Denver is resting three starters against their wishes in order to lose a game, basically
The Denver Nuggets are enjoying one of their better stretches of the season, winning six of eight games since interim head coach Melvin Hunt took over for the dismissed Brian Shaw. The team did well to play spoiler in a win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday night, downing the playoff hopeful in two overtime periods. Its three core starters – Ty Lawson, Kenneth Faried, and Danilo Gallinari – are all presumably healthy and they would like to play on Monday night against a struggling Memphis Grizzlies squad. Because he would like to win the ball game, Melvin Hunt would also like to play that triptych of players.
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Those players will not play on Monday night, however. Via Pro Basketball Talk:
This is a clear edict from the team’s front office. Whether or not this is tanking is up to your definition of the term – the remaining Nuggets will likely plays as hard as they can against Memphis while attempting to win, but the Denver front office is making it very hard for the Denver Nuggets to win the team’s basketball game on Monday evening.
The Nuggets are currently 11.5 games out of the playoff bracket in the Western Conference, and in spite of the recent upturn the squad is still working with the eighth-worst record in the NBA currently. The team more or less punted away its season with a 2-19 stretch through the middle of the 2014-15, one that doomed Shaw’s tenure in Denver. This group, in bad need of a superstar, has no real motivation to want to continue piling up wins.
Thus, the benchings. It’s quite possible that Lawson, Faried, and Gallinari are just as tired as the starters (plus one) in Golden State that sat out their contest against these same (well, mostly) Nuggets on Friday evening, but each member of this triptych reportedly wants to play.
For good reason. Lawson’s season has been marred with injury and off-court troubles. Faried had been working through a frustrating year prior to Shaw’s dismissal, and until only recently Gallinari had looked like a shell of his former self as he worked his way back from a 2013 ACL tear. All three have been playing exceedingly well throughout this stretch, however, and all three would apparently like to keep things going.
On top of that, the interim coach (a man looking to stake his claim as a head man after years of being regarded as a top-flight assistant) is fighting for a gig. No matter, says the front office, as the next batch of Nuggets games are on the road, the punters in Colorado won’t be cheated out of a game, and nobody is driving from two states over to see Ty Lawson play in Memphis in the meantime.
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This is, sadly, the right move for the Nuggets. They don’t need wins, they need to move up in the NBA’s draft lottery to grab a star, and while Faried could use the reps oft-gimpy types like Lawson and Gallinari should be looking out for their dodgy ankles and knees.
This is where the NBA is at in 2015. And if you think the league badly needs to do something about this, understand that most Nuggets fans (in looking to improve lottery odds) will probably back the front office’s decision.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
