Help Is On The Way - The end of the long sports Summer

“I can’t help myself, help myself, help me
No, I can’t help myself, so help me to see
That if all of us out helping ourselves could help somebody else
Help is on the way, help is on the way”

– Lake Street Dive, Help Is On The Way

69. Six-nine. Sixty….

Nine.

Now that I have your attention, let me assure those of you either flustered or unnecessarily turned on that we are not really discussing positions or inversions or even Sutras, Kama or otherwise.

No, instead, we are discussing days. As in how many days it will be from the writing of this article until your Denver Nuggets take the court again for the opening game of their 2024-25 regular season against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Actually 69 days, 17 hours, and 58 and a half minutes***.

Now who’s turned on?

***your mileage may vary, given the time you get to read, but hey… that means it’s less time left than when it was written...

Launching the season on October 24th against a division rival and last year’s #1 seed in the West is just the beginning of what looks to be a great-but-challenging season for the Nugs, as so excellently covered by our own Harrison Wind, who delves into key matchups, back-to-backs, toughest stretches, national games, and the most important parts of the ride. It’s a promise of hoops nourishment on the horizon, one we will need now that Olympic basketball – including one of the best basketball games in recent memory – only whetted our appetite for what is possible to come. Will Jamal Murray come back with a chip on his shoulder? Will Christian Braun make the starting five as unbeatable as the starting core of the last few years? Is Jokic’s beard going to stay, and will he actually play Gru in Despicable Me 5?

All coming in 69 days.

You’ve actually got a couple weeks less to to wait to get your puck on, as the Colorado Avalanche open their season on the road on October 9th in Las Vegas before playing their first home game against Columbus on the 12th, with Patrick Roy bringin the Islanders in a couple nights later. Those will be the first of a four-game home stand that starts the season, and their are several great matchups across their season, and not an abnormally high number of back-to-backs. They’ll also have their first game against the new Utah club on the 24th of October, getting to see that new space only eight games into their year. It will be an intriguing year for the Avs after some key moves this offseason, and by then we should see how some of those new pieces are starting to gel.

That all begins a little less than eight weeks out.

Even closer, the hometown favorite Denver Broncos have already started their preseason, and are a whopping 24 days from a Sunday afternoon game in Seattle to kick off the 2024-25 campaign. While a lot of Broncos fandom seems to be reserving opinions until the real games hit, there is a palpable sense of excitement and optimism surrounding rookie quarterback Bo Nix and how he’s coming out of the gates with the offense. The last rookie QB to get the orange fans crushing this hard may have been Tim Tebow, though this hasn’t all quite reached the fervor of a rookie John Elway. And while Tebow’s stay didn’;’t quite pan out the way many fans had hoped, the fact that there is hope around Dove Valley is a good look for a squad that has been knocked around by its own expectations the last few years.

You barely have to sweat out the next three weeks, give or take, and once again that hopefully happy saga re-re-re-begins.

While the sports of Summer do their darnedest to keep us entertained during this dry spell, the stuff we’re about to sink and synch our teeth into, with basketball and hockey carrying us halfway into spring, and that’s before you even count expected playoffs. The long dry spell is so close to an end. Which of these three seasons to come are you most excited for?

Hang in, sports brethren. Help is on the way.