Kenneth Faried knows how fleeting this all can be.

The fun. The fame. People filling the building wearing your jersey.

One day it’s the highest of highs. The next … it’s all gone.

Faried was a cult figure early in his NBA career in Denver. “The Manimal” was beloved by Nuggets fans at Pepsi Center as they donned his No. 35 jersey and wore dreadlock wigs in honor of the undersized, non-stop big man.

He was at the top of his game in the summer of 2014, a part of the U.S. Men’s Senior National Team that won a gold at the FIBA World Cup. Faried could count Kyrie Irving, Stephen Curry, James Harden, Klay Thompson, Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins among his U.S. teammates.

In the 2014-15 season, Kenneth Faried was a rising star for the Nuggets.

After making the All-Tournament team, he signed a four-year, $50 million extension with the Nuggets in October 2014 as a seeming staple of the franchise’s future.

That never happened. Friction with a new coach, Faried’s injuries, the rise of young bigs (Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic) and an All-Star free agent pickup (Paul Millsap) made Faried basically an afterthought. Traded to Brooklyn in July of 2018, Faried played in just 12 games there before agreeing to a buyout in January.

By then, Faried was unsure of his future in the league. Yet the timing turned out to be perfect.

The Houston Rockets needed someone to help them survive in the post after center Clint Capela’s thumb injury sidelined him more than a month.

On Feb. 4, Kenneth Faried had one of his best games in years in the NBA.

“The Manimal” has been revived in Houston, making an instant impact playing off Chris Paul and reigning Kia MVP James Harden. With solid stats (13.6 points per game, 8.8 rebounds per game), he’s eager to contribute however he can for a playoff team.

Faried sat down with NBA.com 's Sekou Smith in a wide-ranging interview, discussing his journey, the Rockets’ finish to 2018-19 and the looming playoffs.

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Sekou Smith: You had a nickname, people coming to the arena with your jersey on and everything. Did it bother you how quickly that all went away in Denver without you getting a chance to have a say in how things played out?

Kenneth Faried: Yeah, it felt like a slap in the face to me, to be honest with you. All the hard work and the time you put it in. It was like Isaiah Thomas when he was in Boston. The hard work and the grit and you’re hurt or something out of your control happens, you are still there to play basketball and I understand that. But at the same time, you’ve got a lot of outside stresses going on. For me, it was ‘hey, I hurt my back one season and I’m still trying to fight through it.’ And we still wanted to go to the playoffs but didn’t make it. So, let me fight through this and, come to find out, at the end of the season, I have a tear in the top of my gluteus maximus. On the right side I caught a tear and they were like, ‘you tore this and it was pretty bad.’ Talking about surgery and everything.