Logo of the American Basketball Association’s Denver Rockets, one of the league’s charter members in 1967. The team played as the Rockets until 1974. When it appeared that the ABA would merge with the NBA, the team held a contest to rename the franchise, since the NBA already had the Houston Rockets. The winning name was the “Nuggets”, and the franchise survives to this day. The team was relatively successful in its’ ABA years but struggled in postseason play. They had some of the new league’s biggest names on their roster in those early years, including Spencer Haywood, Byron Beck, Ralph Simpson, Larry Jones, David Thompson, Marvin Webster and Dan Issel.