EXECUTIVE AWARD

Mark Warkentien and airplanes and minor-league Basketball games are best friends.

The Nuggets' vice president of

Basketball operations is always somewhere in the country watching someone. Some, like guard Dahntay Jones, end up on the Nuggets' roster. But it is his biggest deal - the trade for Chauncey Billups, which changed the Nuggets' season - that was the catalyst for Warkentien winning

the NBA's executive of the year award.

"It's really a team honor," Warkentien said. "( Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke's) leadership and vision for this season, the front office, our coaching staff and players, the video guys that were here, the ones who stayed here all night every night for the past couple of weeks, we've got a ton of tremendous people helping."

Aside from the Billups trade, the Nuggets traded Marcus Camby and let forward Eduardo Najera leave in the offseason. In their places the Nuggets signed Jones, Chris Andersen and Renaldo Balkman, giving them one of the strongest benches in the league at a low cost.

"I think there's always a value in going against the grain," Warkentien said. "When the masses are going one way, you're a little better off not totally rejecting where they're going, but if they're going there you need to look at the other things that are out there."

They're free. For all the excitement about the Nuggets' bench, the reserves struggled at the free-throw line in Game 1. Denver overall was 25-for-36 from the line (69.4 percent), not too good to begin with, but the bench was just 7-for-15 (46.7 percent). J.R. Smith shot only 1-for-5.

Hard foul. Though the game wasn't as chippy as many of the contests against the Hornets, the Nuggets did make statement fouls early. With 5:57 left in the first, Kenyon Martin, on defense, bumped his backside into Dirk Nowitzki. When Nowitzki got the ball and tried to go baseline, Martin knocked him to the floor with a shoulder slam, earning a technical foul.

Footnotes. The Nuggets played

the first quarter against Dallas with sleep in their eyes, shooting 35.3 percent from the field. ? Denver's Linas Kleiza, who didn't play in the final game against New Orleans, logged seven scoreless minutes Sunday. ? Denver's defensive-minded Jones did an excellent job offensively at

attacking the basket, finishing with nine points. He averaged 5.4 during the regular season. ? The Nuggets had 58 points in the paint, compared with just 30 by the Mavericks.

Chris Dempsey and Benjamin Hochman,

The Denver Post