Kenneth Faried’s excitement about this year’s Nuggets was as hard to contain as he is sprinting up-and-down the basketball court.
“I’m excited to surprise a lot of people,” he said.
A wide grin accompanied those words. Faried talked of the Nuggets being akin to the Phoenix Suns of a couple seasons ago. No one thought that team, under then-first year head coach Jeff Hornacek, would do anything after finishing with 25 wins the season before, but instead pushed for a playoff spot by season’s end.
This, Faried said, can be like that.
Yet Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly and new coach Michael Malone tempered expectations on Monday during his team’s media day. There was no specific talk of any win total or season goals. Improvement was the theme of the day.
“Our goal this season is going to be ‘let’s get better every day.’ As a team, as an organization, find a way to get better every single day,” Malone said. “And if we do that, by the end of the year we’ll be much improved and hopefully in the thick of things.”
Malone and Connelly have been encouraged by near-perfect attendance by the team open gym and workout sessions at the Pepsi Center in September.
“They’re excited,” Connelly said, “we’re excited.”
Said Malone: “That means there’s a buy-in. That means the players are buying in to what we’re telling them. They working, they’re committed and they want to be an active participant and turn this team around from being a lottery team to being a team that can be a competitive Western Conference team. And the work starts tomorrow.”
Nuggets begin training camp for the 2015-16 season on Tuesday. Their first preseason game is on Friday at the Los Angeles Clippers.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or @dempseypost
