Why ESPN Hates the Denver Nuggets

On June 1, the Denver Nuggets host game one of the NBA championship series — a first in the history of the franchise. But the joy felt by long-suffering Nuggets fans, many of whom never thought they'd live to see this glorious day, contrasts sharply with the dismay over Denver's achievement buried deep in the tiny hearts of executives at ESPN, the country's dominant sports broadcaster and de facto presenter of the matchup against the Miami Heat, which will air on its sibling network, ABC.

Thank goodness, since Comcast customers wouldn't be able to see it otherwise.

No, the powers-that-be at ESPN haven't publicly admitted being down on Denver, but such a confession isn't necessary. Their anti-Nuggets fervor has been on view throughout this year's playoffs, with the week-plus since Denver swept the Los Angeles Lakers offering a parade of absolutely infuriating passive-aggressiveness too obvious to deny. And while ESPN has attempted to pivot to some degree over the past 24 hours or so, these efforts qualify as transparently bogus — last-minute concessions that fail to mask an overall sense of disappointment that, so far at least, the best team has won.

ESPN isn't the only stakeholder that wishes the Nuggets had fallen short of the finals, as they've done so many times before. The big shots at the NBA clearly favored an early Denver exit, as evidenced by foul-calling far less balanced than the U.S. budget. The Nuggets, led by the masterful Nikola Jokic, a revitalized Jamal Murray and gifted role players such as Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr., Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, didn't only have to defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns and the Lakers en route to the promised land. They needed to overcome the referees, too — and they did.

You've probably already guessed that money is why these powerhouses aren't psyched over Denver's march to prominence — and you're right. But the factors that have contributed to their response aren't quite as simple to discern.

The Denver Broncos' assorted triumphs at the national level didn't earn sneers from TV types because the team itself has been broadly popular over the years, thanks in large part to the presence of luminaries such as John Elway and Peyton Manning — and besides, the NFL's appeal is so overwhelming that any team capable of reaching the Super Bowl can be successfully hyped.

Differences in circumstances have helped the Colorado Avalanche avoid Nuggets-like media disinterest. The NHL's talent is spread out across many smaller markets rather than being concentrated in the most populous cities. Hence, the playing field (make that the ice) is more even, which translates to fairer treatment in general.

The same can't be said of Major League Baseball, whose dominant franchises are in metro areas such as New York, Boston and Los Angeles — and if at least one squad in this category isn't battling for supremacy at season's end, television titans are disappointed. But because the relentlessly mediocre Colorado Rockies are currently irrelevant, the matter of whether they'd be disrespected in a Nuggets-like way if they reached the World Series, as they've done only once in their existence (they were railed by the Red Sox in 2007), is purely academic these days.

As for the National Basketball Association, it's a superstar-driven league, and viewership climbs accordingly when the biggest celebrities are in the spotlight. Hence, the NBA and ESPN were not so quietly rooting for the Lakers (led by LeBron James and Anthony Davis), the Suns (built around Kevin Durant and Devin Booker), the Boston Celtics (featuring Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown), the Philadelphia 76ers (the anchors are Joel Embiid and James Harden) or the Milwaukee Bucks (over whom Giannis Antetokounmpo towers) to ascend.
Instead, these squads fell one by one, leaving Denver and Miami as the last outfits standing — and ESPN initially insulted both with equal vigor. The morning after Denver dispensed with the Lakers, the network virtually ignored the Nuggets in favor of wall-to-wall discussions about whether or not James might retire and the potential repercussions of such a decision. Likewise, the conversations in the day after the Heat won were almost exclusively about the losing unit, the Celtics, and whether a rebuild or a coach-firing were in order.

Since then, ESPN's denigration of the Heat has lessened somewhat, and that's no surprise, since Miami has a marketable main man, Jimmy Butler, who came close to earning a ring as recently as the Bubble year of 2020 and nearly engineered an upset of the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals twelve months ago.

But the dumping on Denver continued for reasons that longtime pundit Tony Kornheiser laid out in a recent episode of the ESPN debate program Pardon the Interruption. He predicted a low-rated finals watched only by hardcore basketball purists, and not those with more casual interest, because Jokic is the most unglamorous great player in the history of the league and the team plays in the Mountain time zone, to which Americans living outside it pay little heed.

Kornheiser's comments shouldn't simply be dismissed. Watching the athletic feats of James, Durant, Embiid, Antetokounmpo and the rest can be positively breathtaking, while Jokic's skills are far more subtle. Folks who truly know basketball are rightly amazed by his abilities when it comes to passing, positioning, footwork and the like, but those who don't may miss them altogether. He's like a close-up magician doing impossible sleight-of-hand tricks while making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

The line about the Mountain time zone is trenchant as well, since ESPN doesn't seem to know it exists. On the rare occasions when the Nuggets land a nationally televised game, the start time invariably corresponds to 7:30 p.m. Pacific/10:30 p.m. Eastern. That means viewers on the far side of the Mississippi would have to stay up well past midnight to watch the entire contest, and few do.

It makes sense, then, that yesterday ESPN put together a package that essentially introduced Jokic to its audience even though he was drafted by the Nuggets in 2014 and has won not one, but two MVP awards, and might have taken home a third this year had Embiid not so shamelessly campaigned for the prize. But the decision-makers at the network deserve the blame for this situation. They could have looked objectively at this year's playoffs slate, realized the Nuggets had a great chance to reach the peak and worked hard at promoting them rather than treating them like an afterthought.

It's too late to change course now, especially given the main commentators who'll be calling the games. Play-by-play man Mike Breen is a pro's pro, but former New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy was borderline contemptuous in his remarks about the Nuggets during the Lakers series, ex-player and coach Mark Jackson actually left Jokic off his five-person MVP ballot (a gaffe for which he's apologized), and sideline reporter Lisa Salters recently admitted that she'd never seen Nikola play in person until last month. And then there's ex-Celtic Kendrick Perkins, who's picked against the Nuggets so often, and given Jokic so many backhanded compliments, that his credentials as an NBA "expert" should be revoked immediately.

If the ratings for the finals are as low as Kornheiser predicts (and he may very well be right), the results can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. ESPN is now stuck with a product its bosses obviously didn't want, and they deserve it.

Every bit as much as the Nuggets and their supporters deserve a championship.