Free Ballin’

I’m an optimist.  When I was six and the Princess in Voltron dove into the pool and her top surfaced before she did, I was fairly confident that something wonderful was about to happen, network television or not.  I’m even confident that there are women somewhere in the world (somewhere) who might be a little turned on by the previous sentence—in a way that’s OK.  But I cannot conceive of a scenario in which the ’09-’10 Denver Nuggets make a believer out of me.  I haven’t had any faith in the organization since they traded three first-round picks for the privilege of paying Kenyon Martin a max contract.  It took me all of two games watching the Carmelo/Iverson duo to part with any faith in that pair, and I didn’t last season, even after they acquired Chauncey Billups and began to play with a modicum of control.  In the playoffs, up 15 in the fourth quarter against Dallas, despite shooting under 30% from three, I still thought the Mavericks were a fair bet for a comeback.

I just can’t believe in anything that Denver does.  Year after year, regardless of the composition of their roster, they’re the same team; they’ll play well enough to convince themselves and some others that they can make noise in the playoffs.  But they can’t, and they don’t.  This is like their fifth or sixth date now, and they still haven’t even copped a feel.  Me, I need to know what’s what by the end of the second date, or I’m likely to blow up the roster and rebuild around my franchise player (that’s me).  I mean, you can work the trade market, or try to spend your way to the promised land (if you have the cap space), but if the foundation isn’t there, free agency is more likely to give you VD than a championship banner.

Moves like the (swiftly aging) Billups acquisition, picking J.R. Smith off the clearance rack, Linas Kleiza from the end of the first round of the draft, Nene from Sloan Ket… (Umm, can you  make cancer jokes once a guy is totally healthy and finally playing up to his contract?  Yes?  No?  I’ll go with no).  Whatever, these are nips and tucks, injections, the occasional facelift.  But basketball is a top-down business: what happens on the floor is a near-perfect distillation of the organization.  They’ve made some good moves, but too many bad moves, they’re riding a coach whose defensive mastermind/player’s coach reputation was refuted two teams ago.  And their franchise player, Carmelo Anthony, is a star who’s jab-stepped at greatness, but never taken the plunge—it’s been seven years now.

I tell you, if the Nuggets were to win the championship this year (impossible) and I were in Denver to watch the parade, I would probably still stand there in the crowd arms crossed saying, “I don’t believe in this team.  I just don’t see it happening.”  Maybe I’d only be thinking it, though, since I wouldn’t want to offend any pretty Nuggets fans in the mood for like.  But the scenario is only barely conceivable because of my wild imagination; it’s all but implausible.  The Nuggets are not contenders.  They are currently off to the best start at home they’ve ever had.  It’s chimerical, smoke and mirrors.  Talk to me when Kenyon Martin makes the veteran’s minimum.