Leprechauns & Voodoo dolls: When the 2003 Nuggets could have landed LeBron James

May 20—In May 2003, good-luck charms poured into the offices of the Nuggets. There was a leprechaun, a Tiki doll and a brass four-leaf clover. There was a horseshoe, a New Orleans Voodoo doll and a figure of St. Francis of Assisi.

There was even a key from the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where somebody perhaps had won a fortune.

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It was all part of the Nuggets' quest to get as much luck as possible heading into the NBA draft lottery in Secaucus, N.J., in which the big prize was high school phenom LeBron James. So the team had fans send in items, and well over 50 were received.

"There were so many," said Kiki VanDeWeghe, then the Nuggets' general manager and now an NBA special adviser. "I'm sure I probably had a bunch and my pockets full (at the lottery)."

Alas, the charms didn't do the trick the night of May 22, 2003 — 20 years ago Monday. The Nuggets in 2002-03 had tied the Cleveland Cavaliers for the worst record in the NBA at 17-65, giving both teams a 22.5 percent chance to win the lottery. And owner Stan Kroenke represented the Nuggets on stage during the ABC broadcast.

The Cavs, of course, won the lottery and landed the 18-year-old James, a forward from Akron, Ohio, an hour down the road from Cleveland. The Nuggets ended up with the No. 3 pick, and selected Syracuse forward Carmelo Anthony.

Anthony starred with the team for 7.5 seasons and one day will join James in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Nevertheless, Melo was not LeBron. Nobody is. And nobody else has been in the NBA over the past two decades.

Anthony made 10 All-Star Games and played 19 seasons, his last being in 2021-22, when he was James' teammate on the Los Angeles Lakers. James, 38, is still going strong. Last February he became the leading scorer in NBA history and is now vying for his fifth title. His Lakers are busy battling the Nuggets in the Western Conference finals, conjuring up memories of 20 years ago when Denver had a chance equal to Cleveland's to get James.

"It's pretty crazy when you stop to think about it that way," said Ryan Bowen, a Nuggets forward from 1999-2004 and now an assistant for the team. "I can't believe it's been 20 years. When you put it that way, it's definitely a cool little twist to the story."

Well before the 2003 lottery, teams were thinking long and hard about the chance to land James, considered one of the best high school basketball players ever. The Nuggets, with an eye toward the future, dealt veterans Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Avery Johnson, Raef LaFrentz and Nick Van Exel to Dallas at the trade deadline in February 2002. They traded star forward Antonio McDyess to the New York Knicks on draft night in June 2022.

The Nuggets later that summer named career NBA assistant and scout Jeff Bzdelik to be a pro head coach for the first time. Bzdelik, who inherited a stripped-down team, said management was not only looking to clear cap room to sign free agents in the summer of 2003 but also had eyes on that year's draft.

"Their whole focus was getting LeBron ... I'm sure management, they wanted as many pingpong balls as they could to get LeBron," said Bzdelik, now retired from coaching and living in Greenwood Village. "I got that. But I also had a job to do and it was a dance between the two."

VanDeWeghe doesn't deny the Nuggets were looking to the future but said there wasn't a singular focus on James.

"We knew what was coming available for a number of drafts, of course," said VanDeWeghe, who lives in Southern California, where he grew up and was a forward at UCLA before later starring for the Nuggets. "We knew what was available and how much cap space to sort of create. ... In the draft, there's going to be some years better than others and this was a great year. Not only did you have LeBron, but you had Carmelo and you had (Dwyane) Wade and (Chris) Bosh."

VanDeWeghe was hired as general manager by the Nuggets in August 2001 and said Kroenke was fully onboard with the team's plan.

"Stan was always committed," VanDeWeghe said. "He said, 'I want to have a championship team.' And so did I. So it becomes, 'What's the best way to get there?' ... We didn't think we would get to a championship level without being aggressive and really taking a chance."

In the trade with the Mavericks, the Nuggets got solid veteran forward Juwan Howard, but he had just one year left on his contract and was gone after the 2002-03 season. And in the deal with the Knicks, they received veteran center Marcus Camby and the draft rights to big man Nene, both key contributors for multiple years.

After that, though, there wasn't much on the 2002-03 Nuggets. Forward Nikoloz Tskitishvili, taken with the No. 5 pick in 2002, turned out to be a colossal bust. He was one of five rookies with the team the entire season. Nene was the only one to make an impact, and the other three were the forgettable Junior Harrington, Vincent Yarbrough and Predrag Savovic.

Seeing what he would have to work with, Bzdelik, who was hired as a Nuggets scout in 2001 and later promoted to being an assistant, had reservations when offered the job in August 2002 to be head coach.

"When they approached me about it, I actually told them, 'Why don't you give the job to John MacLeod, and I'll be his assistant as opposed to John being my associate coach?' " said Bzdelik, referring to the longtime successful NBA head coach who had joined Denver as an assistant in 2001. "They probably gave me the job because nobody else wanted it. Everybody knew that they wanted to be not so good in terms of talent."

Nevertheless, Bzdelik did his best even though yet another veteran was traded away early in the season in forward James Posey. The Nuggets didn't have much talent, but they competed hard in just about every game.

"(Bzdelik) was a fiery competitor," said former NBA center Scott Hastings, who was a Nuggets television analyst in 2002-03 for Fox Sports Net Rocky Mountain and now has that role for Altitude Sports. "I think a lot of people were trying to get LeBron and I think Bzdelik coached that year trying to win as many games as he possibly could. I just don't think they were very good."

VanDeWeghe said "losing all those games (was) not easy." But he didn't deny it "was tempered a little bit" by what would be available in the 2003 draft.

"I'm competing, but I think that was obvious we weren't trying to win," forward Rodney White, who played for Denver from 2002-05, said of roster decisions made by the team. "We were bringing up D League (now the G League) guys and starting them. That was very odd the way it was orchestrated. I don't think we were playing to win. We were just playing for the next big business deal."

Throughout most of 2002-03, the Nuggets were behind Cleveland in the race for the NBA's worst record during a season in which then-Cavaliers coach John Lucas later told AOL FanHouse the team tanked and "the goal was to get LeBron." But the teams moved into a tie on the last day of the season after the Nuggets had lost their final eight games and the Cavaliers somehow had risen up to win two of their final three.

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"The game-winning layup I had against Phoenix, (fans) were saying, 'Man, if you had just missed that layup, we would have had a better chance (at James) since we would have had 16 wins instead of 17 wins,'" Bowen joked about a last-second shot he had in an 80-79 win at Phoenix in November 2002. "But we played hard every night and Jeff Bzdelik had guys believing we had a chance to win."

Jeff Trepagnier, a guard who was with Denver for the last month of 2002-03 and throughout the next season, agreed that players were trying hard to win games. But that wasn't exactly what many fans wanted.

"The fans didn't care about the wins," Trepagnier said. "It was, 'Let's get a better chance at those (pingpong) balls.' "

Trepagnier had been a rookie with Cleveland in 2001-02. So he had seen firsthand there how fans were hoping for the team to get James, who starred at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.

"Everybody was praying with their fingers crossed," said Trepagnier, who met James a few times that season when he attended games in Cleveland.

After Trepagnier went to Denver, he saw another fan base clamoring for James.

"Everybody wanted LeBron," Trepagnier said. "He was the best pick. He had the most potential. It was just an exciting time."

Heading into the draft lottery, James said he would gladly play for any team that obtained his rights.

"If I get drafted by the Cavs, they will be a lot better team than they were a year ago," he said. "As for Denver, the same thing goes."

Nuggets officials arrived at the lottery with what was reported to be 10 good-luck charms. One that didn't make the trip was a Chinese bowl. It had been sent in with an explanation that breaking it would bring good luck, so VanDeWeghe got out a hammer.

Initially, the charms appeared to work. The NBA held a practice lottery behind closed doors before the big event and the Nuggets won it.

"'We need to save that luck' is exactly what I said," VanDeWeghe said.

Lotteries previously had been shown at halftime of a playoff game, but for the first time that year it was a standalone half-hour show. Mike Tirico was the host on ABC.

"It was just a very, very exciting time," VanDeWeghe said.

The Nuggets had won a drawing with the Cavaliers to assure they would pick no higher than fourth if both teams stunningly fell out of the top three. But that became a moot point after Cleveland and Denver were two of the last three teams standing.

The third was Memphis, but the Grizzlies only would keep their pick if it were the No. 1 selection. Due to an ill-advised previous trade by Memphis for Otis Thorpe, the Pistons were in line to get the selection if it wasn't No. 1.

"Stan was on the stage and I was sort of with some of the other team personnel," VanDeWeghe recalled. "We figured the worst we were going to get is fourth, but we were really thinking somewhere in the top three, obviously hoping for No. 1, like everybody does."

That didn't happen when deputy commissioner Russ Granik held up the Nuggets' card and announced they would pick No. 3. The Grizzlies' card came up next, assuring the Pistons would select No. 2 and the Cavaliers No. 1. James, watching on television at a party at an Akron hotel, later told ESPN that "everybody just starting yelling and coming over to me and jumping on me" and that he didn't even see "them opening the one that said Cleveland."

"Stan was great," VanDeWeghe said of Kroenke after the lottery. "He's amazing in the fact that win or lose he was always pretty positive. I took losing really hard. He said, 'It's OK. We'll get back and we'll take care of this. Don't feel bad.' "

Bzdelik watched the lottery back home.

"I was on a treadmill at a gym in Highlands Ranch," he said. "I probably just hit the faster button and just started sprinting (when the Nuggets came in third). You don't worry so much about things you don't have any control over. Obviously, it would have been great to get LeBron, but I wasn't going to lose sleep over it."

The focus then was on who the Nuggets would take at No. 3 in the June 26 draft, but the suspense didn't last long. Another top prospect had emerged in big man Darko Milicic, an 18-year-old from Serbia, and the Pistons instantly had become intrigued with him.

That opinion wasn't shared by VanDeWeghe.

"I was not a gigantic fan of Darko's," he said. "I remember going to see him (in Serbia with assistant general manager) Jeff Weltman, and I basically said, 'We're not drafting that guy.' "

VanDeWeghe didn't have to worry about that when he was told the day after the lottery by Milicic's agent, Marc Cornstein, that the Pistons would select the Serbian. He turned out to be one of the biggest busts in NBA history while Anthony fell into Denver's lap.

"The consolation prize was a pretty good freshman out of Syracuse named Carmelo Anthony," Hastings said. "It wasn't a bad prize. Melo saved the franchise just like LeBron did (in) Cleveland. But it would have been interesting had LeBron come here. Melo's a great player but LeBron is one of the greatest of all time."

VanDeWeghe doesn't like Anthony being referred to as a "consolation prize."

"I would never use that term to describe Carmelo," said VanDeWeghe, fired by Denver after the 2005-06 season. "He was a great player, truly one of the greats. ... We were very, very, lucky to be there and able to pick Carmelo."

Anthony energized a fan base that had fallen during eight straight seasons of Denver being out of the playoffs, and 'Melo' had more initial team success than James. With the Nuggets' cap room also paying off with free-agent signings of point guard Andre Miller and others, they surged to a 43-39 record in 2003-04 and made the postseason. They then signed forward Kenyon Martin in the summer of 2004, but that didn't help Bzdelik, who was fired two months into the next season.

James' Cavaliers didn't make the playoffs his first two seasons but eventually took over as the better team and made the NBA Finals in 2007. Anthony's Nuggets did go to the Western Conference Finals in 2009 and his teams made the playoffs in each of the seven seasons he finished with the team.

James left the Cavaliers as a free agent for the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010 and Anthony forced a trade to the New York Knicks in February 2011. After that, James won titles with the Heat in 2012 and 2013, returned to Cleveland to win one in 2016 and got another with the Lakers in 2020. After leaving Denver, Anthony was on the losing side in seven of his final eight career playoff series.

Now, James needs his Lakers to get by the Nuggets to win a fifth NBA ring. With that in mind, Bzdelik looked back at when the Nuggets were in position to possibly land the future NBA legend.

"I'm going to tell the truth, I always do," he said. "I'm very transparent. Yeah, their whole focus was getting LeBron, and did I screw it up because I tried to win every single gosh darn game? Did I win too many games for certain fans or management or ownership? I don't know the answer to that."

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It would have taken just one additional loss or one missed Bowen layup for the Nuggets in 2002-03 to have slightly better odds than Cleveland to get James. But whether an extra pingpong ball would have made a difference, one never will know.