Denver Nuggets and Stan Kroenke’s golden touch

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These days, the Nuggets are estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.93 billion.

“One thing I know about Stan is that when he sets his mind to doing something, and when he thinks he’s right, he’s going to fight for that,” said Wellington Webb, who was Denver’s mayor in 1999 and helped broker the deal that closed a year later between Kroenke and the Nuggets.

Though Kroenke married into money – he wed Walmart heiress Ann Walton in 1974, a few years after meeting her during a ski trip to Aspen –he had al- ready honed his business chops.

His first deal: Taking a $1,500 loan at 6% interest from his dad so he could buy part of a clothing shop with his friend.

Not long after, he got into the real estate business, building shopping centers with a developer who was tight with Walmart founder Sam Walton.

Real estate and sports are, these days, almost intertwined - a reality Kroenke grasped quickly.

“I always thought I’d enjoy (owning a sports franchise) because the professional sports business is part business and part sports,” Kroenke told the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune in 2022, “and I love both of them.”

Kroenke’s representatives did not return messages left by The Associated Press seeking an interview.

His first major jump into sports was his partnership with Rams owner Georgia Frontiere. In the mid-1990s, Frontiere was chafing at the inability of Los Angeles to build a new stadium, She was looking for partners to bankroll a move to St. Louis.

Kroenke bought in, and when Frontiere died in 2008, he exercised his right to purchase a majority stake in the team.

The sad irony is that it was Kroenke, the Missouri native, who moved the Rams out of St. Louis and back to LA where they are the main tenant in his $5.1 billion stadium. His connection with Denver - much different.

“One of my dreams was to be involved in a professional basketball team,” Kroenke told The Denver Post, shortly after closing the deal for the Nuggets. “This is a dream I’ve had for a long time.”

There is, in fact, a strong argument that the basketball trophy might be the most meaningful for a family that has amassed three Stanley Cup trophies with the Avalanche, a Super Bowl trophy with the Rams and is still looking for glory with Arsenal, the Premier League soccer team it has had a controlling interest in since 2011.

Kroeke’s son, Josh, was a standout basketball player in high school and played at University of Missouri. He now runs the Nuggets.

“I thought that you could bring a championship to Denver,” Josh said in a recent interview on team-owned Altitude Sports Radio. “Trying to do something that’s never been done before, it’s not always easy, and it’s usually met with a lot of resistance. ... We’re mostly excited for the city to get to experience this. But the job’s not done.”

The Nuggets were parked squarely in NBA purgatory when the team went on the block in 1999, having not sniffed relevancy since their mid-80s heydey, when the teams were highlighted by coach Doug Moe’s uptempo offense. Their situation off the court wasn’t much better. In the late ‘80s, then-owner Sidney Shlenker had toyed with the idea of moving the team to Memphis.

His sale to a media conglomerate that was never truly hot on owning sports teams did nothing to tamp the idea that the Nuggets were a team that might be available to move. And teams were moving; Between 2001-08, Memphis (from Vancouver), Oklahoma City (from Seattle) and New Orleans (from Charlotte) all adopted existing franchises in a flurry of NBA reshuffling.

When Denver went on the block, the highest bidder, billionaire businessman Donald Sturm, came in with a $460 million offer, but balked at the idea that he couldn’t move the team. In stepped Kroenke, who had no problem with the arrangement.