Kenyon Martin may still be a Nugget next season, which is actually good news. The Nuggets apparently shopped him around all summer, but there were no takers for his bad knee and bad contract. Recently, it seemed as though the only options for a Martin trade were to the Knicks for Francis, which I don't think would have made anyone happy.
According to today's Rocky Mountain News, George Karl indicated that Martin would be with the team next season, and that he would attempt to work things out with him.
The Nuggets are currently only $3 million under the luxury-tax line right now, and do not want to go over. But several names keep coming up.
The Nuggets are rumored to be interested in the following players: Bonzi Wells, Al Harrington, and Keith Van Horn. To this, I can only say NO!, yeah right, and maybe.
Wells shot a sizzling 22% from 3 last year, which would make him yet another poor-shooting shooting guard. Why is our name coming up here? Wells brings nothing to the table that we need. And he was #7 on GQ magazine's Ten Most Hated Athletes list. Here's what they said:
"Not yet 30 years old, Bonzi Wells, shooting guard for the Sacramento Kings, has played for three NBA teams. “If you’ve got that much ability and you’re traded three times that early in your career,” says ex-NBA player and current ESPN commentator Tom Tolbert, “there’s obviously something wrong with you.”
Words like fumigate come up when people try to explain why GMs trade him. “It doesn’t bother him if his unhappiness infects the entire team,” says Memphis sportswriter Geoff Calkins, who recalls that when Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown was contemplating retirement (citing health reasons), “part of the calculus for Hubie was ‘It’s not worth it,’ and a big part of that was Bonzi. He helped bring Hubie down.”
When Brown’s successor, Mike Fratello, pulled Wells from a game at the end of last season, Bonzi threw a tantrum involving, characteristically, both profanity and projectiles. “This was in the final weeks of the season,” says Ron Higgins, another Memphis sportswriter, “when the Grizzlies were desperately trying to make the playoffs. Other players looked at him like, What the hell are you doing?”
Recalls sportswriter Jason Quick, who covered Bonzi in Portland: “He would flip off a fan and the next day say, ‘I blacked out.’ He’s such a con man. When the TV lights went on, he’d put on that million-dollar smile, then be an ass when they left.” He spat, infamously, on Danny Ferry. He bitched constantly at his coaches. He was fined for bad-mouthing his own fans in Sports Illustrated. He made a veiled threat after a reporter wrote a negative story about him. “He told me, ‘Don’t be surprised one day if you show up to practice with a steak over your eye,’ ” Quick remembers. “And I said, ‘If you want to do that, I’ll be a rich man.’ He said, ‘I’m not dumb enough to do it myself. I’ll have my posse do it.’ ”
Awesome.
Al Harrington is a stud, but we won't get him and this is just another example of the Nuggets getting thrown into trade discussions for no decent reason. We should focus on Reggie Evans, who despite being a nut-grabber, is actually pretty solid. Evans is waiting on the Nuggets, who are trying to figure out how to use their mid-level exception and how to stay under the luxury tax. According to the Akron Beacon-Journal, the Cleveland Cavs met with Evans yesterday.
Van Horn is a player I never really liked. But Karl seems to think he can bring something to the Nuggets, which is a big man who can shoot from the perimeter. This would be great for the Nuggets because it would draw a big defender out of the lane and allow Melo to use his post game more easily down low. He did shoot a solid 37% from 3 last season, so it sounds like this would work. He made something ridiculous like $15 million last year though, so the Nuggets would have to work something out. But I think this is a good thing. If we can work it out, then we should do it.
If my calculations are correct, here is what the Nuggets would look like if we signed Van Horn, didn't sign Evans, and didn't sign DerMarr (who brings nothing to the table). I wish we could sign Casey Jacobsen, but it doesn't look like we have room for him. Unless we got rid of someone....coughbhackhack rubenpatterson coughhackhack....
PG: Andre Miller
SG: J.R. Smith
SF: Melo
PF: K-Mart
C: Camby
Bench:
PG Earl Boykins
G/F Yakhouba Diawara
G Julius Hodge
G/F Ruben Patterson
F Linas Kleiza
F Eduardo Najera
F Keith Van Horn
F/C Nenê
F/C Jamal Sampson
This team would have everything the Nuggets need.
I came across this article about Dajuan Wagner today in the Philadelphia Daily News. I've been wondering what happened to him ever since I wrote about the 2002 NBA draft. The Cavs picked him 6th overall, and he showed signs of his potential before he was overcome with this strange illness that forced him out of the league.
