On Friday evening, about 45 minutes before tip-off of the greatest game in Denver Nuggets playoff history, one of the all-time great Nuggets and sports fans - Marty Chernoff - passed away at the age of 76. Just one night before, I had stayed up late with Marty in his hospital room, watching the Philadelphia 76ers best the Toronto Raptors and, even though he was in ill health, he had just enough energy and strength to talk about that game and the Nuggets big playoff match-up looming the following night in Portland.
Longtime readers and followers of Denver Stiffs knew Marty Chernoff as “Uncle Marty, The Nuggets Curmudgeon”, whose name adorned these pages frequently from the day I started the site in 2008 and was a fixture at our Stiffs Night Out events at Jake’s Sports & Spirits, a sports bar Marty and I used to own together that became the epicenter of Stiffs Nation.