Nuggets, Knicks make trade that brings neither closer to a title

Durant is a lot of things. Overlooked is not one of them.

 

Well Eddy Curry is gone - part of deal includes Knicks getting Cory Brewer for Anthony Randolph and Eddy Curry

 

Melo got what he wished for. Poor guy.

 

Exactly. A quality true point guard is an absolute NECESSITY in the D'Antoni fast break system. D'antoni failed miserably without one in Denver, succeeded famously with Steve Nash in Phoenix, had a couple miserable seasons without a good point in NY, then he picks up Felton (and Amare, obviously) and things immediately got a whole lot better. So now they deal Felton. Brilliant.

Billups will fill the gap temporarily, but he's old, fading fast and has never been a natural distributor. Unless they've some plan to land Chris Paul or Deron Williams in free agency (will they even have enought cap space to try that now?) I suspect in a couple years this trade will end up being looked back on as shortsighted folly much like the Starbury trade: it will BRIEFLY make them better and restore a lot of excitement for a season or two. But soon enough Billups and Amare will be broken down, and Melo will be the only (increasingly disgruntled) star on a broken roster desperately looking for a point guard.

It'll mean happier times this year and perhaps next, but could easily end up setting them back long term. And it sure as hell ain't getting them near a ring.

 

Carmelo is a tough cover but that's it. He doesn't make the guys around him much better. People are thinking that he'll have the Garnett effect (leave losing team, boom!) but the Knicks are far from that.

Stoudamire and Melo would be a great pick and roll but Melo doesn't need a screen to score and he doesn't pass very well. Most importantly, he's not a defender nor a great rebounder.

Melo is scoring at a nice clip, but John Williamson scored a bunch of points as well.


Thank goodness this is over so that more important trades can go down, say Battier to the Celts (oh heavens, that would be too sweet a fit; he's perfect.)

 

In the who would go first pool if you had Mubarak over Anthony you won.

 

Losing team? The Nuggets made the playoffs every single year of his career, with only one season being a particularly close call (year two of the dysfunctional AI experiment, an experiment performed at Melo's request).

I'm a little frustrated at the lack of defense the Nuggets' organization has received. They've catered to his every need, consistently won and dealt with a slew of bad PR created by Anthony himself. The Nuggets had the second-best record in the West last season and had knocked off the Lakers twice when George Karl was diagnosed with cancer. A pretty solid argument could be made that the Nuggets had a pretty decent shot of at least giving the Lakers a run for their money in the playoffs.

This was about playing in NYC. This move was not about putting himself in position to win a championship. Any argument otherwise is ignoring history, particularly given Zeke's apparent involvement in orchestrating the deal.

As a Nuggets fan, it's frustrating that the narrative has become anything other than Melo being an attention-whore. He's morphed from a guy who wore sweatpants and only cared about winning to someone who wears designer sunglasses during interviews and steals rebounds from teammates to pad his stats (under the guise of working hard during this turmoil, all of which be brought on himself).

That the Nuggets got anything out of NYK of any consequence speaks volumes to how misguided Melo's been during all of this. He ostensibly demanded to leave the organization because he felt that the front office was incapable of putting together a championship caliber roster. Then, that same incapable front office worked over his new management.

Have fun in NYC, Melo. Hope your famewhore of a wife lets you have your balls back now. You're gonna need them in four years when you have to explain why you need to play in L.A. to play for a championship-caliber franchise.

 

It's all too funny. All this, for a perimeter player who doesn't play defense, for a coach to whom defense is a foreign word. All flash, no substance, and their destruction in the playoffs will be hilarious.

 

Then you're on the wrong board. I'm sure there's some fanboi board out there where the prevailing narrative is how the proud honorable Nuggest franchise was victimized here. But I doubt you'll get much of that angle from this crowd.

As for your frustration over qt's "losing" franchise comment: well, sorry, some franchises simply have that perception attached to them regardless of what their recent record indicates. Basic rule of thumb: if your franchise has never been to an NBA Finals in its entire history and you're not from a major media market (or even if you are in the case of the Clippers), you'll remain a place stars have more interest in leaving rather than going to, regardless of what your last record was.

 

Certainly it appears as if the cosmic tumblers will now align to send Paul to the Knicks in another year, with Billups keeping the chair warm in the interim.

In the CBA which will be forcibly imposed after the lockout, the owners will have much greater latitude to simply terminate contracts whenever they feel like it, so clearing cap space will no longer be the be-all and end-all of all moves in the league -- some moves will actually be made because they might directly help the team.

So fitting Paul under the cap will not be that big a deal. They'll just cut a couple guys they don't feel like paying anymore. Salaries will be cranked way down across the board so fitting him under the cap may be even less of a problem.

 

Forgot that this board wasn't where sports journalists gathered to discuss sports issues. (But awesome dig about being a fanboi. Not remotely a tired meme.)

 

I'd rather the owners just do something about players steering themselves to certain markets and turning 9/10ths of NBA teams into glorified version of the Washington Generals, but why the hell would Stern want to do anything about that?