Reid Fischer's World of Rants

Wow, what a bang up offseason so far for the Nuggets!  Not only have they done nothing to make the team better, they’ve actually gotten worse.  Last night at dinner I wasn’t sure I was seeing things correctly and was briefly wondering if I shouldn’t visit the eye doctor when I glanced at the TV on the other side of the restaurant.  Was that a headshot of Marcus Camby with the Clippers logo behind it?  Couldn’t have been, he’s not a free agent.  Before the idea of Camby as a Clipper sunk in, I saw the next graphic showing details of a trade: Clippers get Marcus Camby.  Nuggets get a second round pick in 2010.  What???  Not only that, but later i find the Nuggets simply got the rights to swap second round picks with the Clippers in 2010, they didn’t even get an extra pick!  This after the team already lost Eduardo Najera to New Jersey in free agency. 

So let me get this straight: a team that has been awful on defense gave away its one consistent good defender in Camby for essentially nothing.  They have also lost one of the few players on the team in Najera that consistently hustled and provided energy on the court.  It is obvious the team made this deal purely for financial reasons to try and avoid paying the luxury tax.  I get why they wouldn’t want to pay that for the results they’ve been garnering, but it is appalling that there don’t appear to be plans (at least at this point) to try and make the team any better.  It appears as though they are throwing away the 2008-09 season in hopes of trying to clear cap room and reshape the team for the following year.  While perhaps a sound strategy in the long run, it still doesn’t make any sense to get NOTHING in exchange for Camby.  This is a team that already has not achieved, losing in the first round for five straight years.  Instead of trying to make the team better, the Nuggets are worse today than they were they day they lost their final playoff game to the Lakers in early May.  I suppose you could say (and unfortunately it’s not a joke) that the team defense can be just as bad without Camby in the middle as it was with him, but I shudder to think of just how bad it will be without Camby’s shot blocking ability covering up for the lazy effort of Anthony and Iverson on the defensive end. 

The Nuggets are fooling themselves if they think they are among the elite in the Western Conference.  With the improvements made by the Warriors and Clippers this offseason, plus the potential emergence of other young teams, the Nuggets are squarely so far behind the elite of the conference they can’t even see their taillights.  Perhaps they’re trying to ride out the last year of Iverson’s contract to try and clear cap room to make a run next offseason.  Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt and see if there is something coming this offseason I’m unaware of.  Based on the track record though, it certainly doesn’t seem likely that any improvement for the team is coming this offseason.  Between management’s lack of effort in the offseason and leftover fallout from the referee scandal, I am continuing to sour more and more on the NBA.  Point is, I’m not planning to waste money on tickets anytime soon.  If the team isn’t going to try to improve, why should I finance the product on the court?

Speaking of which the call I got this morning was very comical: It was from a representative of the Nuggets front office asking if I was interested in purchasing advance tickets for the coming season.  Seriously, you give away a key player for nothing while simultaneously making a call asking me to buy tickets????  You have got to be kidding me.  There is about as much chance of me buying tickets to see the Nuggets this winter as there is the team winning a playoff series.  That is to say a zero percent chance.  That is, unless something dramatic happens to where the team actually has a semblance of a chance of putting together a solid product on the court.