Thursday, January 11, 2007

Big Breaking News Concerning the Small

(Boulder-CO) Marc Stein is reporting for www.ESPN.com that Earl Boykins and Julius Hodge are being shipped to Milwaukee for former Maryland Terp Steve Blake. I am not going to steal Stein’s thunder and give you all the details surrounding the trade, but I will say that the writing has been on the wall for all the Nuggets faithful to read and a trade has finally happened.

Check out all the aforementioned details by clicking this link:

Blake is a pass-first guard that has been part of championship caliber teams in the past with the University of Maryland. The 6’3” 170lb guard has career averages six points, three assists, and 1.7 rebounds. His overall numbers on the season have slipped a touch below his career averages, but so have his minutes per game.

The Nuggets needed to move some players to accommodate the salary-cap nightmare looming in the future and the odd man out unfortunately was Earl “The Mightiest Micro” Boykins. Best of luck to Earl in the future with the Bucks as it has been exciting to witness his skills with the Nuggets.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I didn't expect anything to happen that quickly -- I would've guessed that an Earl trade would've happened after 'Melo gets back when we don't need the extra scoring he provides. Umm, so I don't know anything about Blake at all really -- can he hit threes? That's my only reservation about losing Earl... we are really bad at shooting threes.

But oh well, I'll miss having him make jaw-dropping layups in traffic and the general novelty of a guy that small scoring at such a high level. But this sounds like it will be a good move for us, and it adds some versatility that we lost due to having Earl and AI on the same team. I kinda wanted to see what Julius developed into, as he's shown some smart basketball and good passing ability, but I guess it's not to be. Hopefully Earl and Julius have some success with the Bucks.

We lost one of our fan favorites, but I do think it's for the better... though I don't really like the timing of the move.

Nugg Doctor said...

Stumble,

Blake is a career 37.7% from downtown. Not bad, not great.

Thanks for reading,

The Nugg Doctor

Anonymous said...

I see whats in future for the Nuggets, trading our good players with big contracts, for a bunch of unprovens with low salary, Nothing against Steve, I have not seen him play but with the way earl has been playing.

Blake does and height to our back court.

Anonymous said...

That's why I don't like the timing -- Earl's value is probably at an all-time high right now (which is why they made the move, though I don't think the Nugs really got equal value back), but that's because he's been providing scoring to an otherwise flat team. Unless JR gets his game back immediately, we're losing our only other consistent offensive player not named Allen until Melo gets back.

This is definitely a forward-looking move by the Nuggets, trying to get some cap space, looking at future needs (a pass-first PG), and sacrificing short-term gains for long-term benefit. I'm just concerned that making this move right now was a bad idea because we'll probably drop most of these games until Melo gets back and the playoff race is really tight. We're clinging onto the 8th spot as it stands now, and Minnesota's been looking a lot better recently. So we have to hope for a big run at the end of the year when Melo is back, or we might be on the outside looking in come playoff time.

I dunno, hopefully I'm wrong and we'll win the next few games, but I have one of those gut feeling that this timing might bite us in the ass later.

Unknown said...

Those of you that just look at this trade merely from the standpoint of player personnel might scratch your heads. Earl Boykins and Julius Hodge for Steve Blake? It doesn't seem like equal value.

But...when you truly look at what Denver did by completing this trade, it makes plenty of sense.

From a financial perspective:
Denver in one move guaranteed to not pay the luxury tax this season, as the trade exception they received from Milwaukee does not count towards the cap. They save the amount of money they needed to get underneath the luxury tax. So from a financial perspective, it was a very good move.

From a personnel perspective:
1. Guaranteed that we do not lose Boykins in the offseason (when he ops out of his contract) for nothing.
2. Not to be overlooked, we now have a 2.5 million dollar trade exception, that expires one year from today. That is a nice pawn to have in your back pocket for potential off-season moves (or even in-season trades).

From a basketball perspective:
We now finally have a pass first Point Guard. There was a major reason Denver was trying to acquire AI without giving up Andre Miller. The reason being is that both AI and Earl Boykins are shoot first Point Guards - Earl to an even more extreme degree. We simply had to have a point guard that can just come in and distribute to all the scorers on this team, and not whine about it. Steve Blake will remind no one of a great player, but is maybe a poor mans version of Luke Ridnour. He can hit the 3 pointer with fairly good consistency and can just manage a game.

So to summarize, this move was a great trade not because of who we got, but because of who we lost! In other words, with the team assembled how it is, Boykins does not fit this team. Blake does, and in the meantime, the team saves money.

Great trade by a great front office!!