Denver Acquires Aaron Brooks, Trades Andre Miller To Wizards

The Nuggets just got a dose of penicillin.

With the type of ailments besieging our basketball community, sometimes you can't keep icing and patching up problems.  At times you need a cure and the Nuggets may have just traded for one.

Aaron Brooks gives Nuggets fan new hope.

Sending Jordan Hamilton to the Houston Rockets to give them some added size and shooting, the Nuggets will in turn acquire Aaron Brooks.  When the Jeremy Lin craze that began in New York ended up with a big time contract in Houston, Brooks was unexpectedly placed on the sideline.  Money talks, and despite the fact that Lin is hardly any better than Brooks, he was an unknown commodity that Houston took a financial risk on.  That risk forced Lin to the floor and Brooks to the bench.

The later acquisition of James Harden snatched the ball out of the hands of Lin as well who struggles to be the point guard on a team in which Harden dominates the ball.  Brooks ha shown glimpses of All-star potential over his career (19.6 pts per game in 2010), and is an above average, pick and roll, short shot jump shooter, which has been my biggest beef against every player on this team (and of the current generation of players).  Brooks has the potential to make us question Ty Lawson who is much more skilled than Brooks, but much less confident than Brooks is as a player.

Brooks will be able to play both a fast paced style, as well as a half court approach which is quickly showing itself as part of the hybrid identity of this team and its coach.  The only real question is whether or not Brooks can help Denver make a run at the playoffs.  Their schedule says yes as the worst is mostly over for this season.  The quality of western conference competition will have something to say in the end, but a Nugget team running proper sets and defending as they can, has shown signs of something intriguing.



In a side note, Andre Miller will be making a final attempt to resurrect his soiled image in Washington with the Wizards.  In the three-team trade, the Nuggets got 6-foot-11 forward Jan Vesely and Philadelphia received guard Eric Maynor and draft picks.

Suns Turn Out The Lights In Overtime. Nuggets Fans Looking For New Light

Will the Nuggets do something?

Hopefully they will continue to do more of what we saw last night against the Phoenix Suns, minus the losing  in overtime part.  Losing to a team that is 10 games over .500 and solidly in the playoff race is no shame. The shame came from those 4 games we watched prior to the All-Star break.

The Nuggets are in a really precarious position as they approach the trade deadline.  They basically have the makings of a trade package sitting in the training room.  Danilo Galinari, Javale McGhee, Nate Robinson, Ty Lawson create 4 of a solid starting 5.  What all of the Nuggets create is questions of their capacity for growth versus their capacity for trade value.

What is the full upside for this entire team and will we have the patience to be the team that helps it happen or trades and watches from afar? In case we didn't already know, recent evidence has declared that Ty Lawson is an extremely important player for this Nuggets team. With that being said, I believe the children are the future. Choose them well and let them lead the way.

We have a couple of them in house already in Evan Fournier and Quincy Miller, but the prospects for attaining more has created a special dynamic in this years NBA trade market.  There will be plenty of  kids coming out of college next year, which has the entire league seeking to get their hands on what might very well become an historical draft class.

This new Nuggets coaching staff has to analyze this new Nuggets roster in order to separate the old Nuggets that we already know from the new Nuggets that we are not so sure about.  This process is not one that involves keeping a strong grip on victories throughout the season, so you have to determine if losing is worth the cost of growth.  Losing is costly, but Nugget's fans are smart enough to recognize losing teams from losing players.  We can watch losing, but won't stand for losers.

Brian Shaw may be green, but he is a winner even if the George Karl fans would rather see more W's from this years team.  What fans are not so sure of is whether or not our new front office team has uncovered enough winners to jump on this journey of change.  Plenty of fans will join the ride when this journey gets airborne, but only the true fans will endure a long and slow train ride to the airport.

By the end of business tomorrow (10 p.m. Mountain time) we will know one way or another if the Nuggets will do something.  I haven't yet figured out if doing nothing will mean more than doing something, but at least the real analysis can begin when the deadline has passed.

Ty Lawson Is Down. Are The Denver Nuggets Out?

Change.  Makes you wanna hustle.

Lyrics from an old Donald Byrd jam that I thought about when the Nuggets watched Ty Lawson walk to the locker room stooped over at the waist.  One of the greatest challenges of coaching is balancing winning with growing, realizing the necessity for a fair balance of both.

Ty may be down for a while now with a cracked rib.  Some of the damage might be a by-product of the players own ignorance and the coaches uncertainty of how to handle it.  Brian Shaw is a good coach but a great guy.  He could stand to be a little more bad.

When the season began, he played almost everybody in an effort to get to know his players.  They lost with it that approach and then they won with it.  When they started to lose again because players (Andre Miller) complained of inconsistent minutes, he tightened the roster and let key guys play key minutes like key guys do on great teams.  The problem with that idea is that he is now asking Ty "I need to eat better this year" Lawson to make his body do things that he is not disciplined to accomplish with success.

Kevin Durant is only partly Kevin Durant because God blessed him with the talent to be Kevin Durant.  If Kevin Durant only worked as hard on his game and his body as Ty Lawson does he would be Rudy Gay.  Legends are who they are because they match legendary ability with world class work ethic.  The Denver Nuggets try with Ty, but it is clear that they do not have the leader in Lawson to demand excellence of others.

A few years ago, Jeremy Lin launched his way unto the scene when a flailing New York Knicks team pushed him into the line up.  Lin had nothing to lose and everything to gain. For the Nuggets, a window has opened for a two headed monster (Fournier and Miller) to emerge in the Nugget back court.

Randy Foye has stepped up a couple of times in the pinch to ease the pain of losing Lawson, but his shooting is sorely sacrificed when he plays point.  Evan Fournier has shown the capacity to do the job, but he gets inside of his own head at times.  The Magic Johnson alternative to this problem is proving to be Quincy Miller.  Miller can push the rock, create off of the dribble and knock down the 3 if you lose him in the shuffle.  He plays the way Fournier used to play before he realized that his services are so vitally needed.  Together, the window to their growth and our future may have just opened wide.

Shaw will also need to alter the short bench experiment because he is insisting on a style of defense that demands an altered line up from night to night.  Injuries have already forced his hand, but guys like Anthony Randolph and Jordan Hamilton, who have had to cool their heels could stand to get those extra minutes right now as Denver continues the 4 game road trip tonight playing game 3 of 4 against the Indiana Pacers.

This will be an ugly affair if the Nuggets do not come out with the kind of energy that Indiana plays with.  It could get ugly if they do bring energy, but without it, the Pacers will punish the Nuggets for the defeat they suffered in Denver a few weeks back.

Denver is quite the enigma right now.  The flashes of brilliance are so apparent that it makes them a hard team to blink at.  Stretches of crappy play makes them downright painful for an eyes wide open fan to witness. Conventional wisdom has said to give up on this team and on a run at the playoffs, but the fans and the players fight on. They have plenty of youth and talent to grow into a respectable team, but the injuries could cause the front office guys to get an itchy trigger finger.

The trade deadline is February 20th.  Between now and then, keep your ears towards the
Pepsi center and listen for a loud bang.