Every championship ring tells a story, and this one was a 55-year quest by a father who never got to the top of the NBA heap until his son took him there.
While Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray flashed their shiny, new rings during a banner raising ceremony on Tuesday that nearly blew the roof off Ball Arena, maybe the coolest story of the night was told in the quiet tribute paid by Nuggets assistant coach David Adelman to his father.
“When I got the ring, I immediately thought of how I won it for my entire family,” Adelman told me. “My Dad was a player, an assistant and a head coach in the NBA. He had a Hall of Fame career. But he never won a ring.”
His first gaze at the dazzling jewels in Denver’s ring so rocked Adelman’s world that a wave of emotion carried him all the way back to 1990.
Back then he was living every basketball-loving kid’s dream — a 9-year-old ball boy for the Portland Trail Blazers, doing chores in the visitors locker room, while walking in the shadow of Isiah Thomas and the Bad Boys from Detroit.
His father was working in his first full season as a head coach in the league, and Rick Adelman helped guide Clyde “The Glide” Drexler and the Blazers to 59 regular-season victories and a berth in the NBA Finals against Detroit.
In his wide-eyed youth, the current lead assistant to Michael Malone on the Denver bench was the hoops-crazy son of a basketball lifer.
You can’t write NBA history without Rick Adelman. He broke into the league as a scrappy point guard for the Rockets way back in 1968. In that long gone and far away basketball universe, Adelman played for an expansion franchise in San Diego, which paid the then-enormous sum of $1.75 million as an entry fee.
After bouncing around five teams during seven years as a player, Rick got into coaching, serving for six seasons in Portland as an apprentice to Jack Ramsay, before replacing Dr. Jack in the lead chair.
But despite all their success, the Blazers experienced the frustration of getting bounced by Detroit in five games during the ’90 Finals, then went down in six games to Michael Jordan and the mighty Bulls two years later.
“I distinctly remember as a kid, after the two Finals we lost, the empty feeling in our household the next day after the last game, when you had worked that hard to get that far in the playoffs, only to come up just short,” recalled the younger Adelman, one of six children who blessed the marriage of Rick and Mary Kay.
His father coached in the league until 2014, a span of 23 seasons, including a stint with Sacramento, when the Kings starring Chris Webber and Peja Stojakovic were the NBA’s most entertaining team, even if the Lakers and the refs that jobbed Sac-town in the 2002 Western Conference finals might’ve disagreed. Despite winning just shy of 2,000 regular-season and playoff games, Adelman retired without ever winning a championship ring.
The head coach of five NBA teams was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2021, but a man might never feel greater pride than when a child exceeds a father’s wildest dreams.
The ring presented to the Nuggets is an over-the-top work of art, sparkling with blue sapphires and white diamonds. Among the jaw-dropping details are a secret compartment revealing a miniature replica of the first championship banner in team history, as well as 89 rubies to represent the 89 points Denver allowed the Miami Heat in the game that clinched the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
“The Nuggets are such a great story, but especially when you think about what this means for Rick and David Adelman,” said Jason Arasheben, who has designed rings to celebrate both a Super Bowl won by Tom Brady and the marriage of Denver center DeAndre Jordan. “I remember Rick Adelman coaching the Blazers and how close to beating the Lakers he was with his team in Sacramento. For a son to finally bring home a championship to his father and share this ring is as good as it gets in sports.”
The real beauty of a big sports accomplishment can sometimes be discovered in a gem of picture bound by a tiny frame. What makes those sapphires, diamonds and rubies in the Nuggets’ ring really shine is the shared struggle of a 55-year Adelman family quest for this NBA championship.
“He’s my Dad. He saw me play basketball growing up. He was there when I coached my first high-school game,” said David, now 41 years old and soon to be a hot candidate to lead a team of his own in this league.
“All my life, I’ve been by my Dad’s side during a lot of successful moments and a lot of painful moments in basketball. To have it all come to fruition when we beat Miami for the championship, it felt like a real connection with my family. I felt like we did it together. We won it together.”
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