NUGGETS BACK AT UCSD, THIS TIME AS NBA CHAMPS
If you wander past the upper level of UC San Diego’s LionTree Arena and notice the women’s volleyball team or either basketball team practicing on the two courts next to the student weight room instead of the solitude of the main arena downstairs, there’s a reason for that.
The Denver Nuggets are here.
The NBA champs are holding training camp in San Diego this week for a fourth time, staying at the same hotel and practicing at the same facility as they did last fall before their run to the first title in the franchise’s 47-year history.
“Well, it worked well last year,” coach Michael Malone said. “We’re hoping that air, the water, the beach, whatever it might be, continues to be a real positive for our group. You just have to look around this gym. We have five full courts, which is four more than we have at the moment in Denver.
“It doesn’t hurt that you’re staying at a beautiful hotel in a beautiful area of the country. It brings a lot of positivity and allows our guys to come together. Training camp isn’t just about what we do on the court. It’s also about what we do off the court. Guys spending time together is an invaluable part of being a real family.”
The difference from last year: The Nuggets opened training camp as defending champs.
Malone mentioned the dword several times in Monday’s media availability in Denver and again Tuesday at UCSD after their first practice. The NBA has had only one repeat winner over the past decade, Golden State in 2018.
“As great as it was, as historic as it was, the first one in 47 years, we all enjoyed it,” Malone said. “I can’t wait for opening night because once they raise that banner and we get those rings, now it’s over. That puts an end to last season.
“We’re going to try to be a team that can repeat. We’re going to try to be a team that can be a dynasty like Golden State, like San Antonio.”
The starting lineup remains intact, but they’ll have to replace two key bench pieces who left in free
agency, Bruce Brown to Indiana and Jeff Green to Houston. That’s less of a concern, though, when you have Jamal Murray and NBA Finals MVP Nikola Jokic.
Both skipped national team duty for the World Cup, Jokic with Serbia, Murray with Canada, to rest their bodies after a grueling playoff run that extended the season by two months and 20 games. Murray spent time working out with UFC fighters he has befriended. Jokic spent the abbreviated offseason in his quaint hometown of Sombor in Serbia’s northwest corner, dancing in bars, riding his bike to the racetrack to watch his horses run, contorting his 6time
foot-11, 284-pound frame into flips off river rafts.
“The quiet, boring life,” the two-time league MVP said.
His concern now is finding a new spike ball partner for downtime during training camp. Jokic claims “I’m the best, probably” on the team but his usual partner, Slovenian forward Vlatko Cancar, injured his knee during the World Cup and is likely out for the season.
What might he do instead? “Maybe sit by the ocean, why not?” Jokic said.
The more pressing matters are inside LionTree Arena, which Malone and company take every opportunity to point out — listening, management? — is far more spacious than the Nuggets’ practice facility, especially for a 21-man training camp roster. It’s the fourth
they have come to San Diego for training camp, the third at UCSD (and one at San Diego State).
“They have a lot of courts,” Jokic said, “so we don’t bump into each other.”
There also may indeed be something in the air and water. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and the rest of the U.S. Dream Team held training camp at UCSD in 1992, although in the old Main Gym, before winning the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics.
If you thought the Nuggets would immediately jump into sophisticated schemes with such a veteran roster and opening night against the Los Angeles Lakers a mere three weeks away (and the first exhibition next Tuesday in Phoenix), you’d be mistaken. Practices were dominated by numbing, humbling fundamentals.
“It’s a fine line of, yes, this is Year 9 for me and some of our guys have been here for a while, so you want to think you can skip steps,” Malone said. “You can’t do that.
“It would be really easy for me to say, ‘We don’t have to work on our shell drill because we won a championship.’ … That’s never going to be the case. We’re going back to basics and building from there, the core principles, the core foundation of what we do. Repetition, repetition, repetition.”
Added Jokic: “There are no shortcuts.”
Did Jokic take one this summer in Sombor?
Said Nuggets guard Reggie Jackson: “He still looks like the best player in the world.”