Denver Nuggets president Josh Kroenke spoke with Yahoo Sports Tuesday, opening up about troubled guard Ty Lawson, who they recently traded to the Houston Rockets. As reported by Marc J. Spears, while the organization has decided to part ways with the talented guard, they are still rooting for him to succeed.

The reports reveals that Lawson's struggles off the court have been persisting way before his second DUI arrest in the last six months, with Kroenke saying the Nuggets have been privately trying to help the North Carolina product for the "past couple of years."

"He always had the affinity for burning the candle at both ends," the Nuggets' president said in a phone interview. "We want to give our layers freedom to be young guys as well. We're not going to be drill sergeants. But we want our guys to be able to handle their personal lives on their own."

"Ty"¦there were times when he was better than others. But the problems have been there for several years, going back to when we were having a lot of on-court success. I don't want to go back too far. There were just a lot of times where you were at practice and you just know. You could smell it. You know there is probably deeper issues than he would probably let on."

Lawson is currently on a 30-day residential rehabilitation program. He was traded along with a second-round pick in exchange for Nick Johnson, Kostas Papanikolaou, Pablo Prigioni and Joey Dorsey.

"I love Ty and will always love Ty, but once I saw him going down this dark path, we knew that we probably were going to end up in a situation where we were dumping him," Kroenke said.

Should he get himself together, Lawson makes the Western Conference Finalists even more potent as he teams up with James Harden and Dwight Howard.

"In the long run, I hope [the trade] is a good thing for Ty Lawson, the person. There are no guarantees. Sometimes you just need to hear the message from a different person. Sometimes a change of scenery is the best thing for all parties. That's the way we looked at this. I think Ty Lawson, the person, is starting to ubdnerstand more so than he ever has the things he needs to do in order to keep his career on track and more importantly, get his life on track."