Thank you, Den­ver Nuggets.

Up until Fri­day night’s sea­son-sav­ing come­back from 16 points down against the Los Ange­les Clip­pers, there wasn’t a whole lot of sun­shine this week in the world of Col­orado sports. (Actu­al­ly, there was snow.)

From the “As the World Turns” day­time dra­ma sur­round­ing the fate of Col­orado high school foot­ball, to Von Miller’s poten­tial­ly sea­son-end­ing ten­don injury, to the Rock­ies’ per­sis­tent nose­dive —  we need­ed that, Nuggs.

We need­ed that bad.

Gov. Jared Polis — D+

Once upon a time, we expect­ed our politi­cians to think before they spoke. That’s appar­ent­ly too much to ask these days.

In what essen­tial­ly amount­ed to one big 24-hour tease, Polis float­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty Tues­day of Col­orado high school foot­ball return­ing this fall — then ed as CHSAA’s gov­ern­ing board unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed down the idea less than 24 hours later.

A few days after that? Fall foot­ball was back on the table, with CHSAA Com­mis­sion­er Rhon­da Blan­ford-Green meet­ing with the governor’s office to talk about vari­ances for cer­tain sports amid the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Colorado’s high school ath­letes don’t deserve to get yanked around like this. Nor do their par­ents or coaches.

Heck, even CHSAA was a vic­tim here, as it was forced to say no to fall prep foot­ball for the sec­ond time in two months because state lead­ers can’t get their ducks in a row.

It leaves the staff here at Grad­ing the Week wondering:

Did the gov­er­nor talk to any­one before declar­ing Tues­day that fall foot­ball could be a thing in 2020? Or did he fol­low the lead of our Tweet­er in Chief and throw an idea out into the world with­out even con­sid­er­ing the consequences?

Michael Porter Jr. — A

Speak­ing of foot-in-mouth moments… How about everybody’s favorite Nuggets wunderkind?

Say what you will about MPJ’s lack of tact, he sure makes for great copy. And we here at the Grad­ing the Week offices encour­age him to voice his opin­ion when­ev­er he feels the urge.

Throw a stink bomb into the Nuggets lock­er room after a Game 4 loss to the Clip­pers? We can get behind that.

“I mean, that’s real­ly up to the play calls, that’s real­ly up to the coach­es, who they want to put the ball in whose hands,” Porter said when asked about a lack of shots for him­self in the sec­ond half. “We kept going to (Niko­la) Jokic and (Jamal Mur­ray), and they’re two amaz­ing play­ers, you can nev­er get mad at that. But I just think to beat that team, we got­ta get more play­ers involved.”

A cou­ple things: 1) With the Nuggets scuf­fling for offense vs. the Clip­pers, it was prob­a­bly a good idea to shake things up. 2) As true as it might be, for the sake of team har­mo­ny, it’s also prob­a­bly an opin­ion best shared with team­mates and coach­es — not a media Zoom call.

But, hey, we wel­come it with open arms. Speak your mind, MPJ. We’re listening.

Espe­cial­ly if you’re going to bury that 3 at the end of Game 5.

Broncos’ health — C-

If the object of this year’s abbre­vi­at­ed Bron­cos train­ing camp was to break camp healthy and uni­fied … well, one out of two ain’t bad.

Even with all of the renewed hope ema­nat­ing from Bron­cos HQ lead­ing into Week 1, it’s get­ting real­ly hard to look past all of the injuries that have piled up since camp began. This starts, of course, with what appears to be a sea­son-end­ing injury for star out­side line­backer Von Miller.

Nobody had a play­book for how to deal with this bizarre NFL off­sea­son with no OTAs, rook­ie camp or pre­sea­son games, and injuries are part of the busi­ness in pro foot­ball. But here’s a head count from prac­tice Fri­day: Miller, Court­land Sut­ton and Mark Bar­ron did not prac­tice, while Bradley Chubb and Gra­ham Glas­gow final­ly prac­ticed in full after being lim­it­ed par­tic­i­pants in pre­vi­ous days.

And we haven’t even played a down yet. Yikes.