Once the NBA lockout is over with, free agency will start, and the Nuggets need to figure out what to do with their seven players that will enter free agency. Currently, the Nuggets have 3 restricted free agents and 4 unrestricted free agents. For those who don't know the difference between the two types of free agency, here's a simple breakdown: Unrestricted free agents are free to contact and sign with any team that they want, and they are not required to take their previous team's offer even if it pays more. Restricted free agents, on the other hand, are required to go to their previous team if the previous team gives the player a qualifying offer and if they match, dollar-for-dollar, the offer of another team. For more information regarding restricted/unrestricted FA, check out this helpful link.

Note: I know that the new CBA may radically change free agency, but my predictions and recommendations are going to use the NBA's current FA rules, and I'm not even going to try to speculate how the new CBA will turn out.

So follow me after the jump as I discuss the situation surrounding the Nuggets' three restricted free agents: Arron Afflalo, Wilson Chandler, and Gary Forbes!

Continue reading this post »

OK, you may have been expecting Part II of the Draft series. You may also have something to say about how I copied this idea from the fine folks at Mile High Hockey. Whatever. I've given them credit, and since it seems like nobody else has done this yet, I'll be the first to do so. (By the way, for Part II I have a more reasonable situation, but I'm stuck on what player to do. I might do multiple).

So behold, the 2009-2010 Nuggets Players Awards! (but a health lesson on Nuggets will be first!)

Let's start off with the boring ones and end with the good ones!

The Yakhouba Diawara Award for the Player who gets Playing Time but does freaking nothing with it: Malik Allen

This was a no-brainer no matter how you look at it.. In my opinion, Diawara was a waste of minutes, as although he supposedly played defense, he couldn't do shit on offense, and he couldn't pass, he couldn't rebound, he couldn't stay in front of his man some of the time, and he couldn't put the round, orange ball with those black thingys on it into the orange plastic circle with a net attached. Malik isn't as bad as Diawara because he averaged more tacos per game than Yak-Yuk-Yak did, but still. He deserves it more than Air Conditioner because at least Anthony Carter had this 5-game stretch where he played well.

The

The Alexis Ajinca Award for the backup French big-man who doesn't get playing time: Johan Petro

OK, Petro is infinitely more talented than Ajinca, but I couldn't think of any other backup French big men in the league, and "Alexis Ajinca Award" can be shortened to AAA, which also stands for Absolutely Awesome Anchovies (as well as Arron Augustine Afflalo). Petro really deserved to play more when the other big guys were injured, as although he does have his limitations in fighting in the post and scoring outside of the paint, he is/was much better than Malik Allen, who sometimes got more playing time than him.

The following is funny...

The Ryan Bowen/Leon Powe Award for the energy guy without much game: Joey Graham

If you don't remember Ryan Bowen, he was that hard-working guy on the bench of the horrible 2002-03 team, and one of the only two players on that team (the other being Juwan Howard) who actually gave a crap. Joey Graham played hard and had the occasional random 20-point game that came from purely hustle and layups (remember Game 6 of the Nuggets-Jizz series? Did that remind you of Game 2 of the 2008 Finals?). This is meant as a compliment, as I kinda wish that our starting lineup exhibited the energy that Graham exhibits.

Here is a picture of Bowen (right) and Tskitishvili in practice. I'm assuming that Skita is attempting to post Ryan up, and I'm assuming that Bowen is flopping appalled that Skita is actually posting him up (Skita was known for taking and badly missing ill-advised jumpers).

The Latrell Sprewell Award for the exciting, explosive, athletic shooting guard that is remarkably inconsistent: JR Smith

I hate to put Sprewell's name in the same sentence as JR, but Earl Smith III is going the same down the same path as Sprewell (minus the coach-choking fiasco) unless he puts his head on straight and realizes that scoring is not the only important part of the game, and that making money is not the only part of life that one should be interested in persuing.

The [Somebody in the comments section please think of an apppropriate name for this] for the player who finds his stride around Christmastime and starts totally kicking @$$ and pounding the boards until getting injured award: Kenyon Martin

The Nuggets would have finished the season in the 7th or 8th seed had it not been for Kenyon Martin's reinvigorated play in January and February. He went from being solely a defensive PF to being a 14 ppg, 12 rpg monster during those two months while some of the Nuggets' other key guys were out with injuries.

"The Tim Duncan award for the experienced Veteran player who is fundamentally strong and can fill it up on a nightly basis but isn't considered 'flashy'": Chauncey Billups

Thanks to Agiliarept for the idea. This one is obvious, as Billups is the consummate veteran leader that doesn't do the flashy stuff to win, but has a winning attitude (whatever the heck that is). However, Billups wasn't always this type of guy. Here are some of his highlights from George Washington, CU, Celtics, Nuggets (first time), Craptors, and TWolves.

By the way, in the next video (unrelated), Steve Hess is just so funny.

The Spud Webb Award for the short guy who can dunk: Ty Lawson

 This too...:

You were expecting me to put the dunk on Mbenga, right? I think this dunk is just as good, but since it isn't against a big-market team like the Lakers it isn't as well-known.

And finally...

The QPU Award for the MOST VALUABLE QUITTER: CARMELO "QUITTER" ANTHONY!!!

'Nuff said.

If you have any more ideas, please write them down in the comments section and I'll be sure to post them.

This will be the first installment in a hopefully long series of installments about the draft. As you probably know, the Nuggets don't have a first round pick. In fact, we don't even have a pick at all! Now, at first that may seem like a big problem and may cause some people to panic (including me for about a second), but heed this:

The Nuggets have a rather cunning Front Office, and while it is true that they don't really do a whole lot compared to some other GMs, we can usually rely on them to make the right decision at the right time. A great example was the trade that we used to get Lawson last season, and I think that we could look at trading into the first round this season too to nab a good player.

Now, you might wonder "who could we trade"? That is not the issue for now, and I'll address that later. For the first couple of installments, I'll just give player descriptions and my opinion as to the guys that we should get.

I'll start off by supposing that we will trade into picks 15-20 like we did last season. If we do so, then the first person I'd like to see us get is Hassan Whiteside. The basic measurements show that he is 7'0" and 235 lbs, the average size for a very skinny NBA starting center (however, we have this guy named Steve Hess that could add another 15-20 lbs. of bulk to his frame). While I don't believe in highlight reels (as they only show his positives), I'll start off with that for him.

He is an athletic seven-foot freshman from Marshall, and he has drawn comparisons to Marcus Camby. Before you rattle off all the crap about Marcus Camby and how he can't shoot and how he gambled too much on defense and how he wasn't a good man-to-man defender, remember that Camby was, and still is, an above average starting center.

Offense: Hassan Whiteside is rather raw offensively, and while he has shown potential in knocking down those 20-foot jumpers, he hasn't done so consistently enough during his freshman season for that to be much of a threat. His athleticism has led him to be very boisterous around the basket, but he isn't very good at finishing tough layups, and needs more of a post-game to be a legit NBA starting center. However, he has the physical tools to succeed, and while he will need several years to fully develop, the Nuggets are a team with that luxury.

Defense: Hassan Whiteside is a good defender, no matter how you look at it. He led the nation in blocked shots, but he doesn't gamble too much and his crazy, 7'7" wingspan allows him to get blocks without having to lose post position. He has the athleticism of many NBA power forwards, but he also has decent fundamentals. His main weakness is in pick-and-roll situations, and sometimes he looks a bit queasy when he's pulled out to the perimeter on a bad switch or a jump-shooting opposing big, but that will get fixed with experience. The Nuggets as a team are HORRIBLE at defending the pick-and-roll, so it's not like he's going to make us any worse.

Rebounding: I know that this kinda goes into the defense catagory, but I've decided to make this its own catagory because he's just so damn good at it. He has a good work ethic and shows good effort, which is half of what one needs to be a good rebounder. Although he's too skinny and sometimes gets pushed out of position by opposing bigs, his length allows him to grab some of those longer rebounds, and on offensive rebounds he almost always goes for the putback (a la Tyson Chandler). He has strong hands, so he doesn't turn the ball over a whole lot.

The biggest question about him is not if he's going to fulfill his potential (with this team, he will). The biggest question is how long it's going to take him, and whether his skills in college will translate to the NBA. Since he played for a small school (and thus I don't really have any footage of him), he didn't play against players with the size of NBA centers. However, as mentioned before, he has a good work ethic, and I'm sure that by the time Nene's contract expires, he'll be more than ready to start at center.

You may wonder if we have that luxury or not, and it remains to be seen. During his rookie season, I forsee him as our fifth big and a guy that goes to the DLeague often to develop his skills (there's no shame in doing that, and he'll get more PT and experience there than sitting on the bench in the NBA). By his second season, he should be ready to be our primary backup center, and by his third season we might start him in certain situations.

This is all supposing that we get him in the first  place, which is to be seen. However, if we do trade to the middle of the first, we should trade to Minnesota for the 16th pick, as he'll probably be available there. I'll finish this off with a picture of him, as again I don't have much footage of him because of where he played.

Passing the rock ^

Hassan Whiteside loves taking the highest percentage shot in basketball: the dunk.

We just lost our first round series to the Jazz, and it was our 6th first round exit in 7 years (although to be fair, we didn't make the playoffs for like a bazillion straight years before that). Also, Chauncey Billups' streak of 7 straight conference final appearances has come to an end, but nobody cares because nobody should care (I just had to throw that out there for some reason). However, during the season, we faced numerous challenges, including injuries galore and our head coach being out since early March, and although I'm sure that Adrian Dantley did the best job he could, he is nowhere near the coach that George Karl is, and, frankly, at this point I doubt that Chauncey would be much better than Dantley (some have said that he should be player coach; the guy who shoulda been player coach was Dantley, as I'm sure he has some game left, and he can take pressure off our big men. But that's off the point). There were also many smaller, but still significant issues, such as our 22 back-to-back games, the incredulous number of games we dropped to crappy teams, the refs' unwillingness to call fouls (David Stern, please don't kill me for typing that), and Melo's odd troubles at converting FTs during March and the beginning of April.

But now, it's time to move on and see what we can do during the offseason to improve the team...

Join me after the jump for whatever I'm going to type next

(By the way, I've realized that nobody really utilizes the transition between the space above the jump and the space below it because you can only see the jump on a mobile device)

Continue reading this post »

Since the game thread is filling up very, very fast, I've decided to add a third/fourth quarter and post-game thread so that the site stops lagging. This is sort of an experimental feature, as I see this on some other blog sites, but never here. I'll add more later, depending on whether or not the Nuggets manage to win this extremely crucial game.

At the moment of this posting, the Nuggets are down 63-77 to the Mavs near the end of the third quarter with the Mavericks having possession of the basketball. Update: Currently, the score is 79-95 with the Nuggets calling a timeout right after the Dirkler nailed a three. Final Update: The Nuggets lost 93-109 in Dallas to fall  to 48-27, which is good for 4th in the West.

Beat this guy's team!: I guess we lost to this guy's team...

For here, I will discuss the three teams that the Nuggets are most likely to face in Round 1. These teams are the Spurs, the Thunder, and the Blazers. I won't go into too much depth about the Blazers because, well, 1) They are definitely my second favorite team besides the Nuggets, and, more importantly, 2) Zachm219 did this little thing on the Blazers and the Mavs a couple days ago. So here's the western conference standings as of right now, but Utah, Dallas, Portland, and the l*kers all play today, so it could change. I'm just including the teams in playoff position because Memphis has a 0.1% of making the playoffs, and all the other Western Conference teams are mathematically eliminated.

The stat that interests me the most is the Average Point Differential (DIFF). This shows the amount of points by which each team outscores the opponent on average. The Mavs have a differential of only +1.7, which is about equivalent to that of the 39-34 Miami Heat. Another thing to take into account is Average Winning Percentage of the opponent, which I didn't put up there. The Nuggets are at .495, The Jazz are at .514, the Spurs are at .509, the Suns are at .505, the Blazers are at .500, the Thunder are at .502 and the Mavericks are at .511.

In my team "scouting" after the jump, I will not include Phoenix because they have a higher chance of getting home-court advantage in the first round than falling to the 6th/7th seed and playing us.

To the jump!

Continue reading this post »