13 OCTOBER 10-16, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | had been a COVID dud, he was excited to suit up again. “That’s when a lot of the magic all came together for me,” he recalls. “I was no longer doing it because I had to for a job. It was purely because I wanted to. It was purely just for the joy of it. That’s when things were just clicking.” Drake had surgery that March, under- going a bilateral core decompression, an operation designed to draw blood into his femurs by drilling holes into his bones. After a week of recuperation, he began working again, scheduling appearances for Rocky and answering emails, getting around on crutches or in a wheelchair. He also attended games to catch his father as Rocky. “I saw it as a good opportunity to watch my dad as much as possible and just remind myself of what I know and also how he does Rocky, and all the stuff he does and all the little gimmicks he does, all the mannerisms,” Drake says. For Kenn, those fi nal months as Rocky were a dream. After more than thirty years with the team, the Nuggets won the NBA championship. He got to celebrate with the players and ride in the championship parade. It was a fitting swan song for a man Hesington calls the “Michael Jordan” of mascots. “If we have a Mount Rushmore of mascots, Kenn is on everybody’s list,” Hesington says. After the championship season ended, Drake still felt pain in his hips. Physical therapy didn’t help, nor did any over-the-counter remedies. Still, he stepped back into the Rocky costume last October. The pain worsened. Drake began limping; he was slower and couldn’t run. Unable to generate power from his lower body, Drake tried to transform the backwards half-court shot with a new form that placed less pres- sure on his lower body. But the pain was unavoidable. “I’d have tears in my eyes under the cos- tume,” Drake says. Some of the half-court shots wouldn’t even make it to the hoop. “It was rough,” he adds. Fans noticed that Rocky wasn’t just dif- ferent; he was struggling. “This person isn’t even hitting the rim. This can’t be the same guy that has been do- ing it for decades,” Hess says, recalling what he and other fans were saying at the time. In February, Drake headed back to the doctor’s offi ce. He learned that his femoral heads had collapsed. Doctors told Drake he could fi nish the season in severe pain and be limited physically or get a double hip replacement right away in order to be ready for the next season. Drake opted for the latter option. He told the Nuggets, and soon learned they’d be putting someone else in the Rocky outfi t. Permanently. Kenn protested this decision. “I advised them to just put him on the injured reserve,” he says. “I told them that it was a win-win. Be honest with the fans again; they’re not stupid. And they again chose not to. They put a kid in there to just go out there and wave.” “He wasn’t doing skits,” says Drake, who got his double hip replacement in April. “He was just basically showing up for intros and the half-court shot, and that was it. He did the bare minimum just to make sure that Rocky was still out there.” Drake recuperated fast. His x-rays looked great, he recalls, and he was able to move around sooner than most patients. But he never got back into Rocky’s suit. “I’m unable to comment on the way things ended with the Nuggets at this time,” Drake says. While Drake was still healing, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment posted a job listing for a mascot performer that clearly described Rocky. The salary range was listed at $70,000 to $130,000. Kroenke Sports & Entertainment de- clined a request to talk about Rocky and the tenures of Kenn and Drake Solomon in that mascot suit. “KSE is deeply appreciative of the con- tributions made by all of our employees over the years. However, as a policy, we do not comment on specifi c former employ- ees,” says Jim Mulvihill, a spokesperson for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. “We also don’t comment on Rocky the SuperMascot, except to say that we can’t wait to see him back at Ball Arena this season!” Rocky will be back at Ball Arena at the end of the month. But for the fi rst NBA season since 1990, a Solomon will not be in the mountain lion suit. Cade, who is also no longer with the Nug- gets, isn’t sure what he plans to do next, but he enjoys video production. Kenn has been working on his own podcast, Between the Fur, in which he interviews and talks with former mascots and athletes. He’s also working with Hesington in the international mascot world and will be traveling soon to Azerbaijan to perform as Luigi, a mascot monkey, during a European gymnastics tournament. And while Drake wants to stay in the entertainment world, he thinks he’s done with professional sports. “They don’t want to take risks…it’s not like it used to be,” he says. Still, he’s happy to be honest with fans at last, he adds: “It’s kind of nice to tell my story fi nally.” Email the author at [email protected].
