(Boulder-CO) The third worst decision made on draft day by the Denver Nuggets in the last ten years has got to be selecting Tony “El Busto” Battie with the fifth overall selection in the 1997 NBA Draft. The reasons why this move ranks so high are Tony’s lack of impact, the player the Nuggets overlooked in that same draft, and the extremely short stay Battie had with the Nuggets. While with the Nuggets, Battie didn’t wow anyone with his averages of 8.4 points and 5.4 rebounds. Even worse was how Battie and crew were doing their best to lose 71 games that season. Honestly, being a Nuggets fan sometimes means taking a lot of crap from other NBA fans league wide, but even I hated watching Battie and the rest of the squad at this point in Nuggets’ history.
After that total abomination of an attempt to put a competitive team on the floor the Nuggets quickly shipped El Busto to Boston in return for the rights to Nick Van Exel via a three team deal that sent the rights to Tyronn Lue to the Los Angeles Lakers. The bright side of this whole debacle is that Battie only spent one season with the Nuggets and has since become a NBA journeymen going on his fourth team in ten years.
What makes this choice even worse is the player that the Toronto Raptors ended up with at the 9th pick in that same year. Tracy McGrady has since led the league in scoring twice and has been a perennial All-Star with the Raptors, Magic, and the Rockets. He and cousin Vince Carter, also a player the Nuggets could have drafted, started out as one of the most dynamic duos in the NBA and remain two of the most exciting players in the NBA today.
Oh, what could have been!?!?
1 comment:
Big ups on referencing the El Busto comment. Remember how that came about?
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