Ryan Bowen is going to a parade Thursday morning with a few hundred thousand people who love his team.
The former Iowa Hawkeyes basketball player went to a victory parade a year ago in Denver, to celebrate the National Hockey League championship of the Colorado Avalanche. Thursday, Bowen will be in one of the vehicles of the people getting feted in downtown Denver, the NBA-champion Denver Nuggets.
“I’d been around so long and I really hadn’t been close,” the Nuggets assistant coach said Wednesday from his home in Highlands Ranch, Colo., basking in his team’s title-clinching home win over the Miami Heat Monday.
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“It takes a special situation, a special team. You just don’t know if it’s in the cards.”
When one of those cards is a joker, as in Nikola “The Joker” Jokic, you’ll have a chance. Jokic averaged 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists in his extraordinary 20-game playoff performance, in which the Nuggets went 16-4.
Bowen and Jokic have been together for all eight seasons of the two-time NBA MVP’s career. If you watched this year’s playoffs, Bowen probably validates what you think you saw.
“Nikola’s an incredible worker,” said Bowen. “Nikola would be successful no matter who he was with and where. He’s that good a player, that good a worker.”
Bowen, meanwhile, is 47 and an NBA career guy. Not bad for a Fort Madison kid who went to Iowa with relatively little fanfare before having a terrific college career.
He remains Iowa’s career leader in field goal percentage and steals. He had 15 points and 16 rebounds for the Hawkeyes in their 1997 NCAA tournament win over Virginia. Kent McCausland, a teammate of Bowen’s at Iowa, attended Monday’s clinching win.
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The 6-foot-9 Bowen averaged 14.4 points and 8.7 rebounds as an Iowa senior 25 years ago, then was a second-round draft pick of the Nuggets. Coincidentally, Jokic was a second-round Denver pick in 2014. Like Bowen, he played in Europe the season after he was drafted, then joined the Nuggets.
That was in 2015, the year Bowen returned to Denver for his second stint there as assistant coach. He was hired by new Nuggets head coach Michael Malone. Bowen had been a Denver assistant for George Karl for two years. Karl was fired in June 2013, and Bowen joined Malone’s Sacramento staff for two years.
Malone got fired in Sacramento in December 2014, but was hired as Denver’s coach in June 2015. He and Bowen have been there ever since.
Bowen spent the first five of his nine full NBA playing seasons in Denver. Of his two decades in the league, this was his first experience in the league finals, let alone as the champion.
“Last year I took my family to the Avs’ parade,” Bowen said. “I was thinking it would be pretty awesome to get to do this with the Nuggets.”
Bowen isn’t the only former Hawkeye in the team’s organization. Scott Howard, a graduate assistant coach at Iowa in 1985, is the team’s director of player personnel and has been in the organization for eight years. Associate head trainer Jason Miller has been with the Nuggets nine years. He formerly worked with the Iowa men’s basketball team.
Today, they all are world champions.
“There was the trophy presentation on the court and the locker room celebration,” Bowen said. “Now, the parade. We get the rings at the beginning of next season.
“Really surreal.”
www.thegazette.com
The former Iowa Hawkeyes basketball player went to a victory parade a year ago in Denver, to celebrate the National Hockey League championship of the Colorado Avalanche. Thursday, Bowen will be in one of the vehicles of the people getting feted in downtown Denver, the NBA-champion Denver Nuggets.
“I’d been around so long and I really hadn’t been close,” the Nuggets assistant coach said Wednesday from his home in Highlands Ranch, Colo., basking in his team’s title-clinching home win over the Miami Heat Monday.
Advertisement
“It takes a special situation, a special team. You just don’t know if it’s in the cards.”
When one of those cards is a joker, as in Nikola “The Joker” Jokic, you’ll have a chance. Jokic averaged 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists in his extraordinary 20-game playoff performance, in which the Nuggets went 16-4.
Bowen and Jokic have been together for all eight seasons of the two-time NBA MVP’s career. If you watched this year’s playoffs, Bowen probably validates what you think you saw.
“Nikola’s an incredible worker,” said Bowen. “Nikola would be successful no matter who he was with and where. He’s that good a player, that good a worker.”
Bowen, meanwhile, is 47 and an NBA career guy. Not bad for a Fort Madison kid who went to Iowa with relatively little fanfare before having a terrific college career.
He remains Iowa’s career leader in field goal percentage and steals. He had 15 points and 16 rebounds for the Hawkeyes in their 1997 NCAA tournament win over Virginia. Kent McCausland, a teammate of Bowen’s at Iowa, attended Monday’s clinching win.
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The 6-foot-9 Bowen averaged 14.4 points and 8.7 rebounds as an Iowa senior 25 years ago, then was a second-round draft pick of the Nuggets. Coincidentally, Jokic was a second-round Denver pick in 2014. Like Bowen, he played in Europe the season after he was drafted, then joined the Nuggets.
That was in 2015, the year Bowen returned to Denver for his second stint there as assistant coach. He was hired by new Nuggets head coach Michael Malone. Bowen had been a Denver assistant for George Karl for two years. Karl was fired in June 2013, and Bowen joined Malone’s Sacramento staff for two years.
Malone got fired in Sacramento in December 2014, but was hired as Denver’s coach in June 2015. He and Bowen have been there ever since.
Bowen spent the first five of his nine full NBA playing seasons in Denver. Of his two decades in the league, this was his first experience in the league finals, let alone as the champion.
“Last year I took my family to the Avs’ parade,” Bowen said. “I was thinking it would be pretty awesome to get to do this with the Nuggets.”
Bowen isn’t the only former Hawkeye in the team’s organization. Scott Howard, a graduate assistant coach at Iowa in 1985, is the team’s director of player personnel and has been in the organization for eight years. Associate head trainer Jason Miller has been with the Nuggets nine years. He formerly worked with the Iowa men’s basketball team.
Today, they all are world champions.
“There was the trophy presentation on the court and the locker room celebration,” Bowen said. “Now, the parade. We get the rings at the beginning of next season.
“Really surreal.”
After 20-plus years in NBA, former Hawkeye Ryan Bowen is world champion
Former standout Iowa men’s basketball player Ryan Bowen is a longtime assistant coach with the NBA champion Denver Nuggets.
www.thegazette.com
