DENVER -- For years, Kiki Vandeweghe has heard all the jokes and snickers. He knows all about the lack of respect for the Denver Nuggets.

	“	The Nuggets had a great basketball tradition and when I played here, it was a family. The feeling you got when you were on the court was that you had the whole city and all the fans, and everybody was fighting against the other team. ... That's the feeling I want to re-create. ”
		— Kiki Vandeweghe, Nuggets GM

Vandeweghe, a proud member of the Nuggets during their heyday in the 1980s, never joined in on the laughter. Now in his second-year as Denver's general manager, Vandeweghe isn't expecting this season's Nuggets to shut up the critics. He's also not expecting them to end a playoff-less streak that has been growing since 1995. But Vandeweghe does believe the franchise is moving in the right direction.

"Yeah, I followed it and it hurt," Vandeweghe said of the Nuggets bashing. "I did not like it and I'm not afraid to tell you that. The Nuggets had a great basketball tradition and when I played here, it was a family. The feeling you got when you were on the court was that you had the whole city and all the fans, and everybody was fighting against the other team.

"True or not, that's the feeling I had as a player. That's the feeling I want to re-create. That's what I saw was not here. The Nuggets had been bad for a while and there was a lot of instability, and things were not what they were. You can never re-create the past, but I wanted to get back to that family feeling where the fans had something to be proud of."

After trading away millions of dollars in contracts, Vandeweghe believes he now has a strong foundation to build the Nuggets. But the cement still isn't dry.

The Nuggets will have five rookies expected to be on their roster -- guards Junior Harrington, Predrag Savovic and Vincent Yarbrough and lottery pick forwards Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Nene Hilario. Three other players only have one year of NBA experience -- guard Kenny Satterfield and forwards Chris Andersen and Rodney White -- while forward Donnell Harvey is just 22 years old. Of the players expected to make the team, seven were born in the 1980s.

Opposing veteran teams will salivate when they look at the Nuggets' young roster. But in the long run, Vandeweghe believes his young boys will blossom to get the last laugh.

"If you're going to get a great player in the draft, he's going to be young and you're going to have to wait. The (Jay) Williams of this draft is the exception," Vandeweghe said. "It's very rare when that happens. If you're looking for a Kobe Bryant or a T-Mac (Tracy McGrady), those guys are going to be young and you're going to have to wait a couple of years.

"Kobe wasn't very good his first year, year-and-a-half. Made a lot of mistakes. Didn't play well. But now he's a superstar and if you're going to find a superstar in the draft, you're going to have to draft young, be patient a couple of years and teach them the right way and hope they have the commitment to be good. You can find the talent, see the talent, but their commitment mentally, and staying healthy, all those things have to fall into place and then you find that great player."

The Nuggets do have some quality veteran players in forward Juwan Howard, forward-center Marcus Camby, swingman George McCloud, swingman James Posey and hustling forward Ryan Bowen. But all eyes this season will be on the young and restless NBA toddlers that the Nuggets are banking the future on.

"I'm like the elder statesmen here," said Howard, 29. "I'm used to a situation where I am one of the younger guys. Now these guys in here make me feel really old. I'm looking forward to this year. This organization is taking a step up in the rebuilding process. You got to start somewhere."

Said Vandeweghe: "Ultimately, end of the day, bottom line, you've got to win. You can put out effort and the fans will come to see entertainment and great effort, but eventually it's got to translate into wins."

Marc J. Spears is a regular contributor to ESPN.com and also covers the Nuggets and the NBA for The Denver Post.