The Nuggets' season ended like a closed slut's door at the end of prom night. The pre-date "happy ending" expectation was there; the Nuggets were pre-season favorites to get back to the Western Conference Finals, and you're date gave a documented junior year post-prom... whatever. On date night you were lookin' high school sharp, re-defining the "grab-ass" game, being separated by chaperons for inappropriate dancing, and the Nuggets were out to their first half all time best win-loss record, undefeated against the Lakers. Everyone from your classmates, to the teachers, to the illegal janitor peepin' on the underage girls knew the end of the night had something probably unsuitable for the age, and definitely premarital, in store for you. All that remained was a little underage drinking, a secluded area at least 5 x 3 in cubic feet, a second half of the season status-quo, and you're walking into school Monday navigating a sexed-up rumor mill.
Then all of a sudden you're date's dead-beat dad found out there was an after-prom party at some kid's house. In an unexpected anomaly bit of parenting, dad blows up his daughter's cell in a last ditch effort to keep her off the pole. George Karl got cancer. And in the blink of an eye a Deron Williams sized door is closed in your face after nothing more than a hug at 10:15 pm.
Wait... what?? As you sit in you're now empty car in suburban-wherever, you can't help but sit and meditate. You look at the slutty prom soap art adorning your family car your date used to put out the high school vibe. You reflect on how Kenyon Martin was halfway into his all-star worthy season. The deal was sealed man, alright maybe it was more like zip-locked but still.... what???
I think I've been sitting in the driver's seat of my empty prom car, looking at the soap art in confusion for the last however many months. I haven't been able to give an opinion on a season I don't understand.
Eventually you have to snap out of it, stop trying to assess, and move the fuck on. It wasn't your night, it wasn't your season. Live in the present. You've still got a future kid.
It has taken me two months to gather my thoughts about the Nuggets... and yep.. this was the best I could come up with.
Nonetheless the point remains. There are two paths you, yet-to-be-deflowered 17 year old or 2010 Nugget executive, you can take from here, and in the long run, only one of them leads you where you want to be.
Path I: Michael Cera
Now 1:15 am you are still sitting in your parked car, lamenting the twisted turn of luck the night just clubbed you with. You can still smell Mrs. high school date's perfume that her daughter rubbed into the fabric of your clothes through 3 hours of teenage foreplay. You still dwell on the slight press of the budding bosom you felt at that last hug. You grasp at the memory of Kenyon Martin putting up 20 points and 15 rebounds a game. And as you replay the night from start to finish you can't help but conclude your train of thought with the question... why?
Knowing that as a Senior in High School you are about to enter the perceived personal "golden age" of sexual exploration, college, you can't help but feel overwhelmed. Yeah, kinda like "Superbad." Just like typecasts Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, desparation kicks in.
Pretty soon, you start firing front office executives. You start drinking a little more purposefully. What was once the respectably high female standards you had, have lowered themselves to thinking Jermaine O'Neal, Al Harrington, and Sheldon Williams are pretty "hot."
As time goes on, you are so wrapped up in your Prom Night failure that you are looking for anything with a hole. You watch yourself slip further and further down the slippery slope of drunken hook-up abominations. All the time wishing you could close something respectable, all the time letting your lack of self confidence get in the way of what you should have. You go out and buy the nice clothes, clean the room.... and bust out the roofie-colada's. Lowering yourself to trade line deadline crapshoots like Yao Ming's injury ridden contract or a Vince Carter experiment.
... if only her dad would not have called...
Path II: The Fonz
Eeyyyyy... its all good. You go home, whack it, and move on.
Inevitably, no matter which path you chose, you will be presented with an opportunity to close the "hot chick." For whatever reason, a pretty girl will at one time give you "the look." Where it goes from there is dependent on how you act.
Carmelo Anthony is that hot chick. Carmelo Anthony is in a contract year. There is a 3 year, $65 million extension on the table. The new collective bargaining agreement (basically an agreement between owners and the players) has yet to be formalized, but is expected to lower the amount that teams can spend on players by 30%. This is the last year Carmelo Anthony can make $20 mil + in base salary.
What little there was to be learned from Superbad was that desperation is not attrractive. Cleveland found this out the hard way. The thing about desperation, is that it sticks to you. Just as you can't shake your STD ridden hook up past, the Cleveland Caveliers can't shake the $32 mil they owe losers Antwain Jamison, Mo Williams, Andersen Verajao, and Daniel Gibson they hooked up with in an effort to get Lebron to stay.
The Nuggets will finally be done with Kenyon Martin's $16 mil/year and J.R. Smith's $6mil contracts next year... that's cap space.
There is the perception that if Carmelo Anthony leaves the Nuggets will never recover. While that may be true, playing it like that just makes you seem like a loser. The Fonz is a loser, and god knows what kind of trouble he got himself into over the course of season after season of Happy Days, but did he ever let it take down his self confidence? Eeeeyyyy....
Time heals all wounds... so they say. If anything, I think it eventually allows you to be realistic about an experience. Six years removed from prom, do you really want your name sexually attached to the twice-divorced, 22 year-old, mother of five?
So at the trade deadline, when Carmelo Anthony still hasn't signed is extension, I say play the Fonzie, not the squeaky voiced Mike Cera. It is much more attractive to hold yourself (or a franchise) accountable to a sense of self respect and self confidence, than it is for your owner to give your star player whatever he wants and write an angry letter :( to him when he leaves. For not only will it leave you not regretting the miserable hookups and bad contracts that will stick with you for years, but the franchise will appear more reputable and ultimately more attractive.
Eeyyy... comon 'Melo, we've got the same cap space that anyone else will have next year with a better coach, one season away from hitting the Western Conference Finals, and a budding Ty Lawson... stick around.. eeeyyy if not .. sall good, we'll go home, whack it.. and move on.
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