Not too far away from the sunny campus of USC lies the vast Mile High City where history was made June 12 as the Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals at Ball Arena.
As a Colorado native, there is something special about being a Nuggets fan, something even distance can’t change.
“You grow up being a Nuggets fan,” said Karina Chavez Saucedo, a senior global health major who grew up in Longmont, a suburb of Boulder, Colorado. “I feel like I’ve been a fan since I was born.”
USC Trojans come from all over the world to study in Los Angeles, some experiencing homesickness because it’s their first time away from home. The question then becomes, how do you keep home close when it’s so far away?
“Twitter,” Chavez Saucedo said. As she studied abroad during the spring semester, Chavez Saucedo followed the basketball season through live updates and video highlight games. “It was hard because of the time difference. If you wanted to watch a game, it’d be like four in the morning,” Chavez Saucedo said.
Nonetheless, the Nuggets spirit prevailed. Sports is one of those things that brings people together and creates a sense of community within the home team but also nationally as Chavez Saucedo mentioned, one of the best parts of sports: rivalry.
“One of my favorite memories was sweeping the Lakers because of the Colorado-California [rivalry],” Chavez Saucedo said.
Other USC Nuggets fans took a more traditional route in staying up to date with the sport. Andres Quintanar, a longtime Nuggets fan and junior neuroscience and data science major, watched the season from his apartment back at school. “My roommates probably hated me because I was the only Nuggets fan,” Quintanar said.
Quintanar, who grew up in Denver, has been a Nuggets fan all his life. “I remember when Carmelo Anthony got drafted … [it was] what really made me fall in love with the sport.” Quintanar also played with Anthony at a camp program in Colorado when he was younger. “I got to play basketball with them and I got to meet my idol, my favorite basketball player to this day,” Quintanar said.
For fellow Trojans, there were an array of opportunities to be a part of the NBA Finals in the city of Denver. For non-home games, the Ball Arena as well as other notable locations in downtown hosted watch parties, including the infamous sweep of the L.A. Lakers.
By the time the NBA Finals came around, there was nowhere left to watch the game. “They didn’t even play in the arena and it was sold out, even nosebleeds,” Quintanar said. And when the Nuggets won at home in Game 5, the town erupted.
“When we actually won, I watched that with my friends out in Denver,” Chavez Saucedo said. “After we all rushed to the streets. The energy was just insane.”
And as the team made their way down 17th Street to the Capitol building for the official victory parade, the team was met with a sea of blue and yellow. It might not have been the gold and red that Trojans are used to, but for Nuggets fans who are also Trojans, this was a victory all around.
The Nuggets winning the final serves as a reminder that Trojans are from everywhere and how sports, like the NBA, can be a unifying tool or lifeline for students studying at USC.