Feel Marcus Camby's Pain

Still in total shock over the Marcus Camby "trade". I have, however, come to the conclusion that the Clippers offer to the Knicks for Zach Randolph couldn't have been real, or kept on the table once Camby was in play. Randolph's worse, crazy, and makes too much.

Anyway, it's good -- and a little sad -- to hear Camby himself try and untangle his reactions to the deal. From the Rocky Mountain News:

"Blindsided, distraught, disrespected. All those adjectives. I definitely feel insulted ... When I first heard about the trade, I felt like I was the scapegoat after all our past first-round exits and failures and lack of defense. I felt it was them telling me that I was no longer wanted and I was the cause of everything that went wrong the last couple years on this team."

"I'm still in disbelief. I'm still in shock. I still can't believe this happened."

Camby was a bad match for the Nuggets, at least as long as that team refused to play defense and his shot-blocking and rebounding were being wasted. The deal was bizarre and lopsided, but Camby's been around long enough to understand the financial game. Maybe, down the road, he'll thank them for putting them somehwere he could flourish, because those Nuggets certainly weren't going anywhere. But if they somehow retool their defensive identity by shipping him out, for bread crumbs on the dollar, then yeah, he should be angry for a long, long time.

It's also worth pointing out that, for a team full of shiftless "thugs", there sure seems to be a deep-seated sense of pride and resposibility on Denver. I blame it all on George Karl, the original gangster.

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