Offseason? Nuggets guard Arron Afflalo's work has just begun

Afflalo's schedule now is five- to six-hour workouts five days a week. His agent, Sam Goldfeder, has been in the basketball business for more than a decade. Asked where Afflalo's work ethic ranks among players he has seen, Goldfeder said: "At the very top. You have your hard workers, guys like Blake Griffin . But Arron is in that class, without a doubt. He works out like an animal."

Afflalo averaged 12.6 points
last season and enters this summer as a restricted free agent. Gold-feder and Nuggets executive Masai Ujiri have said they see "Triple-A" re-signing with Denver. But that might not be for a while, because the NBA likely will have a work stoppage beginning July 1.

"I have confidence that we can get a deal done," Goldfeder said. "There is a very strong mutual admiration between Arron and Nuggets management."

Because a new collective bargaining agreement could lead to a shortening of the length and size of NBA contracts, it's difficult to gauge how much money Afflalo will get.

To his credit, Afflalo works out like he gets paid by the game. He starts his offseason workouts with conditioning, then adds weight training and two hours of basketball.

"I'll tone it down the last week before training camp," the UCLA product said. "I remember in Detroit, and even in my first year in Denver, they used to try to tell me to tone it down a little bit and save something for the game. But in reality, I've been in such a habit for working out for so long, I can do it."

"The reality is you don't know who will and won't be back. But more important, you don't know how much better players will be," said Afflalo, a first-round pick in the 2007 draft. "You never know how good Ty (Lawson) can be next year or how good I can be or (Danilo) Gallinari or whoever.

"There's a lot of responsibility on the players themselves, or at least I look at it from my career — it's my responsibility to be better than I was the year before. I think that's a really important message. I would hope that all my teammates feel the same way."