When Aaron Gordon suits up for Denver Nuggets next season, he’ll be doing so with a new jersey number. The NBA champion is changing his jersey number from No. 50 to no. 32, to honor his brother, Drew Gordon who died in a car accident May.
Drew wore No. 32 when he played college basketball at the University of New Mexico, where he had two standout seasons averaging 13.4 points and 10.8 rebounds as a junior and senior. He earned all Mountain West Conference honors in both seasons, and was all Mountain West Conference tournament MVP in his senior year.
After graduating from New Mexico, Gordon played professionally overseas in Serbia for Euroleague powerhouse Partizan Belgrade, where he also wore the No. 32 jersey. While most of his career was spent overseas, he did play for the Philadelphia 76ers for nine games during the 2014-15 NBA season prior to being waived. Although Drew didn’t find much success in the NBA, he had a lengthy and successful career internationally, where he was an Italian Cup winner in 2014 with Dinamo Sassari, was named an All-Star in France in 2016, as well as an All-Star nod in 2018 while playing in Russia. He officially announced his retirement from professional basketball in July 2023.
Drew died in a car accident on May 30 at the age of 33, when his car collided with another vehicle in Clackamas County, Oregon. On June 6th, Aaron Gordon shared on Instagram a series of photos of his new chest tattoo with the initials “DG” for his older brother, while sharing the caption, “Big bruh lives through me.”
This will be the third number change in Gordon’s professional career, after wearing No. 00 during his seven seasons with the Orlando Magic. He then switched to No. 50 after both No. 00 and No. 0 were taken at the time he joined the team.
