State of the Denver Nuggets

One night the Denver Nuggets are getting run out of the building like their socks are on fire. The next, they are tearing apart the best teams in the NBA.

The state of the Nuggets, in a scientific and collaborative estimation, is unstable. Indeterminate. Unknown.

Denver is a smorgasbord of pieces. They don’t contain any “Super-Stars”; no players that can put the rest of the team on their shoulders and just flat-out go at the snap of a finger, but yet they also don’t have a player that can go cold just as easily, find a reason to lose interest as the team falls flat.

Aaron Affalo (13.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg), Danilo Galinari (15.2 ppg, 4.9 rpg), Ty Lawson (15.1 ppg, 6.7 apg), Wilson Chandler (12.3 ppg, 5.8 rpg), Andre Miller (10.1 ppg, 6.4 apg), Al Harrington (14.4 ppg, 6.5 rpg), Kenneth Faried (9.6 ppg, 7.1 rpg) and Corey Brewer (9.5 ppg, 2.9 rpg) are all comparable. They are by no means All-Stars, but they are solid additions to any team in the association. The Nuggets are made up a bunch of role players, surrounded by other role players, feeding, once again, off other role players. The sum of its part is no simple algorithm.

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National Basketball Freelancers

As fans, we are naïve; sometimes plain dumb. We paint our chest, buying hundred dollar tickets to sick on wet seats in -10 degree weather and we truly believe that NBA players want to win a championship.

It’s not that they don’t want to win; most of them would do anything to win one. Brian ‘The Custodian” Cardinal (Ever wonder how he got that nickname?) can viably attest to that fact.

This day-in-age they are programmed, like the new NBA Jam, to know that the only true measure of success is how many wins you can get.  But we are only now becoming aware that this is only the case IF there is an NBA season.

Unlike football, David Stern cannot keep them off the court. There are no Coach Carter chains on the doors, and definitely no soliloquies that pronounce the players and owners greed and the calling for a agreement to be made. The players are content to go play in select venues with their buddies.

It’s Bagger Vance meets Space Jam.

And why would they want to stop doing it? The players get to go out and play in games they want to play in. They get paid as much money as people are willing to pay to see them (which is turning out to be lumps of money). There is no pressure on the players to take over an exhibition game. They don’t have to go to towns like Milwaukee and Oklahoma City. Some fans, outside competitors may get the opportunity to get some playing time against their favorite pro. And they get the freedom that most of them probably haven’t felt since they were in elementary school.

Players play to win the game; but that NBA game is becoming more and more overrated. 

NBAing Abroad

Every single person that I’ve known to go abroad to some European hillside bourgeoisie town wants to make their gallant return back as soon as possible. Their experiences were so undeniably unbelievable that dreaming about their time there only startles them awake at night.

NBA players aren’t this way.

Many of them want to sign these huge, million dollar European contract to go play while the American league is in lockout. They want to continue to earn money, and play basketball.

Brandon Jennings was so happy to come back to the NBA after a year overseas that his hair started growing straight up. Manute Bol came to America and actually shrank a whole inch, because he was going to play in the league. And James Naismith originally wanted to pronounce his game “basketball” [bas-kit-by-YA) like his European counterparts. (ALL are jokes.)

Once the NBA lockout ends (if that be in 2011 or 2012, the latter is more likely) the east coast airports are going to look like a mix ‘Coming to America’ and ‘Snakes on a Plane’.

There will be euphoria by the NBA players.

The talent overseas is widely overrated. The money abroad teams are rumored offering an American superstar is illogical. The European franchises checkbooks may have more hopz than the athletes themselves; expect a bounced check or two.

NBA players will venture across the Atlantic looking for games. But when, and if, the NBA lockout is lifted these players will be hurrying back home.