sink or swim: the Nuggets story

by now anyone who has accidentally come to this site knows that denver had 2 big news that happened a day apart: melo (& JR smith) getting suspended for getting into a fight and - the bigger news - AI being traded to denver. the first item seemed to trigger the second one even quicker.

for those who still not on the know, nuggets were blowing out the knicks in NY and there was a late game hard foul that got JR heated. lil' 50 cents (nate robinson) threw extra fuel in the fire and escalated the whole situation. melo got involved and slapped mardy collins (the rookie who fouled JR) hard. from far away it looked like melo landed a right hook to his face, then he proceeded to backpedal away while other knicks went after him (jared jefferies and nate). finally things came under control.

melo should never had put himself in that situation, no matter how heated he was. he was having his best season, leading the league in scoring and was basically branded as the best player on Team USA this summer. this act tarnished his hard-earned rep, again. in the post detroit-brawl era (this NY/nuggets thing wasn't a fight. it was simply a lot of motion, and melo was the only one who connected anything), there's zero tolerance for any sort of commotion. there were plenty of fights before in NBA (larry bird and dr. J choked each other! barkley took on shaq) and none of them receive a 15 game suspension for one single hit. it's ridiculous. it's true there's an "image problem" with the nba, but that's all perception. fights break out in hockey (yes it's part of the game), baseball, and football. so i'm pretty sick of this double standard.

anyway i hope melo still makes the all star team in vegas. this should be his time, instead he got derailed by this crap.

and since nuggets just lost the leading scorer of the NBA, they decided it's in the best interest for them to replace him with the second leading scorer in iverson. i really don't quite know how melo and AI can coexist together, since both are scorers and need the ball in their hands to be effective. their games don't compliment each other. but i guess it's all done now and we'll see what happens with them.

well AI should be debuting in the powder blue uni tonight in denver. a new era of basketball begins.