The Official Denver Nuggets Thread!

[Denver Native (Carol)]

http://www.denverpost.com/nuggets/ci_15952083

Newly minted Nuggets vice president of basketball operations, Masai Ujiri, re-iterated this afternoon that he intends on meeting with the team's star forward, Carmelo Anthony, soon.

What he'll hear from Anthony in that meeting is anyone's guess.

Asked if the organization has a read on what Anthony wants to hear from management or see done with the team, Ujiri said he will wait-and-see.

"I think that all the speculation is about the team," Ujiri said. "I don't want people to forget that this is a good basketball team. This basketball team was in the Western Conference Finals. I think the team is a good team. I don't know if he has anything in his hand that he wants us to do. I think he's been treated very well by this organization and he'll continue to be treated well by this organization.

"I'll wait and talk to Melo and see what he has to say. I think so far things have been positive. There's been a lot of speculation, but hey, that's how it works in our business."

Meanwhile, Nuggets president Josh Kroenke took aim at a recent report citing sources who detailed a deteriorating relationship between team executives and Anthony's representation.

"Anything that has been said is either someone trying to manipulate the situation behind the scenes, or other motives that are unknown at this point," Kroenke said. "But Melo and his representation have been great to us.

"I think he knows he can come to me as an individual. We have that amount of respect that we can talk about things openly in a noncombative way. So anything that has been stated from sources behind sources, all of our talks have been extremely cordial."

Ujiri largely deflected questions about what might happen if Anthony, who has a three-year, $65 million contract offer on the table from the Nuggets, tells the team he wants to be dealt or doesn't intend on coming back.

"It's a process," Ujiri said. "Until he tells me that, we want him back, the city wants him back, ownership wants him back. I think they've done a great job here. He's been here seven years, seven years in the playoffs. What he's brought to the city is positive and I think he'll build on that."

[Denver Native (Carol)]

http://www.denverpost.com/krieger/ci_15979592

Normally, taking charge of a term-limited Nuggets roster might seem like a questionable career move for a basketball coach on a one-year contract.

But when the basketball coach is emerging from his second steel cage match with cancer in five years, getting back to work looks pretty good.

"It's official," George Karl said Thursday just before taking off for a long Labor Day weekend with family. "I've been cleared to go for it. My PET scan came back great."

There are no guarantees with cancer, of course. Two weeks before the PET scan that showed no signs of the squamous cell carcinoma he battled this year, Karl took his annual prostate test to make sure the cancer he beat five years ago has not returned.

"In three months, I'm going to have another PET scan," he said. "I'll probably have three or four more PET scans in the next year. And then the second year it won't be that many, it might be only two, but you've still got to go through them.

"The one they did, they were very positive on. In general, they said they couldn't find any cancer cells and it looked great. I think the word was 'excellent.' It was an excellent scan as the doctor defines it."

Karl's recovery from the brutal regimen of chemotherapy and radiation aimed at his neck and throat remains incomplete. His mouth, fried by the radiation, is slowly returning to working order. The feeding tube in his stomach has been removed. He is eating salads and soups, cottage cheese and peaches and cereal. He is hoping to graduate to more solid foods this month.

And then there's the important stuff:

"I've had a beer and it tasted awful," he said. "It tasted so bad that I actually had to ask, 'Are you sure the beer is good?' It tasted like I was drinking Alka-Seltzer. So that was disappointing. I'm going to wait a little longer, because the taste of beer is really important to me. I want that one to get back.

"My doctors feel going back to work is definitely a positive. I don't know if they like the intensity or stress of an NBA season, but they want to get you back to your normal routine, and I'm excited about that."

Karl's return answers the most important question about the Nuggets' coaching staff, but not the only one. It's still not clear if Tim Grgurich, his right-hand man, will be back.

Grgurich and Mark Warkentien, the vice president of basketball operations the Nuggets just let go, are close friends and godfathers to each other's children. Perhaps not surprisingly, Karl's assistants did not view his one-year contract extension as a great omen for their job security. Jamahl Mosley has already left for a job in Cleveland, where new coach Byron Scott signed a four-year contract in July.

The Nuggets have been in cost-cutting mode for at least two years and are not expected to invest in a new lead assistant — say, someone with experience as a head coach in case Karl has to step away again — unless Grgurich elects not to return.

Karl is considering at least one concession to his recovery — taking commercial morning flights to some road games rather than traveling overnight with the team and going to bed at 5 a.m. In such cases, his staff would handle the road morning walkthrough practice.

He does not believe the team's front office turnover and the uncertainty over Carmelo Anthony's future portend poorly for the coming season.

"For some reason, our P.R. in the summer, it seems like people like to think that we're going to be awful. And I just go, why? Why do they think this? We've put three 50-win seasons on the board. Even without Melo I think we're a good basketball team.

"I think we're going to work something out with Melo and it's going to come out positive for Denver Nugget basketball. I don't know what that is, but that's my belief inside, it's my positive energy that I now can push on basketball a little bit more than I push on my health."

Karl imagines one more run with the current roster, playing well enough to make the playoffs and adding a healthy Kenyon Martin in time to be a postseason threat.

Of course, that assumes a bunch of players not offered contract extensions don't mope their way right out of the playoff bracket. And it assumes new team president Josh Kroenke and executive vice president Masai Ujiri don't start trading off expiring contracts.

For Karl, it's good to be worrying about such things again.

"I know I can do this," he said. "I'm a cancer survivor. Yeah, I have some tests in the future, but everything's looking good. You keep your focus on your life and you try to make it as good as you possibly can."