You know it’s the preseason when you find yourself alone in the visitor’s locker room with Kenyon Martin, Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups and a team attendant grabbing left over shaving kits.

Then again, this is Portland – a place where some out of town beat writers don’t venture in the exhibition and where in the regular season, the spot is still sparse at times with media. It’s just not every day or every game where you see a head coach – in this case George Karl – chilling on a folding chair in the busy Rose Garden hallway talking to Portland team executives, coaches and players alike as they passed him by. Very Godfather-esque. But there Karl sat for a good twenty minutes with no reporters, cameras or voice recorders in his face.

Fine by him. He often prefers the black folding chair for his postgame pressers.

I’ll say this though after speaking to both Anthony and Martin for a while for a post game story running now over at SLAM online (Game Notes: Roy And Oden lead late comeback for Portland): neither of those guys seemed overly concerned about the loss to the Blazers. Tends to be a typical response for many teams knowing what remains ahead is a tedious and tiring NBA regular season.

Even so, Martin knows when the ball goes up for good Denver – a team often confused with a walking technical foul with Melo, Martin, Chris Anderson and JR Smith unafraid to mix it up -  they’ll be ready to go without Karl being in their ear about it.

Melo admitted he’s ready to go right now actually. The way he played, Anthony looked it too. Thought for sure he and Martell Webster were going to exchange blows a couple times in the game jockeying for position. But after the game, Melo was….well….mellow.

He spoke openly about Martin (a feature story on Martin is set to run next week at SLAM online). He laughed about saying Denver needed to flip the switch in the fourth quarter, not Portland. He meant what he said: he's ready for the regular season.

All Denver needs now are some legit referees to officiate the game and those pesky members of the media to harass them as they shower, dress and exit the locker room.

They’ll have to wait until next week when they come back to Portland.

Minus the legit refs of course.

photo: sity.com

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