Kidd’s Triumphant Return Shows That Sometimes The Bad Guys Win

It might’ve actually been fitting that the first hours of NBA free agency were unexpectedly quiet for the Nuggets. Too quiet. There will be roster moves in Denver. That’s a certainty. Vlatko Cancar and DeAndre Jordan are each likely to return on one-year deals, league sources told The Denver Post, and that still leaves two roster spots unoccupied.

Calvin Booth’s draft day comments felt like an omen for an inevitable loss. Whether inevitable or not, it became reality Sunday. The Nuggets have lost their championship team’s fifth starter in free agency, as Kentavious Caldwell-Pope agreed to a three-year, $66 million contract with the Orlando Magic, aaccording to reports from USA TODAY’s Jeff Zillgitt and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Caldwell-Pope declined his $15.4 million player option with Denver earlier this week to enter unrestricted free agency, a marketplace where the Nuggets didn’t retain him despite having his full Bird rights.

A masterpiece it wasn’t. Finger painting is more like it. But give the Rockies credit for hanging tough and delivering a slew of excellent defensive plays in a 5-4, 14-inning win over the White Sox on Sunday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field. Colorado manufactured the winning run in the 14th when Sam Hilliard’s sacrifice bunt moved Ryan McMahon from second to third, and then McMahon scored on Michael Toglia’s sacrifice fly. Lefty reliever Jalen Beeks kept the White Sox from scoring in the bottom of the frame to help the Rockies end their five-game losing streak.

Unless something changes, the Colorado Avalanche will be bargain hunting when the NHL’s free agent market opens Monday morning. The Avs have a unique set of circumstances, but if what general manager Chris MacFarland said this past weekend at the 2024 NHL draft is true, they have very little room below the salary cap ceiling to work with. Colorado could spend well past the $88 million limit, for now, because Valeri Nichushkin’s $6.125 million cap hit doesn’t go on the books officially until he is reinstated.

The final fire truck rolled through the streets of Denver for the Nuggets’ celebratory parade a year ago, carrying Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and the franchise’s first NBA championship trophy. The truck suddenly stopped following a right turn around a corner. An instant later, chaos. On the concrete, amid the noise and celebrations, police Sgt.

The regression to the mean couldn’t have been meaner. After three straight wins in which the Colorado Rapids beat their opponents by a combined score of 9-1, a trip to LAFC was straight in the other direction. While the Rapids’ defense looked solid and stood its ground for much of the game, Mateusz Bogusz and LAFC were just too much to handle.