{"id":16927,"date":"2025-08-14T20:01:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rocky-the-mascot-sues-owner-of-the-denver-nuggets-over-firing\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:02:09","slug":"rocky-the-mascot-sues-owner-of-the-denver-nuggets-over-firing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rocky-the-mascot-sues-owner-of-the-denver-nuggets-over-firing\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocky the mascot sues owner of the Denver Nuggets over firing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Denver
Denver Nuggets mascot Rocky the mountain lion in the second half of an NBA basketball game on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, in Denver. (David Zalubowski\/The Associated Press)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Rocky, the beloved mascot of the Denver Nuggets, is suing the team\u2019s owner.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Denver District Court, the man inside the mountain lion suit, Drake Solomon, alleged that he was fired after he took time off to heal from a hip injury, in violation of disability protection laws.<\/p>\n

Solomon, 31, is seeking unspecified damages from Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Nuggets basketball team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not easy to go ahead with this because I love the Nuggets,\u201d Solomon said Wednesday in an interview with The Sun. \u201cThey\u2019ve been my whole life and my family. For things to end the way they did it was pretty heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon became Rocky in 2021, following in the footsteps of his father, who was the original Rocky more than 30 years ago. But in the 2022-23 NBA season, the younger Solomon was diagnosed with avascular necrosis, a condition that causes bone tissue to die as a result of damage to blood vessels and a lack of blood supply.<\/p>\n

He underwent surgery to deal with the condition and returned to work as Rocky 10 days later. However, he was still dealing with hip pain, the lawsuit says. In the 2023-24 season, doctors determined that Solomon needed a hip replacement.<\/p>\n

But when Solomon told his supervisors, they said they would \u201cbe holding tryouts for his position due to his record of impairment and their lack of confidence in his health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon recovered from the hip replacement quickly, then returned to a \u201chostile work environment\u201d and news that the Nuggets would hold tryouts for the next Rocky because Solomon had \u201cburned them last time,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

The team fired Solomon shortly after the tryouts, in August 2024. The termination violated his rights under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n

His termination was a blow to a family who has been deeply connected with Rocky for decades, said his attorney, Siddhartha Rathod. He likened the termination to firing a person for going on maternity leave.<\/p>\n

Besides dancing and entertaining the crowd at Nuggets games, Solomon attended charity events, toy drives and youth basketball programs. Drake Solomon began his career with the Nuggets in 2012 as a \u201ctrampoline dunk artist\u201d and part of the \u201cpromo squad.\u201d And when his father retired in 2021, Drake was the only person invited to perform in a closed-door tryout before he was given the job.<\/p>\n

Solomon and his brothers grew up doing their homework in the Nuggets locker room, then falling asleep on the way home from the games. \u201cI was actually on the court at 2 weeks old, my dad using me for a little skit,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe loved Rocky our entire lives. We always looked at the Nuggets as a second family and Rocky as a second dad. For it to end so cold \u2026 it\u2019s kind of like losing a family member. My dad was pretty devastated when he heard. He was the one that suggested I look into seeing what I can do to make some wrongs right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon recently moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and is looking to continue his career in sports entertainment, perhaps as a college mascot coach or a mascot for another team, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in my blood,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kroenke Sports did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, which also alleges that the company violated the Colorado Protecting Opportunities and Workers\u2019 Rights Act, a 2023 law that specifies what employers can write into severance agreements. The agreement given to Solomon included nondisclosure, nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions that violated state law, his attorneys allege.<\/p>\n

Kroenke Sports, which also owns the Colorado Avalanche hockey team and Colorado Rapids soccer team, has about 1,000 employees, according to court documents. This severance agreement issue could turn into a class-action lawsuit, Solomon\u2019s attorneys said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

of the original Rocky was forced to go through tryouts and then terminated after taking time off to deal with health issues, the lawsuit alleges <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20469,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16927\/revisions\/20469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16927"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}