Warkentien said Balkman's "ticket" is to be a high-energy player in the mold of Eduardo Najera, who left the Nuggets last summer as a free agent.

"I think I can be better than (Najera)," said Balkman, who said Denver's move "means a lot to me."

Balkman, acquired last July from New York, didn't play in the first half Wednesday at Utah in his first game in a Nuggets uniform. But he provided some valuable energy in the second half, and finished with five points and a steal in eight minutes.

--Nuggets guard Allen Iverson vows not to rock the boat, but he was quite surprised when he wasn't named a team captain.

Iverson was a tri-captain last season along with Carmelo Anthony and the since-departed Marcus Camby. But, after taking a team vote, Nuggets coach George Karl announced this season's co-captains are Anthony and Kenyon Martin.

Karl said Iverson "got a lot of votes," but he elected to choose only the top two vote-getters and not the top three because "two is enough."

"Does it matter? Yeah, it matters," Iverson said. "It's not something that will bother me at all or something that I'm going to dwell on, but it was surprising... I want to run with this and make it a positive thing instead of trying to make anything negative about the whole situation. I'm too far in. I'm a veteran. I can't let stuff like that (drag) me down or the team. But, yeah, I was surprised."

QUOTE TO NOTE: "The whole game was tough for me. I definitely didn't play my best." -- Linas Kleiza, replacing Nuggets suspended forward Carmelo Anthony in the starting lineup, shot 1-of-8 and scored just four points Wednesday at Utah.