The former Nugget guard is still the team’s all-time leader in steals more than 30 years after he retired and is among the top 10 in points, rebounds and assists.<\/p>\n
DENVER \u2014 Long before Nikola Jokic became the NBA\u2019s premier triple-double player, Fat Lever became synonymous with the unique accomplishment.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo comparison,\u2019\u2019 Lever said waving his arms back and forth across his body in deference to the Denver Nuggets\u2019 current superstar. \u201cNo comparison.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Fine, Fat. Jokic is one of a kind. But Lever was a first of his kind as a do-it-all guard for the Denver Nuggets during the 1980s. Did you know that of the top 23 leaders in ABA\/NBA career triple doubles, Lever, who still ranks 13th all time 32 years after he retired, is the only one not in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame?<\/p>\n
Perhaps this needs to be corrected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, they\u2019re doing it,\u2019\u2019 Lever said in a sit-down interview Thursday with 9NEWS. \u201c We\u2019re in the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. I\u2019ll take that for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lever, who averaged 17.0 points, 7.6 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 2.5 steals a game during his six seasons with the Nuggets from 1984-90, was one of the six athletes inducted Thursday into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame during a ceremony held at the Hilton Denver City Center hotel. The others were Broncos defensive back Steve Foley, Colorado Buffs quarterback Kordell Stewart, professional tennis champion Beatriz \u201cGigi\u201d Fernandez, University of Denver basketball star Harry Hollines and Olympic middle-distance runner Wendy Koenig.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of the true pleasures of my life,\u2019\u2019 Lever said. \u201cTo the point where I\u2019ve always come back to Denver at different times and surrounding Colorado, but to come back in an atmosphere like this and bring my kids and family members and grandkids who have no idea who Fat Lever is but who Papa is, it\u2019s a pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n
To this day, Lever is still the Nuggets\u2019 all-time leader with 1,167 steals and is third in assists with 3,566. He is also ninth in points and although he was only 6-foot-3, he ranks among the top 10 among the team\u2019s all-time leaders in rebounds.<\/p>\n
Alex English was the smooth scorer for those Nuggets\u2019 teams. How did Lever decide to take the complete player route?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started in high school,\u2019\u2019 Lever said. \u201cI had a conversation with you about Pueblo. In Arizona. We won back to back state championships in high school and all five players on our team played all positions. So I played center at times. I played point guard. And Jeff Moore, believe it or not, was the best player on our basketball team. He was 6-4, tallest guy on the team.<\/p>\n
Pueblo went 28-0 in 1977-78, with Lever one of three players who averaged a triple double.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat developed my all-around game and that carried over to everything I did in basketball,\u2019\u2019 Lever said.<\/p>\n
More than once, Lever would slither between the trees and wind up with the rebound as the tall, hulking likes of Hakeem Olajuwan, Ralph Simpson, Charles Barkley and Kevin Willis looked on in disbelief.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the time. The biggest complainer was Hakeem Olajuwan,\u2019\u2019 Lever said with a laugh. \u201cWe were playing in my first All-Star Game, going to Chicago. And I was on the plane with him. He said, \u201cDon\u2019t take my rebound.\u201d And I started laughing. I told him, \u2018Just pass me the ball, I\u2019ll shoot every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lever spent the afternoon Thursday with his family at the Denver Zoo. He otherwise lives in Phoenix where he oversees the National Basketball Retired Players Association and Legends of Basketball, both nonprofit organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe represent the ABA, the NBA and Harlem Globetrotters, supporting a myriad of events and also helping our retired players try to re-establish themselves and figure out what to do next,\u2019\u2019 Lever said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Nugget guard is still the team’s all-time leader in steals more than 30 years after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-588916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}