Denver, CO
Family on 3 – The rare bond of these Denver Nuggets – DNVR Sports
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.
– Richard Bach
There’s a moment in most people’s young adulthood in which you’re deeply trying to establish your YOU. Your uniqueness, what makes you one of one. Those first forays into new territory can also come with a rejection of what got you there, as they did with me. I remember several years of feeling as if I had a closer bond with friends than family, as I’d PICKED those friends. I’d had no say in whatever shape my family had taken, I’d simply gotten stuck with what I’d gotten, even if that getting was very good.
A few decades later, I’m simply grateful for every last bit of what I was “stuck” with.
Moreover, I was glad for all I’d stuck myself with, as well. I tend more to the Richard Bach line of thought up top when it comes to family, and am so blessed that there are also a few people in my life external to my family tree that are still as much “kin” as anyone I share DNA with. How much luckier am I to have both. That concept, family. It’s one of the things that has stuck with me about the chant these Denver Nuggets wrap most practices and games with. Coach Mike Malone standing in the midst of his team, shouting:
“Family on three! One, two three…” “FAMILY”
Now, some of those teams chants are surely more enthusiastic than others, just like how so many people feel day over day about their family. But for the Nuggets, these aren’t just words. Family not only runs across the top of Denver basketball literally, but is one of the core tenets of the organization holistically. In the abstract, it sounds hokey, and maybe over the top. It’s a multi-billion dollar business, and tough decisions sometimes have to be made. There also have certainly been guys who have come and gone who have decidedly NOT felt a part of the family here, even during these idyllic days (koff, Bones Hyland). On the whole, the description is so apt, it’s clear this team has clearly internalized the concept, is living it, and that is a part of what makes them so utterly rare.
On Wednesday night, when the Nuggets were distancing themselves from the Minnesota Timberwolves in the fourth quarter, two of the vaunted five starters stayed seated on the bench, with second year stars Peyton Watson and Christian Braun playing so impressively as to warrant staying in the game. What made that even more impressive was the two players they were supplanting for that moment, Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. AG and KCP are the most-valued pieces in the defensive chain the Nuggets run their crunchtime D upon, and yet there they sat…
Well, maybe “sat” isn’t the right word…
There they celebrated. There they joined the rest of their team in the barbaric yawp that was P-Wat and CB feeling themselves.
You know who would not celebrate those plays as Gordon and Caldwell-Pope did? Selfish guys. Guys who are thinking about how they look or worrying about whether a DNP in the fourth quarter might reflect on their standing. Guys who aren’t a part of the family. A guy who’s shooting for First Team Defense like KCP could sure feel a certain sort of a way about the two kids playing out the string and also grabbing the defensive player of the game chains. Instead, Kenny was as thrilled as the rest.
The same feelings went a few games prior, when backup point guard Reggie Jackson had spent a few games in a bit of a slump, and was finally breaking out of that shell in a spectacular way, and in a needed fourth quarter run. The guy who told Malone to leave him in? Jamal Murray, who ceded his spot that night to let Reggie cook. When Jackson scored seven straight points to put the Nuggets out of reach at games end, Murray was one of the first to greet him off the floor, overjoyed and celebrating as much as if he’d been the one to sling those arrows.
Heck, even rarely used center Jay Huff is a part of this Nuggets family, loved to the as much as any of the rest. When the Nuggets had banked a recent game to the point of bringing the far end of the bench in, Huff came into the game. In his short time, Jay had a block and then a pair of offensive plays – a finger roll layup and a dunk – that brought the starters back to their feet and cheering. Hell, Moach was actually the first one running out. On a less cohesive team, those starters are discussing plans in their relative cliques as the nobodys salt the game with absolutely no one still watching. In Denver, it’s an event. Because here we celebrate the success of our family.
That feeling of family extends beyond the players having that uncommon bond, and their rejoicing in each other’s games. That feeling extends to Malone’s deep and concerted efforts to let a badly injured Jamal Murray know that the team would stick with him a couple years back. That extends to Gordon traveling halfway across the globe to hang with Nikola Jokic in his hometown. That extends to Jokic breaking his usual media silence to lift up the podcast of teammate Michael Porter, Jr., who himself has sacrificed ego in abundance for the greater good. To Caldwell-Pope and Murray both proclaiming in recent postgame interviews that they are Nuggets for life. To Malone telling the press he has “two daughters and 18 boys”. To a team that seems to have found harmony from top to bottom, this Denver Nuggets family has bought in.
It’s family. It is celebration, it’s true. Rejoicing and all the good stuff. But it is sacrifice as well. Hardship and frustrations and tears and blood and sweat and cohesion in moments that would test a lesser bond. It’s utter familiarity. It’s a subtraction of self for that greater good, and with that a bond that is so much harder to break than a “buddy”. What these Denver Nggets have already done together will be something that connects them for the rest of their lives. That they keep coming back to it every day willing to give of themselves, build those bonds even deeper and keep the larger goals in mind is something that only a family – of blood or bond – can do.
We are family. Get up everybody and sing!
-Sister Sledge
Craig Morton, a Broncos Ring of Fame quarterback who played professionally for nearly two decades, died Saturday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., at the age of 83.
Morton’s family confirmed his death through the organization, which announced the news on Monday.
Morton led Denver to its first Super Bowl appearance in 1977, quarterbacking the team best known for its ferocious Orange Crush defense. That season, at the age of 34, Morton earned the league’s comeback player of the year award and sparked a six-season run with the Broncos.
“He was our leader that year that we went 12-2, the first year he came to Denver,” fellow Broncos Ring of Famer and former safety Steve Foley told The Post. “It was a magical season. He was just tough as nails.”
Morton was hurt throughout the playoffs and Foley said the quarterback was in the hospital before the AFC Championship Game, when the Broncos beat the Oakland Raiders, 20-17, and advanced to their first Super Bowl appearance.
“I don’t know how he even suited up,” Foley said. “He was black and blue and yellow all over his hip. … Man, he came out and had a great game. He was just tough.
“And what a gem of a guy. Oh, yeah. He had the best heart.”
Morton was the first quarterback to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl, taking the Cowboys there in 1970 before later leading the Broncos.
Morton was born in February 1943 in Michigan, but graduated from high school in California and played quarterback in college at Cal. He also played baseball in college. He was selected No. 5 overall by Dallas in the 1965 NFL Draft, five years before the AFL and NFL merged.
Early in his career, Morton started for Dallas over Roger Staubach before Staubach eventually took over the job.
Morton, though, engineered a long and successful career in pro football.
He played in 207 career games over 18 seasons, including 72 games (64 starts) for the Broncos from 1977-82. Morton was 41-23 as a starter and threw for 11,895 yards for Denver.
“He had a confidence about himself. Kind of a swagger,” Foley said. “Our offense picked up when he arrived. We just knew he could win. He brought that to the team. And man, he had an arm. Oh, yeah. He had a gun.”
Morton was inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame in 1988 as part of a three-man class along with Haven Moses and Jim Turner. Four years later, he was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Morton’s tenure in Denver helped put the Broncos on the map.
“Absolutely, it did,” Foley said. “It made everybody wake up and say, ‘Who is this team on the interior of the United States?’ Unless you played on the East Coast or West Coast, you weren’t getting much coverage.”
Foley said he last saw Morton in the Champions Club at Empower Field during a game sometime in the past two seasons and said he remembered thinking, ‘Man, he looks great.’” Players from the Orange Crush era were surprised and saddened, then, to learn of the quarterback’s passing.
“It’s a little bit shocking,” Foley said. “He was a beautiful guy.”
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.
Rocky Mountain sandhill cranes battle warmer conditions due to drought
Wildlife biologist Jenny Nehring and farmer Rob Jones talk about Sandhill cranes and their impact on the San Luis Valley.
DENVER — Zoos are of necessity big gulpers of water, a fact that has some zookeepers in the drying American West working to rapidly upgrade efficiency and reduce unnecessary irrigation or leaks.
Denver Zoo, formally known as the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance, has rapidly reduced its demands on threatened and declining water sources, including the Colorado River.
Among the upgrades is a sea lion water filtration system that allows most of the water to be cleaned and reused each time the pool is drained. That’s saving more than 8 million gallons a year, zoo sustainability director Blair Neelands said. “You can get in there, scrub it with a toothbrush and refill it with the same water,” she said.
Similar upgrades to an African penguin showcase reduced its water use by 95% by largely eliminating what’s sent down the drain. (Like a backyard swimming pool, though, these tanks sometimes still need to be drained and refreshed with new water to reduce mineral buildup.)
“The biggest thing for us is swapping from dump-and-fill pools to life-support systems,” Neeland said.
Another biggie is replacement of a 50-year-old water main with funding of about $3 million from the city. There’s no way of knowing how much that pipe had leaked over the years, but Neeland suspected it was more than a million gallons a year. The savings should become apparent as the zoo tracks its water use over the next few years.
Creating hippo-sized water savings
When The Arizona Republic visited in 2025, the zoo was on the cusp of eclipsing a goal to reduce its water use by half of what it had been in 2018. The zoo had used 80 million gallons in 2024, or about 219,000 a day, a 45% reduction in just a handful of years. Much of the savings had come in the form of smarter irrigation practices and use of drought-tolerant native plants where possible. The landscaping also pivoted to recycled “purple pipe” water from the city, which owns the zoo’s land, restricting potable water to areas where animals really need it.
“When people hear ‘recycled water,’ they get worried about cleanliness and hygiene,” zoo spokesman Jake Kubié said. “But it’s safe for the animals, and it’s not their drinking water.”
Getting past the water conservation goal would mean draining the pool where Mahali the hippo spent most hours lurking with just his eyes, ears and snout visible to visitors. Because he spent so much time in the pool, the water needed daily changes. It amounted to 21 million gallons a year, not to mention water heater bills that drove the cost to $200,000 a year, according to zoo officials. They estimated that Mahali used as much water as 350,000 four-person households.
“This facility is outdated,” Kubié said. “Some day this will become a huge saver of water.”
That day came before year’s end, and it indeed brought a tremendous savings. The zoo shipped Mahali to a new home (and a potential mate) at a wildlife preserve in Texas and drained the pool one last time. Ending the daily change-outs shaved more than a quarter of the zoo’s entire water usage from the previous year. It put the zoo significantly beyond its goal.
Denver Zoo’s water savings are part of a broader waste- and pollution-prevention effort aimed at being a good neighbor in uncertain times, Neeland said.
“Water savings and drought is top of mind for anyone who lives in the Western United States,” she said.
In Phoenix, a different mix of animals
That’s true of the Phoenix Zoo, as well, where zookeepers must maintain landscaping and animal exhibits in a city that baked under 100-degree-plus high temperatures for a third of the days last year. The zoo creates a “respite in the desert,” spokeswoman Linda Hardwick said, but has no hippos, penguins, grizzly bears or many of the other species that would require big water investments for outdoor swimming or cooling.
“We really specialize in animals that will thrive in the temperatures here,” Hardwick said.
The Phoenix Zoo uses most of its water on landscaping. After a consultant’s 2023 irrigation assessment, the staff centralized irrigation scheduling under a single trained technician and employed technologies including weather-based controllers and smart meters. Salt River Project awarded $70,000 in grant funds for the upgrades and several thousand more for training.
The zoo uses about 189,000 gallons a day, she said. That represents a 17% reduction from 2023, or 20% when adjusted for the year’s particular weather and evapotranspiration demand.
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram.
Watch CBS News
-
Dallas, TX5 minutes ago
Former Cowboys QB Craig Morton passes away at age 83
-
Miami, FL11 minutes agoBrickell Avenue Bridge openings spark rush hour gridlock concerns in downtown Miami
-
Boston, MA17 minutes agoWhat we know about accused Memorial Drive gunman Tyler Brown
-
Denver, CO23 minutes agoBroncos Ring of Famer Craig Morton, who led Denver to first Super Bowl, dies at 83
-
Seattle, WA29 minutes agoVictim identified in deadly Seattle beer garden shooting on Lake City Way; suspect sought
-
San Diego, CA35 minutes agoSan Diego health officials monitor hantavirus situation as cruise ship passengers return to U.S.
-
Milwaukee, WI41 minutes agoSame name keeps coming up in mock drafts as possible Bucks selection
-
Atlanta, GA47 minutes agoFire at Chamblee apartment complex displaces more than 75 residents, closes businesses
