What I want you to do is think back, find all those feelings of anger and hate you’ve been harboring deep inside your heart ever since the Carmelo Anthony trade, and I want you to reignite them with a burning fervor.
This is the year we can finally complete our revenge. This is the year the Denver Nuggets come out on top.
In case you aren’t aware, the Nuggets have the right to swap picks with the New York Knicks on lottery night, a final gift from the Melo trade. This means that the single worst part about NBA basketball — tanking — has now been, as Nate Timmons so correctly stated on DenverStiffs.com, “outsourced” to the New York Knicks.
Nuggets fans have been granted an amazing opportunity. This season, when we come home, turn on the TV, grab a beer and watch this exciting, up-and-coming Nuggets roster run up and down the court in the thin Denver air, we will simultaneously be able to root for Melo and the Knicks to get crushed by 40 every night.
It’s the best of both worlds.
The Nuggets can hold out hope of sneaking into playoff contention while still believing they have a shot at a top-five selection in the NBA Draft.
But the best part of all of this is the fact that it is the New York Knicks. It is Carmelo Anthony. If we were swapping picks with the Detroit Pistons, this wouldn’t be nearly as fun. But given that I, as I expect many of you do, already spend my free time booing the Knicks from my living room, I can’t imagine a more enjoyable team to spend a season rooting against.
Now, I can’t promise that the Knicks are going to be a bottom-five team in the NBA any more than I can promise the Nuggets will be in playoff contention, but that’s not the point. As fans, there are two things we need going into any season: hope and something worth rooting for (or against). With this pick swap, Denver has that and more.
We are now t-minus seven days away from the start of NBA season. Get excited.
