It’s been three days since the draft, but due in no small part to the project-Euro-center brain trauma the Nuggets inflicted on me, it took some time to process.  Thursday was a crazy, crazy day for Denver fans.  Before we evaluate the chaos of the day, we should preface with my feelings (and somewhat less important, the team’s needs) leading up to it.  Last year was a foregone conclusion.  We were going to suck, the only question was how much.  Coming off another Groundhog’s Day 50-win season & 1st round exit, we fired George Karl (thank god), lost that traitor Andre Iguodala, lost Gallo (lynchpin to our entire offense) for the full season, then signed that hobbit / defensive dynamo Nate Robinson.  We had as much of a shot at the playoffs as my rec-league team.  So with a loaded 2014 draft, I did the reprehensible, buried myself in high school YouTube mixtapes, and prayed we would tank.  As the logic goes, it’s MUCH better to completely bottom out than to be average and almost compete.  I went from watching damn near every game to simply checking box scores (in my defense – extremely difficult to watch Nuggs games on the West Coast with a job & a girlfriend).  In true Nuggets fashion, however, we played juuuust well enough to land the 11th seed.  In this draft though, that’s a pretty valuable pick – so hold that thought.

In the weeks leading up to the draft, word leaked that we’re trying to land Kevin Love – something I suggested we may try two weeks before it came out.

I was only slightly off. The offer was Chandler & Faried + Afflalo, who we’d somehow get in a trade.  I’d obviously rather find a way to keep Faried – like Chandler / Afflalo + the 11th, but screw it – a lineup of Ty, Shooting Guard X, Gallo, Love, Mozgov was pretty sexy. Championship? Come on.  But probably back to 50 wins, and fun to watch again. So on draft day, when we swung Afflalo for Fournier & a pick, then ESPN reported we’d been on the phone with Minnesota all day, I turned 50 shades of Nuggets blue.  Denver and new GM Tim Connelly wouldn’t stop wheeling and dealing the rest of the evening.  It was captivating stuff.  This brings us to our grades for the day – broken down by each move.

TRADE: EVAN FOURNIER + 2ND ROUND PICK (56TH) FOR ARRON AFFLALO

Grade: U (unfinished)

This grade is entirely dependent on the final outcome of our (most likely futile) Love pursuits.  If we complete the trade, then somehow pull off a miracle and convince Love to sign longterm? He gets one of those free As that North Carolina gave Rashad McCants.  More likely though, he stays, and the grade gets a little murkier.  You can’t just evaluate the player here. You have to look at need, position and long term implications.  The Nuggets were desperate for a shooting guard, which also happens to be the weakest position in the L.  No matter who you ask, Afflalo falls somewhere in the top 10 SGs in the NBA (and the top half of that list has a collective age of 1,000).  He’ll never be a superstar, but he’s consistent, actually plays defense, shoots 43% from range, and most importantly, isn’t Nate Robinson.  His deal also expires next year, so we’re essentially renting him for one season.  If it works out, great. If not, great guy to teach Gary Harris the breaks of the game.  He also gets bonus points for being homies with Kendrick Lamar, who used to be jealous of Arron Afflalo, he was the one to follow.  Now let’s watch him beat up on grandpa Kobe. #blackboyfly

11th PICK: DOUG MCDERMOTT

Grade: A-

Hell yeah, love it. Love it, love it, love it.  If the Spurs proved anything, it’s that you can never have enough shooters.  I wasn’t alone.

Seriously, look at that guy’s face above.  That was me.  No idea if McBuckets will pan out or not, but the fantasy of having a white dude raining fireballs all over the court was awesome.  Obviously, the Nuggets traded him.  Happy trails my sweet McBuckets, we hardly knew thee.  Good news is we got back both the 16th & 19th picks from Chicago.  This being the deepest draft since the Ice Age and all, my optimism remained.  We could swing Gary Harris, James Young, Mitch McGary – SO MANY OPTIONS.  I love the fucking draft.

16th PICK: JUSUF NURKIC

Grade: I hate the fucking draft.

If your first thought was, ‘who the fuck is Jusuf Nurkic’, well my friend, you’re not alone. ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, and I quote: “Does NOT play above the rim, has a bit of WWE in him, but has excellent feet.”  This was right before old Hodor shook Adam Silver’s hand and threw up the tight butthole sign.

So we drafted a 6’11”, 280lb project Euro center who can’t jump, can’t shoot, either has an attitude problem or likes to hit people with metal chairs (or the latter because of the former), but has the feet of a ballerina. Wonderful. Goddamnit Denver.  He doesn’t even fit the big white Euro profile.  Again, HE CAN’T SHOOT!  What’s the best case here?  Big Country Bryant Reeves?  How management, and more specifically – OUR MANAGEMENT – think they can do this to their fans is absolutely

The Nuggets blogging community had a collective meltdown on Twitter, and with good reason.  We all suffer from NBA Draft PTSD.  Follow me, if you will, down the boulevard of broken dreams:

1996: Efthimios Rentzias – 23rd pick, 35 games played (next pick: Derek Fisher)

Probably defensible at the time, I can’t recall – I was 12. But that’s 35 games played total. For his career.  Couple that with the unkillable Derek Fisher, and it’s not so defensible anymore.

1998: Raef Lafrentz – 3rd pick (picked after: Antawn Jamison (4), Vince Carter (5), Dirk Nowitzki (9), Paul Pierce (10))

This one I remember.  It was miserable.  Lafrentz & Pierce were, of course, teammates at Kansas.  To continue the wrestling analogy, Denver saw The Rockers and went all-in on Marty Jannetty. Jannetty! We chose JANNETTY! Pierce turned out to be Shawn Michaels (shocker) and Nuggets fans got our heads put through Brutus the Beefcake’s metaphorical barbershop window. If you’re counting at home, we took Raef in front of THREE HALL OF FAMERS!!!

2000: Mamadou N’Diaye – 26th pick, 69 games played (picked later: Mark Madsen!!) 

Just kidding about the Mad Dog part. Kind of.

2002: The Immortal Nikolas Tskitishvili – 5th pick (picked after: Amar’e Stoudemire (9), Caron Butler (10), Tayshaun Prince (23), Carlos Boozer’s Hairline (35))

Remember those picks earlier?  They’re nothing. They’re nothing man.  This pick right here?  THIS PICK RIGHT HERE!? It’s death.  This is the reason any Nuggets fan I know will never, ever, support a pick of an unknown project center with amazing ‘upside’.  Tskitishvili is pretty much the worst thing you can say to me.  He has a -.039 career win share percentage.  That means that for every 48 minutes he was on the court, his team lost .039 games.  I’m pretty sure that’s impossible.

All of this is precisely why I face-palmed myself when I heard the words ‘Jusuf Nurkic’.  Names still on the board?  James Young, Tyler Ennis, Gary Harris, Mitch McGary, Jordan Adams, Rodney Hood, Shabazz Napier … the list goes on. Again,  inconceivable.

Now, to be fair, some people that know much more about the NBA than me thought this was a great pick.

Denver’s own idiot curmudgeon, Mark Kizla, labeled him, ‘the Shaquille O’Neal of the Adriatic League, for what that’s worth.’ I’m way too jaded, it’s not worth much.  The ‘experts’ ran out of any actual info on the kid, so they started talking about his 400lb dad, who is still waiting in the parking lot for Shooter McGavin.

Just what that has to do with this kid being a good center, I have no idea.  Look, I obviously hope I’m wrong.  I really, really, REALLY do.  I just wish we would’ve taken someone who played more than 14 minutes a game in the Adriatic JV league last year.  I spent some time with this video, and came away extremely underwhelmed. Knock yourself out.

19th PICK: GARY HARRIS

Grade: A-

Love, love, love this pick.  Well done.  I was having a total fit on Twitter leading up to it, screaming to anyone who would listen that we should’ve drafted Harris at 16.  Hell, I would’ve been happy if we took him at 11.  Harris was universally ranked as the 2nd best SG in the draft behind Andrew Wiggins, with Jay Bilas ranking him 11th overall, and Chad Ford labeling him a ‘lock’ for the first 14.  Give the Nuggs a ton of credit here – as Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post pointed out,  getting Harris at 19, as opposed to 11 or 16, saved us more than $2MM in salary cap.  Like we addressed in our Afflalo discussion, this also fulfilled the Nuggets desperation for quality shooting guards.  Harris is, by all accounts, a great kid with an incredible basketball IQ. He can shoot (his 3pt % did fall from 41% to 37% last year, but he was also hurt, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt) and more importantly, defend multiple positions. We won’t need him to be a go-to scorer for a few years, so he can spot up in the corners and lock down the bigger guards on D. Also, don’t sleep on the fact that he is not Nate Robinson.  That could be huge. The only reason this pick is an A- and not a solid A is that I’m worried James Young (drafted 17th, one spot behind the Shaq of the Adriatic) may turn into a superstar.  Young has more upside, but is way riskier.  Harris isn’t going to be making many SportsCenter Top 10 segments, but he’s going to be solid and may turn out to be the steal of the draft.  I like him.

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Overall Grade: B-

I’m trying here. I swear I am.  I really don’t want the Nurkipocalypse to cloud my judgement of an otherwise extremely productive day.  But it’s hard. Even when incredible progress was made, the Nuggets just couldn’t help being the Nuggets. Our salary cap is still a mess and we’re stuck with Javale & Nate, but I’m hopeful for the first time since Gallo blew out his knee before the 2013 playoffs. Bottom line is, we got better, and now have as many, if not more, young assets as any team in the league.  I love NBA free agency, especially when your team is active (it’s the summer, the hell else am I going to do, watch baseball?), and I expect the Nuggets to be involved in 90% of the rumors this year.  So what do I think happens?  The Love situation won’t settle until Melo & Lebron ink their deals, so we can keep living on a prayer until then.  More than likely though, he refuses to ever sign long-term here, and we take this squad into next season.  I couldn’t have been more excited when we landed Brian Shaw, so let’s see what he can do with a healthy (fingers crossed) roster of Ty, Afflalo, Gallo, Chandler, Faried, Mozgov, Harris, Brooks, Hickson, Pierre McGee, even our favorite troll doll Nate.  There’s a few real life NBA players in there.  Zach Lowe likes what we did, and so do I.  Too bad we’re in the West.  This team probably sleepwalks their way into a 3-seed in the East.  Bring on the Hodor era.