![]() ![]() Last July I wrote for Forbes on why I believe the Nuggets’ three-point shooting will bounce back this season (click the link for the deep dive). The Nuggets Improve To Top-10 In Three-Point Percentage, Shooting 37% Or Higher If he simply replicates his performance from last season he should be firmly in the mix, and if he can find ways of improving (see the next prediction), he should emerge as one of the front-runners. Last season Jokic finished fourth in MVP voting, and while he may be facing stiffer competition this year, he is also surrounded by the strongest team ever assembled through the course of his Nuggets career. Nikola Jokic Finishes Top-Three In MVP Voting, But Doesn’t Win The Award But the Nuggets team that enters the playoffs six months from now in 2020 stands a good chance of being considerably better than the current incarnation, so Denver just might be up for the challenge. The path to reaching the conference finals will almost inevitably go though at least one of the newly-formed “superstar duo” teams in Los Angeles or Houston, and that will be no small feat. Now Denver is armed with a solid dose of playoff experience and a roster with fewer weaknesses to expose, and are well-positioned to secure home court advantage at least through the first two rounds of the postseason. This effectively means that the only way to improve on that performance would be to at least make it to the Western Conference finals. In the first playoff appearance of the Jokic Era, the Nuggets got to within four points of winning game seven of their second round series against Portland. If so, this will be extremely welcome news to a team whose attendance bottomed out from 2015 to 2017 as it increases their revenue, raises the profile of the newly revamped Denver Nuggets brand, and perhaps even, as Millsap suggested, helps elevate the team’s home court advantage as well.The Nuggets Reach The Western Conference Finals, But Their Road Ends There Barring any further injuries to Denver’s already-battered roster, it appears likely that all these factors should combine to at least keep Denver’s current attendance trajectory afloat, if not bump it up even further, perhaps even above the 81,000 threshold. And by all indications, the Nuggets seem to only be gaining in popularity as word of their success is capturing the attention of more and more “casual” fans, many of whom may have been paying more attention to the Denver Broncos until their season ended in December.Ī return to the playoffs, which seems almost inevitable at this point, should generate even more excitement in the Denver area for the Nuggets, as should the likely selection of center Nikola Jokic to the All-Star team in February. Their current average of 18,092 represents filling the Pepsi Center to 94.5% of its capacity, up from 89.5% last season. In my Nuggets season prediction piece for Forbes, I forecast (correctly so far, knock on wood) that Denver would set a new franchise attendance record this season with an average attendance topping 18,000 for their first time, and noted there that the 2009-10 season was the high water attendance mark on Denver’s books with an average turnout of 17,995 people, which that season was 13th in the league.Īn average turnout over 18,000 would set a new Nuggets attendance record, and Denver is firmly on track to do just that. ![]() Extending the previous data set with this season’s numbers provides a clear display of how closely success and attendance have tended to correlate.ĭenver Nuggets average attendance rank and win percentage from 2000-01 to present. 700 this season, so has Denver’s average attendance climbed to 18,092, good for 15th in the NBA, up five places up from last season. As their record has leapt to a currently third-best. 561 which ranked 14th in the NBA, the Nuggets were 20th in the league in average attendance at 17,141. ![]() And while this may seem obvious on its face, research I conducted for the article did in fact show a positive historical correlation between Denver’s success on the court and their ticket sales for the seats in the arena.Īttendance data from ESPN shows that this pattern has carried through into this season as well. In a preseason piece for Forbes, I projected that if the Nuggets again improved their winning percentage, as they had for several consecutive seasons, then a concurrent increase in attendance would be likely. There is data to support the connectivity there, albeit that the conventional wisdom might hold, contrary to his interpretation, that winning drives attendance more than the other way around). Millsap’s point on the symbiotic relationship between crowd support and the team’s winning ways is not merely a platitude. ![]()
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