The agent for suspended Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin said Saturday he plans on calling the NBA Players Association on Monday to explore filing a grievance against the team but hopes a resolution arrives before then to make that move unnecessary.
Brian Dyke also said Saturday that Martin has no meeting set with coach George Karl to discuss the suspension, which the agent said would last through the first round of the playoffs.
Friday, Dyke questioned the length of the suspension as well as the recovery time Nuggets doctors told Martin he would need after having surgery on his left knee last summer.
“I like Coach, but I don’t agree with him,” said Dyke, who spoke to Karl before the suspension was announced last Tuesday. “He had to suspend him, but I don’t agree with the whole first round. There is no excusing what he did. He was punished. But an indefinite suspension is nothing we talked about, and I don’t agree with it.”
Karl last week described his initial conversation with Dyke as good but also “very angry” and difficult at times. He would not comment on the agent’s latest statements other than to say, “I’m never going to talk about it on the day of a game. I probably am never going to talk about it again.”
Team doctor Steve Traina and athletic trainer Jim Gillen declined comment.
Dyke said the Nuggets’ medical staff told Martin in September that he had fully recovered from microfracture surgery.
But Martin has been plagued by knee problems all season. The five-year NBA veteran missed a career-high 25 games to injury this season, including 16 because of tendinitis in his left knee and six to a left knee bruise, according to the Nuggets. Dyke said Martin missed those games because of complications from surgery.
“They told Kenyon he was completely healed,” Dyke said. “That wasn’t the case.”
Late in the regular season, Martin suggested a longer recovery timeline from the May surgery but indicated doctors told him the recovery would move faster than it did.
“I was under the impression it was going to be closer to eight months than 18 months,” he said. “They gave me a time frame when I got the surgery that it was eight to 18 months to heal.”
Martin was suspended for conduct detrimental to the team after he refused to play in the second half of the Nuggets’ loss Monday against the Clippers.
