Ranking the Denver Nuggets’ logos #1 1982-1993
The rainbow skyline, one of the coolest designs in all of basketball and possibly all of sports. NBA fans love it, Denver fans love it, and whenever I meet someone who isn’t a sports fan while wearing it, it always gets a compliment.
Iconic, yes. It was also the start of the Alex English era or as I like to refer to it: the ‘basketball reference outlier era’. This team, for better or worse, broke a lot of records and serves as a blip on a lot of basketball reference results.
The roster had Alex English, Kiki Vandeweghe, Dan Issel, and head coach Doug Moe. The team scored an NBA record of 370 points alongside the Detroit Pistons in a triple-overtime loss 184-186.
In the 1982-83 season, those three players all averaged over 20 points per contest, English getting to 28.4 and Kiki getting 26.7 in an offensively juiced team.
So combine incredible scoring feats and records with some bright, flashy, and smart designs and you have a memorable design that still gets a run today.
It also stuck around for an era of decline which coincided with Mutumbo joining the roster so there are even rainbow skyline Mount Mutumbo jerseys out there if that tickles your fancy.
The current Denver Nuggets have retro’d this jersey and rainbow skyline design a few times now and while it looks modern and fresh, nothing beats the original.