Nuggets’ Birdman Soars, on the Court and Off

By JOHN BRANCH

DENVER — Chris Andersen is hard to ignore, a 6-foot-10 Nuggets forward whose gel-hardened faux-hawk rises to 7-1, whose doodle pad of a body is covered in Technicolor artwork, whose headband covers the tops of his ears.
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The 6-foot-10 Andersen is averaging 6.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.07 blocks a game this postseason.
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From top, Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters; Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images; Larry W. Smith/EPA

With his jumping ability, his tattooed wingspan and his faux-hawk and headband, Chris Andersen, aka Birdman, has become a cult hero and an unlikely role model in Denver.

Fans at the Pepsi Center, including an increasing number dressed as birds, stand and cheer whenever Birdman is about to enter the game. Some flap their arms in anticipation.

Andersen, a 30-year-old bench player who was suspended from the N.B.A. in 2006 for two years because of drug use, is an unusual cult hero and the unlikeliest of role models. But the stands are sprinkled with small children wearing headbands and spiked hair, men dressed in yellow feathers, and people of all ages wearing “Birdman” T-shirts or the hot-selling No. 11 jersey.

“Role model?” Andersen repeated the other day, almost spitting out the chicken he chewed in the players’ lounge. He laughed. “I guess so.”

The first tattoos came a decade ago, after he returned from a stint in China. A symbol on the inside of one forearm means “good,” he said. The symbol on the inside of the other means “bad.”

“It’s not good arm, bad arm,” he explained. “I’m stuck in the middle of the good and the bad. Everybody’s stuck in the middle.”

Andersen’s popularity stems from some cosmic combination of hops, hustle, hair and history. Even he does not quite understand it.

Denver Coach George Karl uses Andersen like a booster shot. Andersen often changes the complexion of games and, almost instantly, the mood in the arena.

“I’ve always felt that the ability to compete and play harder than the opponent is a tremendous talent,” Karl said. “And Chris kind of has that. He energizes by playing hard. He’s unorthodox. I think it’s a great story.”

Andersen is averaging 6.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.07 blocks a game this postseason for the Nuggets, who trail the Lakers by 3-2 in the Western Conference final. Game 6 is in Denver on Friday night.

His 2.46 blocks-per-game average in the regular season trailed only Orlando’s Dwight Howard, but his 5.76 blocks per 48 minutes led the league. Andersen credits his jumping ability to long bike rides to and from school, and a high school coach who had players jump from the floor to the top of wooden boxes, the biggest taller than a table.

Karl said he did not look at Andersen and shake his head, or his arms, like so many others.

“No, I look at him and say thank you,” Karl said. “He’s a gift from the gods.”

He actually is from the countryside near Iola, Tex., about 100 miles north of Houston. The retelling of his complicated back story has given rise to some mythology.

“I did not grow up in a barn,” Andersen said. “I lived in a barn for year because they were building a house.”

Andersen’s parents separated when he was 7, and his mother struggled to support her son and two daughters. Andersen bounced from a grandfather’s house in Tennessee to a children’s home in Denton, Tex., where he spent about four years. He was back in Iola with his mother before his freshman year in high school.

Poor grades led him to Blinn Junior College in Brenham, Tex., beginning a whirlwind basketball tour that included the Chinese Basketball League, the International Basketball League, the International Basketball Association and the N.B.A.’s Development League. In 2001, the Nuggets made Andersen the first-ever call-up from the D-League.

His popularity with fans took root in three seasons in Denver. It was during a summer league that Andersen’s teammates took to calling him Birdman, for his long wingspan and his penchant for aerial acrobatics. The last tattoo Andersen got, before this season, was “Birdman” across his back.

He signed as a free agent with the New Orleans Hornets in 2004, and had his best statistical season — 7.7 points and 6.1 rebounds per game. That earned him a four-year, $14 million contract. But his personal life crumbled. He and his mother stopped talking (and still have not spoken, he said). He broke up with a longtime girlfriend. Hurricane Katrina hit, knocking the Hornets to Oklahoma City.

In January 2006, Andersen was suspended for two years for failing a drug test. He has never said what the drug was, and declined to do so this week. He insisted that his was not a clichéd case of a young athlete from a difficult background earning too much money, too soon.

“It wasn’t that,” Andersen said. “I didn’t get money and start partying. I had a lot of things going on in my life that were eating me alive and I had nobody to turn to. And so I turned to alcohol, and alcohol turned to something else.”

He called Mark Bryant, a Denver lawyer who had befriended Andersen years earlier. Bryant told Andersen to “come home” to Colorado and live with Bryant’s family, which included his wife and two young sons. Bryant said in a phone interview that he did not recognize how serious Andersen’s problems were.

He learned quickly. A day after returning from the N.B.A.’s arbitration hearing in New York, where the suspension was upheld, Andersen was reportedly seen drinking and dancing at a nightclub. Bryant confronted him.

“He said, ‘I wasn’t dancing,’ ” Bryant recalled.

Bryant ushered Andersen to rehabilitation. Andersen spent 30 days at Promises in Malibu, Calif. He spent about six months living with the Bryants.

“His job was himself,” Bryant said.

Andersen learned to handle his own finances. He met Brandy Newman, now his fiancée. He moved to the small town of Larkspur, Colo., south of Denver, far from the nightclub haunts. He trained and sometimes even attended Nuggets games, building a hunger for what he had thrown away.

The Hornets took Andersen back last spring. The Nuggets signed him back last July.

“If it wasn’t for what led to that suspension, and me having to go through the suspension, and then me rebuilding my life, I wouldn’t be in the position that I’m in now,” Andersen said.

During Game 4 on Monday night, Andersen rose from the bench. An anticipatory cheer rose through the arena.

Andersen opened the second quarter with a dunk off an alley-oop pass. He blocked a shot, then another, leading to two Denver baskets. The Nuggets built a double-digit lead and cruised to victory.

Rocky, the mountain lion mascot, appeared in a No. 11 jersey, a faux-hawk and a headband. Andersen highlights flickered on the video boards overhead. Throughout the arena, people flapped their arms.

Andersen, too, waved his. Once again, things were just taking off.