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ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — This isn’t just Jamal Murray casting aside questions about his health and downplaying his recent injuries. In fact, as if he had a definitive display of athleticism for the media planned to perfection, he pounced at the rim Friday for a contested slam dunk — moments after the doors had been opened allowing a throng of reporters to watch the last 30 minutes of Denver’s practice. Point taken. “I feel good,” a curt Murray said during the team’s media day at Ball Arena, rejecting any notion that he was dealing with lingering injuries as training camp began. One week later, and on the opposite side of the globe, his emphatic dunk supplied some meaningful evidence.

The 2024-25 NHL season began this past weekend with a couple of games in Prague, but league play begins in earnest in the coming days. It should be a fascinating season. International hockey is coming back. The Edmonton Oilers looked like clear Stanley Cup favorites in early July, but an ultra-rare double-dose of offer sheets from the St.

Around midnight in the parking lot of a Denver bar a quarter century ago, the Colorado version of a classic Australian sport was born. Paul Renouf and his buddies were watching the Australian Football League’s Grand Final that night and decided to have a kick under the light poles at halftime of footy’s Super Bowl. And thus the seeds of the Denver Bulldogs were planted. “We didn’t ever plan to start a team,” Renouf said.

It took a camel for us to find out Nikola Jokic has never ridden a horse. The Nuggets spent this week in Abu Dhabi playing a pair of exhibition games against the world-champion Celtics. Many of the Nuggets staffers made the trip, including their media team. As the players experienced life abroad, a few boarded camels, including Russell Westbrook and Peyton Watson. A Nuggets reporter asked Jokic if he had been on a camel. “I have never been on a horse, to be honest,” Jokic said.

In his comeback from Tommy John, Gabriel Hughes took cues from Camus. Hughes, the Rockies’ first-round pick in 2022, returned to the mound in instructional league a little over a month ago after missing all of the 2024 minor-league season. While he was recovering from surgery, Hughes dove into a heady, philosophic reading list that included “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus, “Existentialism Is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre and “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. Camus’ work struck a significant cord with the right-hander and underscored his mindset amid a rehabilitation that lasted over a year. “In these books, we’re trying to figure out how to deal with the inevitable bad things that happen in life, and after surgery, those were really what I was trying to find an answer to,” Hughes said.

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