Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post reports:
|
It’s not every day — or any day, for that matter — that a player gets a personal apology from the front office that traded him.
But then, Chauncey Billups wasn’t just any player for the Nuggets.
His inclusion in the trade to the New York Knicks was the name that really stung for Nuggets fans. Billups grew up here, played basketball at George Washington High School and the University of Colorado and never wastes an opportunity to show his love for the city.
That’s why, said Nuggets executives Josh Kroenke and Masai Ujiri, it was painful to let him go. And that’s why the duo opened their Tuesday evening news conference in an unusual manner.
“I want to offer a personal apology to the Billups family,” Kroenke said. “They mean the world to me personally, and I know that Chauncey means everything to Denver. And when I say Denver, I mean just Denver basketball on every level. He is Denver basketball. He was a high school star here, he was a college star here, he was a professional star here. It was an incredibly tough decision to include him in this trade.”
