That was my first thought when I saw they were giving away Marcus Camby for a two liter of Sierra Mist. But then I realized that they're shedding contracts to either get under the salary cap or the luxury tax threshold. Right now the Nuggets management has finally figured out that their overpaid, badly constructed roster was only good for a lower seed in the playoffs and a four to five game exit. Wow...it only took how many years to get that? They've made the playoffs for five straight years, but have won exactly four playoff games over that period. During that time they gave Kenyon Martin $91 million for seven years only to watch miss time with injuries damn near every season and play like some garbage when he's actually there. They've given $60 million to Nene for reasons no can understand, and traded for Allen Iverson, who solved none of their problems and only added more. When you're already a bad defensive team, throwing a guy into the mix who's also a bad defender usually isn't a good idea.
What exactly am I getting at here? The Nuggets are a major example of how to screw a team up royally. If you back to 2003, right after they drafted Carmelo Anthony, they had the foundation in place to be better; in addition to Melo, they had Andre Miller, Marcus Camby, and some other disposable parts. That was good enough to get into the playoffs as an eight seed, so all they needed to do was add the right pieces to move up. Instead, they blew $91 million on Martin, who anyone that paid attention could see was a Jason Kidd creation more than anything else. Then when that didn't make them any better, they did the Iverson trade. And then they shelled out $60 million to keep Nene, with the hopes that he was about to turn into what they'd hoped to get from Martin. Now they're in salary dump mode with no real end in sight. Iverson will likely be dealt next, since his contract runs out this year, but they'll be stuck with Nene and Martin's awful contract for at least another year or two.
If you want to understand how NBA management often works, all you have to do is look at this: James Posey, who's been an integral part of two championship teams, just got $25 million from New Orleans while Nene and Martin will have gotten over $150 million combined. Yikes.
The Nuggets are going to give up 150 points a night