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.

After all, there’s no financial risk, and if at some point they change their minds and decide that Iverson is messing up their…well, that’s it, what do they have to mess up, really?  Philly’s season is almost screwed.  Teams that start the season 4–15 do not make the playoffs unless they only sucked because their big time superstar was out injured and comes back 100%.  Well, the 76ers don’t have any superstar to come back from injury, so they’ve hired a former superstar and hope he still has it.

I’m talking myself into this.

Iverson’s a tough fit on almost any team, but the Princeton offense doesn’t really require a point guard, just someone to bring the ball up the floor.  After that, it’s all about passing and off-the-ball movement.  Well, AI’s game has been all about ball monopoly for several years, but once upon a time, Larry Brown had Iverson moving around screens as well as Reggie Miller ever did.  And although AI shoots a ton, I never thought it was selfish; it’s just how he knows to play.  Furthermore, though he’s not a drive and kick guy, and it’s kind of hard for me to remember him ever catching a pass and then immediately passing to someone else, he’s always been a nifty interior passer on the way to the hoop.  And now instead of having George Lynch and Dikembe Mutombo to pass to, he can dish off to Elton Brand near the basket and a bunch of high-fliers who can get at the rim pretty quickly.  (Yes, I know he had Carmelo, J.R. Smith, and some other jumpers in Denver, but it was more of an every man for himself, offense.)

The one other angle I’m considering is Bill Simmons’ whole Elton Brand is a “second banana” thing.  I’ve never really given much thought about the wolf pack mentality on teams the way Simmons does, but maybe he’s right; maybe it’s really important for a team to have an alpha dog.  Lou Williams being out for two months definitely decreased the talent level in Philly, but it’s not like he was top dog, team leader; he’s a young guy figuring out his way like the rest of their roster.  Elton Brand can’t play that role if he can’t bring it on the floor.  And either way I get the impression that neither he, nor Andre Iguodala have the personality for it anyway.  Maybe that’s what the 76ers have missed most from Andre Miller, a guy whose moxie was as important (or more so) than his talents.  I don’t know if I’d ever call AI a leader, but he sure as hell has moxie, and plays with a fervor that borders on desperation: like he needs the ball to go in.  Maybe he flexes superior, throws his body at the defenders, and the rest of the team falls into place behind him

OK, yeah, I’ve just about talked myself into it, that the AI signing is the right way to go.  I needed a third favorite-team-to-watch this year, anyway.  Now, when the Rockets aren’t on, I can flip back and forth between Oklahoma City and Philly games.  Starting Monday.

“T.J. Ford is a lock to lead the league in assists once he gets his minutes in Indiana!”

“Mike Dunleavy’s first good season totally wasn’t a fluke!”

Hell, the Pacers don’t even have enough talent to take that joke into the fourth round of a made up draft of a made up fantasy league.  Brandon Rush is going to be a good rotation player.  Some people think Roy Hibbert is hot stuff, but I haven’t seen enough him (didn’t get much run in the games I saw,) to have an opinion.  Almost everyone else on the team hurts them either by sucking or by being overpaid.

Chicago: NBA stars consistently take the ball into the paint and finish or they shoot the lights out.  There are the rare exceptions, but for the most part, if a guy can’t do one of those two things, he’s not going to be a star.  Can you see Tyrus Thomas developing a highly effective post game?  Or a good-enough handle to penetrate from the perimeter?  Can you see him becoming a great shooter?  Neither can I.  He’s not going to be a star, no matter how young he is or how high he jumps.  His upside is as a third option on a good team.  Fortunately for the Bulls, Derrick Rose is a star, and Luol Deng is a fairly good second option, and John Salmons is a high-quality third option.

I didn’t like the Bulls last year; I like them this year.  Last year they had only three players who could regularly create their own scoring opportunities: Rose, Ben Gordon, and Salmons.  And of those three, only Rose even tried to pass the ball.  Ben Gordon is a good player, sort of, kind of, but he was a bad fit.  Spreading his 16 shots around the roster will help Deng get his mojo back and might help Thomas find his bearings.

Milwaukee: Signing Michael Redd in 2005 was sentimental.  They should have let Cleveland sign him to play with LeBron.  Instead, they took a course that made it virtually impossible to build a contender during the length of his contract.  I wrote “virtually impossible” because a miracle (hitting the lotto jackpot) gave them a shot to making it work and they screwed that up, too.  Almost every move they’ve made since signing Redd has been awful.  Not bad, awful.

Oh yes, but they did draft that Brandon Jennings character.  I saw him tonight for the first time, facing Dallas.  My take?  He was totally out of control half the time and clearly barely knows what he’s doing out there; and he was still one of the best players on the floor.  I wouldn’t bet against him.

Unfortunately, Jennings was an obvious choice in the 10^th spot for a team with garbage pointguards.  So it’s not like choosing Jennings was a coup, or an indication that the Bucks are going to do smart things, going forward.  However, I did like Ilyasova, tonight.  And I love signing young players to small multi-year contracts ($7M over 3 years.)  Who knows?  History says it’s a fluke smart move.  We’ll see.

Cleveland: They will win the Central Division and in the playoffs they will beat anyone but Boston or Orlando in 5 games or less.  Is this news to anyone?  Maybe it is.  It was pretty absurd hearing all of the commentary on problems in Cleveland in the first week of the season.  I liked and still like the Shaq move.  He makes around 60% of his shots.  Isn’t that a nice addition to a team that has the best scorer in the game and no one else who can be counted on, game in and game out, to put points on the board?  What Shaq can’t do is practically irrelevant; nearing his 38^th birthday, he’s still one of the most dominant post scorer’s in the game.  Fouls are the one concern with Shaq, but mostly it’s just a question of whether he’ll be a force for 30 minutes a game, or only 20 minutes a game.

Detroit: I don’t think Joe Dumars is somehow less smart than he used to be; I think he’s having a midlife crisis.  I didn’t immediately hate the Billups/Iverson trade like so many others did; I thought it was weird and risky, but not insane.  It didn’t pan out, but he got a ton of salary cap space to reinvent the Pistons.  And he did, spending almost 30% of Detroit’s cap space on two players (Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva) who don’t rebound, defend much, or pass.  That they can’t/won’t pass the ball is particularly problematic, since Rodney Stuckey doesn’t do it either, and Richard Hamilton’s effectiveness is almost entirely dependent on ball movement.  I see this team looking a lot like Denver did with  Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, J.R. Smith, and Linas Kleiza—but less talented.  And when it didn’t pan out for Denver, they still had Anthony to build around.  When this Detroit squad doesn’t work, what are they going to do?