Chauncey and the Nuggets
May 19, 2009 by James Edwards
Filed under Chauncey Billups, Denver Nuggets, NBA Playoffs
NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.
It should be the name of a rock group and at times they play just that crazy and act just that crazy. The team got to the point that there was no separation between the night life and the court life.
Now all that has changed. George Karl was fed up and wanted to go back to the old tried and true ways of actually stopping your opponent. Still, something was missing and that is when Chauncey Billups arrived.
Chauncey had played for Rick Carlisle (Defense, man to man), Larry Brown (Defense, spread the ball), and Flip Wilson (team defense, and score the basketball). Chauncey had learned the disciplined way from all three and then you have to add in the fact that he played under the GM brilliance of Joe Dumars. Joe settled for nothing less than excellence.
Chauncey Billups is leading the Nuggets
Now Chauncey is exerting his influence on a Nugget team that is desperate to get away from the old ways and win an NBA title.
Nearly everything Karl had preached, Billups magnified. Defense. Toughness. Professionalism. With the ball in his hands, Billups was able to shepherd these wayward Nuggets toward a common goal.
“I was always looking for somebody like Chauncey to come to our team,” Carmelo Anthony(notes) said.
His career tarnished by five consecutive first-round exits, as well as a few off-the-court transgressions, Anthony’s hunger to win grew even more after he had helped the U.S. Olympic team win a gold medal in Beijing. If Billups wanted to lead, Anthony, like most of the Nuggets, would follow.
“My whole thing was I knew some guys wanted to win,” Billups said. “Where I come from that’s one thing I know how to do: win. I don’t do it all the time, but I’m trying to all the time.”
Photo source Newscom
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