MEXICO CITY — To cancel out the cost of admission, Cesar Pineda and his date took the bus.
He lives in Guadalajara, roughly a seven-hour drive from Mexico City. And that’s without stops. Pineda was willing to sit through it, though, to finally see his beloved Nuggets. The round-trip bus ride was about $50 (in U.S. currency), affordable enough to stomach dropping a couple hundred bucks per ticket to the game.
“When I saw they were coming to Mexico, I told my girlfriend, we need to go,” Pineda said. “I don’t know how much we have to spend to go, but we need to go to see Jokic, Murray, and now we have Cameron Johnson. All of those guys are incredible.”
Pineda was part of a predominantly Nuggets crowd this weekend at Arena CDMX, where the visiting team stormed out to a 27-point lead and held on for a 114-102 win over the Pacers.
“I would say (it was) more of a Nuggets crowd,” Spencer Jones said. “I mean, Jok’s got fans all over the world, so that definitely helps.”
The party favors might’ve been a little ironic, then. Every seat was adorned with a complementary yellow t-shirt that could be mistaken for Nuggets gold until a closer examination. These were Día de los Muertos-themed shirts supporting “Los Pacers.” Indiana was technically the home team for Saturday’s neutral-site game, which replaced what would’ve ordinarily been the Nuggets’ annual visit to Indianapolis. Instead, the only other time they’ll meet this season will be in Denver. At altitude, like Mexico City.
“If you’re asking how this became our home game, I don’t know if I want to get into the backstory on that,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said before the game, responding to a question that wasn’t about how it became their home game. “But we are great partners with the league. … The altitude is a factor. It’s a factor in Denver. And we’re higher here. I looked at it. It looks like we’re at 7,300 feet here in this arena. … So there’s challenges with everything. It’s gonna be more important how we substitute, make sure we try to keep out players fresh throughout the game.”
Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon, left, greets fans prior to a NBA basketball game against the Indiana Pacers in Mexico City, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Between the elevation and the faction of Nuggets fans in attendance, Denver might’ve nabbed a 42nd home game on the regular-season schedule, which is supposed to be an even 41-41 split. Mexico City was especially fond of Nikola Jokic. The international crowd wasn’t familiar with his preferred background noise when shooting free throws, silence, so the superstar center was serenaded with “M-V-P” chants every time he stepped to the foul line in the first half.
“The energy was awesome,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said. “I could tell from the starting five (introductions). I don’t want to say they were backing us, but there was definitely juice for us. And it was cool to hear ‘M-V-P’ chants in a different country. … There was an atmosphere to this. Our guys got really excited to play.”
“I think the kids always have an effect on me,” Murray said. “I enjoy seeing them. I enjoy seeing their love of the game. I enjoy seeing their excitement. It makes me want to give back. It brings me back to the time when I was a kid and I looked up to those (NBA players) and I got a chance to see them or yell at them or whatever. It means a lot.”
Pineda was a Carmelo Anthony fan in the early 2000s, and he gravitated toward the Nuggets as a result. But only a few years after he pledged his fandom, Anthony asked out, leaving Pineda torn between loyalties.
“I was devastated when they traded him to another team,” he said. “But then we got Andre Iguodala, and then I was rooting for the Nuggets still. People always told me, ‘Why do you support the Nuggets if they suck?’ I understand, we had a couple of bad seasons after I started watching them. I’m like, players come and go, but the Nuggets are still the Nuggets.”
Bennett Durando
Cesar Pineda (right) took a bus from Guadalajara to Mexico City to watch the Nuggets, his favorite NBA team since Carmelo Anthony’s years in Denver.
Lala Bardo and David Flores got into the team more recently, during the Jokic-Murray era, but their origin story is organic — it’s not pure bandwagon fandom. They live in Mexico City. One of their closest friends, whom they met in college at UAM Xochimilco, got engaged to a guy from Denver and moved there. The group didn’t want to grow apart, so basketball became the bond that held their long-distance friendship together. They all united this weekend.
“They introduced the Nuggets to us,” Flores said, sporting an old-school Antonio McDyess jersey at the game — evidence, his buddy told him, that he’s a real one.
“It’s an experience to share with friends from Denver,” Bardo said. “And our friends are here this weekend.”
The anecdotal consensus among them, and others strolling the concourse Saturday, was that Jokic’s “No. 15” far outnumbered the Indiana jerseys in the crowd. Ironically, Jokic was the one Nugget who didn’t seem to get any fuel from the fans, despite having been the subject of their adoration with the M-V-P chants. He noticed the tide turning as Indiana mounted a second-half comeback.
Bennett Durando
Lala Bardo and David Flores live in Mexico City but are Nuggets fans, courtesy of a long-distance friendship with a college classmate who lives in Denver.
“I didn’t know what side they are,” Jokic said, laughing. “Sometimes they were cheering for us. Sometimes they were cheering for Pacers.”
And the Pacers did seem to benefit from some karmic justice for the matchup counting as their home game instead of Denver’s. About an hour before opening tip, someone noticed the basket the Nuggets had been warming up on was uneven, causing about a 10-minute interruption while an arena worker climbed a 10-foot ladder and leveled the rim. One Nuggets coach joked that someone should go block Indiana’s basket for 10 minutes in the name of fairness. Jokic had already gone through his pregame routine on the wonky hoop. He then shot an inefficient 6-for-17 inside the arc and 7-for-20 total.
His teammates overcame that, maybe in part thanks to some quasi-homecourt advantage at Indiana’s “home” game.
Pineda had dragged his girlfriend too many hours for the Nuggets not to feel the effects of their presence.
“It was amazing,” Murray said. “Great atmosphere. The fans were really into it.”
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