The Nuggets can’t count on Carmelo’s Knicks to be their lottery ticket
“in the lousy Eastern Conference the Knicks are closer to being a playoff team with 17 wins than the Nuggets are in the West with 22”
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Your Denver Nuggets are one game over .500 a little past the half way mark in the season. Their record of 22-21 has them four games behind Dallas for the eighth seed in the Western Conference. They may want to stop winning before they screw around and make the playoffs.
The Nuggets had been counting on the New York Knicks, whose first round pick in the 2014 draft the Nuggets own, to lose enough games to wind up in the NBA lottery. Denver has two first round picks coming – theirs and New York’s – the “worse” of the two they owe to Orlando. Denver can make the playoffs and still have a lottery pick assuming the Knicks do not make the playoffs. But, in the lousy Eastern Conference the Knicks are closer to being a playoff team with 17 wins than the Nuggets are in the West with 22.
New York in only two games behind the current eight seed in the East, Charlotte.
Carmelo Anthony has been on a tear lately and the Knicks have won two in a row. Soon New York will have an injured Amar’e Stoudemire back in the lineup along with Tyson Chandler. It’s looking more and more like the Knicks could make the playoffs and render the pick they send Denver far less useful.
That would mean that if the Nuggets want a shot at a top-five pick they would have to be a lottery team themselves.
The Nuggets can’t really seem to figure out who they are. They beat really good teams and they lose to really good ones. They need to pick an identity soon and stick with it because it’s looking less and less likely that they can walk down the middle of the fence and count on the Knicks to provide them with their lottery ticket.
