal to concourses A, B and C.
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Passengers may skip the train and instead stroll or ride moving walkways from the main terminal to Concourse A. But the train — officially called the Automated Guideway Transit System — is the only transportation option for getting between concourses A and B and between concourses B and C.
The original circa-1995 train system is currently undergoing a much-needed $75 million upgrade as part of the DEN’s “Vision 100” strategic plan to serve 100 million annual passengers in the next several years.
Improvements include 16 new train cars and the replacement of aging infrastructure that is prone to malfunctions. The glitches sometimes last just a few minutes, but as recently as May 2026, mechanical problems with trains forced the airport to deploy shuttle buses to move passengers between concourses.
Train to the Gates Updates: Crews have repaired the mechanical issue and trains are now fully operational. Shuttle buses from Concourse A to Concourses C are also running to help move passengers while the train operation returns to normal service. https://t.co/BZRJheqi7V
— Denver Int’l Airport (@DENAirport) May 6, 2026
Although DEN’s records show that the airport trains run glitch-free more than 99% of the time, even short outages create stress, platform gridlock and missed flights “simply because we have so many people going through our airport,” Jim Starling, DEN’s chief construction and infrastructure officer, told TPG.
Finding an alternative to DEN’s trains
Installing ziplines between concourses as alternatives to the train sounds fun but is sadly impractical. Connecting all the concourses with bridges was considered but rejected due to time and cost.
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Instead, during planning workshops, airline and DEN officials determined that the best solution was to repurpose portions of the airport’s existing underground baggage tunnels into pedestrian walkways. Those tunnels were originally built for the airport’s ill-fated automated baggage system, whose technical failures delayed DEN’s planned 1993 opening by 16 months and left sections of the tunnel network largely unused for decades.
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In a statement announcing the underground walkway plan, Denver mayor Mike Johnston called it “a big win for Denver’s travelers.” The tunnel transformation also got thumbs up from United Airlines (Denver’s largest airline customer), American Airlines and Southwest Airlines (which counts DEN as its largest operation in terms of flights).
“The addition of pedestrian walkways at DEN is a significant investment and will give our customers more options for their connecting flights,” Jonna McGrath, United’s vice president of airport operations, said.
Lisa Hingson, vice president of customer experience and innovation at Southwest, said the new pedestrian walkways would be “a tremendous addition” to recent enhancements such as TSA PreCheck Touchless ID and Touchless ID self-bag drop. “The addition of pedestrian walkways adds flexibility and reliability for our customers and improves operational resilience,” Amanda Zhang, American Airlines’ vice president of corporate real estate, said.
Making it happen
The tunnels to be converted are wide enough for two-way pedestrian traffic and currently contain some of the equipment from the old, abandoned baggage system. So that will need to come out.
“If you go down there today, what you’ll see is a lot of concrete,” Starling said. “And that’s not the environment we’d want to have for people to walk through.”
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Making pedestrian walkways out of tunnels built to move baggage would entail upgrading the floors, adding walls and appropriate HVAC systems, and possibly installing moving walkways, Starling added.
And then there’s the challenge of what Starling termed “vertical circulation” — the tricky job of getting passengers down to the tunnels from one concourse and then back up at another.
Timeline and budget
DEN airport estimates the cost of creating pedestrian tunnels at DEN to be between $300 and $700 million.
“That’s a wide range,” Starling said, “but it reflects the fact that we are at the concept level.” Once design plans are finalized, construction of the tunnels could begin as early as 2027.
And what about the lizard people?
Over the years, DEN has neither confirmed nor denied rumors of secret Illuminati, outer space aliens and, yes, lizard people making their homes in the airport’s underground tunnels. Instead, the airport has good-naturedly leaned into the mysteries and conspiracy theories with exhibitions such as “Conspiracy Theories Uncovered.”
Johnston is happy to play along. In the announcement of plans for the pedestrian walkways at DEN, he said: “And who knows… maybe along the way, travelers will finally get a closer look at the underground tunnels and decide for themselves what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
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