Big Phil Fired by Chelsea

Wow. What can one say about this. You can win the world cup. Come very close to winning the European Cup. But, in England if you aren't in first place after 6 months you can't coach.

Chelsea does not seem to be setting itself up for long team success. They have no players coming through their youth system. No purchases of promising young players. When the owner runs out of money, they are gonna be in trouble.

ARod Steroids

ARod tested positive for a forbidden substance in 2003. I'm shocked, shocked to learn a baseball player may have taken 'roids! He took an anonymous test and at the time broke no rules. For all we know, he could have tested positive for ephedrine or something silly like that.

Anyway, the media hype over this has been ridiculous. To listen to sports talk radio, no player from the '90s will even be considered for the Hall of Fame. They are all tainted. I think we need to start drug testing sports writers. If they have taken any illegal substances, they can't be hall of fame voters. :)

AI for Chancey Billups and Antonio McDyess

The Rocky Mountain News is reporting the Nuggets are looking to trade Allen Iverson to Detroit for Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess. Initial reaction. This would be a great trade for the Nuggets. They get a real point guard and a solid backup at the 4 for KMart which is needed given his history of injuries.

The Numbers
AI is making $20M in the last year of his contract. McDyess will make $6.9M this year and $7.5M next year. Billups will make $12M for this year and the next two years. Salary cap wise, the Nuggets would still be a little tight the next 2 years if the deal goes through.

I still think AI is great. But I don't think you can win in the NBA with a 6 foot tall 2 guard unless you have a large point guard to match him with. The Pistons have such a person. Rodney Stucky is a 6'5" point guard. The Nuggets have no such player.

The Nuggets really, really need someone who can run the team. The last 5 minutes vs the Lakers made that painfully obvious. In addition, this would allow the Nuggets to move Balkman or Dantay Jones into the starting lineup to guard the 2 or 3 from the opposing team. JR and Klieza would score off the bench and have a little help from McDyess.

It works for me.
Update
Sounds like its a done deal. Also, Stephen A Smith is reporting that the Nuggets plan to waive McDyess after the deal is complete.

Weekend Update 11/02/2008

Well two games in the books this weekend against LA teams. One game shows how good the Nuggets can be, the other how bad.

The good was against the Clippers. The Nuggets played a swarming defense, shared the ball and pretty much owned the second half as they came back from a big halftime deficit to win. It was a real team effort with special kudos to Dantay Jones who had a great game. If they play this kind of team ball all year, they are gonna win a lot of games.

The bad, the final minutes vs the LA Lakers. I tuned into the game in the late 3rd quarter and the Nuggets were keeping a steady lead. As it got to crunch time the Lakers went to Kobe Bryant. He played good but the Nuggets did get a few good stops along the way.

However, the problem was not their defense, it was their offense. The same old 1 on 5 isolation crap from last year. Throw Mello the ball, run to the opposite side of the court and stand there. Mello takes on 2 or 3 guys, then the ball is passed around the perimeter and a desparation 3 goes up late in the shot clock. When are they gonna learn? As the game wore on, Kobe settled for fewer and fewer jumpers and took the ball to the hole. Did the Nuggets go inside to Mello? To Nene? Nope. Just long difficult outside jumpers. Totally different than the Clipper game.

A New Season and the Trade

Well the new season quickly approaches and I have not posted in a long time.

The Camby Trade

From a team happiness perspective, I think this will help a lot. Not that Camby is a bad guy or anything like that. No, things should be better because of clearly defined roles. Nene is the starting center and KMart is the starting PF. No more time sharing, no more discussions about which of the three should be the starter. Both will get all the minutes they want. The team should also be much better defensively. Camby is a great weakside defender, but always seemed to struggle when he had to guard good big men like Tim Duncan or Amare Stoudemire.

The only potential problem is Nene and KMart have not had the best health records in the league.

Why didn't the Nuggets get anything in Return?

It is a misconception that the Nuggets didn't get anything for Camby. They did not get a player back in the trade, they got a $10M salary cap exception. What does that mean you may ask? It means that if the Nuggets were to trade say .... Allen Iversion who is making $20M this season, they would only take $10M in salary coming back to the Nuggets. The net result is, if the Nuggets trade Iverson in addition to Camby, they will drop $20m from their salary cap for the season. This should give them cap room to sign Klieza and JR Smith next year.

Iverson's departure would seem inevitable to me. That is sad because the guy plays his heart out every night. And there is a lot to like about the guy. But if you are building the team around Mello, a 6' scoring point guard does not fit. They need a good play making point with an outside shot.

Spurs v Suns

As the Spurs and Sun are about to play their second game, I wanted to say something about the first game. That was one of the best played basketball games I have seen in a log time. Back and forth with the Champs making the Suns take the title from them.
It was just a joy to watch the game offensively and defensively.

In my opinion, the winner of this series will me the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. I'll take the Spurs or Suns to make it to the finals if there aren't any major injuries.