Unlikely role model, Nuggets’ Birdman soars, on the court and off

Chris Andersen is hard to ignore, a 6-foot-10 Nuggets forward whose gel-hardened faux-hawk rises to 7-1, whose doodle pad of a body is covered in Technicolor artwork, whose headband covers the tops of his ears.

Fans at the Pepsi Center, including an increasing number dressed as birds, stand and cheer whenever Birdman is about to enter the game. Some flap their arms in anticipation.

Andersen, a 30-year-old bench player who was suspended from the N.B.A. in 2006 for two years because of drug use, is an unusual cult hero and the unlikeliest of role models. But the stands are sprinkled with small children wearing headbands and spiked hair, men dressed in yellow feathers, and people of all ages wearing “Birdman” T-shirts or the hot-selling No. 11 jersey.

“Role model?” Andersen repeated the other day, almost spitting out the chicken he chewed in the players’ lounge. He laughed. “I guess so.”

The first tattoos came a decade ago, after he returned from a stint in China. A symbol on the inside of one forearm means “good,” he said. The symbol on the inside of the other means “bad.”

“It’s not good arm, bad arm,” he explained. “I’m stuck in the middle of the good and the bad. Everybody’s stuck in the middle.”

Andersen’s popularity stems from some cosmic combination of hops, hustle, hair and history. Even he does not quite understand it.

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