Penn State basketball great and current Denver Nuggets GM Calvin Booth is an NBA champion.
Penn State basketball great Calvin Booth runs the team that just won the NBA championship. @NittanySN
— Joe Smeltzer (@joesmeltzer775) June 13, 2023
The favored Nuggets closed out the Miami Heat in Game 5 Monday night in Denver with a 94-89 win.
In what shouldn’t have surprised anybody paying attention, center Nikola Jokic was the closing game’s star.
He shot 12-for-16 from the field and finished with 28 points, adding 16 rebounds in the win. Jokic is the heart and soul of the Nuggets, having won consecutive MVPs in the two seasons preceding this one. Many feel Jokic should have won his third straight MVP this season— an honor that went Philadelphia center Joel Embiid— but Jokic has the ring.
Booth’s been the Nuggets’ GM since before the 2020 season, but he’s been working for the Nuggets since 2017, when he was named the assistant general manager.
Booth played at Penn State from 1995-1999, coming out of Ohio’s Groveport Madison High School. He was the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year in 1998 and made second-team All-Big Ten in 1999.
From there, he was selected in the second round with the 35th overall pick by the Washington Wizards in the 1999 Draft and played ten seasons in the league for the Wizards, Mavericks, 76ers, Bucks, Kings, and Timberwolves.
Booth’s son, Carey, was Penn State’s top Class of 2023 signee. The four-star from New Hamphsire’s Brewster Academy was the second-highest-rated signee in Penn State history per 247Sports, behind only Tony Carr.
Carey Booth requested a release from his letter of intent the night after that announcement, and ended up deciding to follow Shrewsberry to South Bend.
Calvin Booth is the first GM in Nuggets history to win an NBA championship.
