NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Every year you hear the same thing about how the NBA is rigged so it will be a final with Boston and L.A. or a final with LeBron and Kobe or Shaq and Tim Duncan and every year we all fall for the same story line.

But the NBA is not rigged. There, it had to be said. Well, there were those times when my Pistons were, uhh, let’s save that story for another time and just stick with the NBA is not rigged, even though we know it is.

“The Lakers paid $50,000 to win that game. They got their money’s worth,” said a Denver player, not wanting to be identified for fear of retribution from the league.

Was the outcome rigged? I refuse to believe it was.

The 16 field-goal attempts the Nuggets missed during the fourth quarter had much more to do with the defeat than any of the 30 personal fouls called against Denver by the referees.

Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson and the Lakers organization were fined $50,000 by the NBA for complaining about the calls in Game 4, won decisively by the upstart Nuggets.

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George Karl thinks something stinks

When Kenyon Martin wanted to complain to the press about the referee’s favoring the Lakers, Chauncey Billups came to the rescue.

“Don’t let the league take your money,” Denver teammate Chauncey Billups told Martin.

Photo source Newscom

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Chauncey Billups is all the rage right now. It seems like everything he does works and everything he touches turns to gold. Gold Nuggets, that is.

Always known as a heady player when he was a Piston, nothing has changed while on the Nuggets. Check out this YouTube of Chauncey dropping the ball off of Kobe’s back to create a score.

If the Nuggets win they will have to point to Chauncey and say he led them there. Funny thing is, if Chauncey was still with the Pistons they might not have gone any further than they did. The Nuggets give Chauncey a chance to shine in a way that the Pistons would not have.

So please, Piston fans, understand why Chauncey had to go and wish him good luck with the Nuggets.

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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.”

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

How can it be possible to have the Nuggets go this far in the playoffs? Some say it is all Chauncey Billups and maybe they have something there, because this would put Chauncey in his 7th straight Conference finals. Now that is some kind of record.

“It’s absolutely been a storybook, and I couldn’t write a better script — hopefully, I don’t wake up anytime soon,” said Chauncey Billups, the pride of Park Hill, who finished with 28 points, seven rebounds and a game-high 12 assists. “The win is for all the guys who have been here, haven’t been able to get out of the first round and carried that weight. And it’s for the city, for the fans.”

And so, with an electrifying 124-110 victory, the Nuggets advanced to the Western Conference finals for the first time in 24 years.

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Now for those of us that assume the Los Angeles Kobe’s will be in the finals against the Nuggets, and that is not sure thing, we can no longer assume that LA will automatically defeat the Nuggets and go on to create the storybook matchup of LeBron vs. Kobe.

Carmelo is not just laying down, he is ready!

David Stern may not be too happy if it is Paul Pierce vs. Chauncey Billups, not quite the drawing power there. Carmelo in the finals, who would have thought it would happen this fast and maybe it won’t, but the Nuggets have a solid chance now. In fact, where are the Lakers? Denver is already waiting for them.

Oh yes, Denver is for real

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Chad Ford writes for the ESPN insider and has some definite opinions on basketball.

On Denver vs. the Lakers:

Damon (Socorro, NM): At this point, are the Lakers worrying about Denver?

Chad Ford: They should be. Denver has been great. Chauncey is showing that he was really the heart of the Pistons all of those years and they have a physical front line. They don’t have the depth that the Lakers have, but I think the Nuggets will really, really push them. I’ve been really, really impressed.

Any Piston fan would tell you that Chauncey was an important piece of the puzzle, but as the Pistons aged, Chauncey could no longer carry them. He is great at pulling the team together, but he is not a Kobe or LeBron, where he is the team.

Chauncey Billups is leading Denver to glory

On LeBron James… Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Dallas is struggling to figure out how to stop the Nuggets. There just does not seem to be any one or two players that need stopping. There appears to be a whole bus load.

With the Mavericks moving back home, maybe they can stem the tidal wave of buckets and pull out a couple of victories.

On Tuesday, for the second straight game, Denver’s top two scorers, Anthony and Billups, struggled at the start. But, once again, the Nuggets found others to step up.

Smith, an athletic guard, scored 17 of his 21 points in the first half, and Nene scored 14 of his 25 as the Nuggets took a 58-55 lead. That made up for Anthony and Billups combining for just 10 first-half points.

In Sunday’s Game 1, Anthony and Billups combined for just seven first-half points. But Nene scored 18 of his team-high 24 before intermission, and the Nuggets led, 51-47, en route to a 109-95 win.

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Carmelo is thinking Defense!

This is a confident Nugget team held together by ex-Piston Chauncey Billups and fueled by the high scoring Carmelo Anthony. George Karl has crafted a team that can score easily and defend when it has to. Even Carmelo was talking about playing defense when interviewed before the half. Yes, you are in trouble when Carmelo is talking defense.

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The Denver vs. Dallas series was not supposed to happen. If you roll the tape back to the beginning of the year and someone had told you that Denver would meet the Chris Paul Hornets and that Dallas would face the Tim Duncan Spurs, then the choice was easy. The Hornets and Spurs would advance.

But nobody told Dallas and Denver about the script. Not to mention a few other things.

Ok, let’s mention them.

No Manu Ginobili. Would the Spurs have won with him? Who knows, but their chances would have increased signifigantly.

Rick Carlisle. Rick has changed Dallas. They now play offense at a slightly less frenetic pace and they play defense. While Rick was in Piston land, before Larry Brown, he did an incredible job of making each player accountable. He loves to not double team and hold his defender accountable. It is working in Dallas. (On the flip side, Carlisle was very unlikeable to everyone right down to the janitors.)

The most significant different component in the organization is Carlisle, who has Jason Kidd running a well-coordinated offense and who has the Mavericks playing better defense than they ever did under defensive-minded Avery Johnson.

Carlisle seemed to make all the right moves, getting maximum effort from the bench, from Josh Howard, and, yes, from Erick Dampier.

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Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups. Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Denver is rejuvenated with elder statesman Chauncey Billups taking the reins and teaching the Nuggets how winning is done. Now Carmelo wants to restore the luster to his image by proving he can win.

The big knock on Carmelo is that he only plays at one end of the floor and here are two hints as to which end that is, offense, offense. Yeah, Carmelo likes to put it up.

My first look at Carmelo Anthony was years ago in 2002 when his 15th ranked Syracuse team took on my might Spartans of Michigan State University. Kelvin Torbert guarded Carmelo for most of the day. Kelvin was giving away a few inches, but was a pretty tough defender. Didn’t matter. Carmelo put up 25 on my Spartans going 5 for 5 from downtown. Syracuse won by one point.

Fans will sit up and take notice if Carmelo wins

Spartan fans will remember that as the game that Chris Hill went 10 for 18 from 3 point land and put up 39 points. By far the highlight of Chris’s career.

Right off the bat, you had to wonder if Carmelo could play defense, because Jim Boheim always has his team in a zone. Once Carmelo was in the NBA, Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Chauncey Billups was traded to Denver for Allen Iverson.

For the Detroit Pistons it was an experiment to see if Allen could revive their stagnant offense and allow them to go to one more conference NBA final and maybe even have a shot at winning the NBA title. We all know now that Plan B was put into effect and Allen represents over 20 million bucks of salary cap that can be released.

For Denver it was a chance to go in another direction. Coach George Karl would finally get the point guard he coveted. Someone that would set up the other players and not have to have the ball to make an impact on the bottom line. That bottom line would be winning games.

Detroit fans still love Chauncey Billups

He brings All-Star talent to the floor, and is only four years removed from being an NBA Finals MVP. But maybe most significant, he provides the kind of leadership that has catapulted the Nuggets to the top of the Northwest division standings.

“A natural leader you do it the right way, everyday,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “And you have a no-nonsense kind of role with people who don’t do it that way. That’s what Chauncey has brought to us.

“The leaders who try to talk their way and not show the way with their actions and attitude, will fail.”

Failure is something Billups has had little experience with in recent years.

In his six-plus seasons with Detroit, the Pistons won an NBA title in 2004, returned to the finals the following season and advanced to the Eastern Conference finals every year since.

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J. R. Smith said that he used to just survive on talent and talent alone, but now playing next to Chauncey has him thinking basketball again. It has become a thinking man’s game for many of the Nuggets.

Chauncey has become the leader of the Nuggets and now they have the second best record in the West.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Houston has McGrady go down to injury.
Detroit has Iverson go down to injury.

Enter stage left…Ron Artest.
Enter stage right…Rip Hamilton.

It is the Rip and Ron show. Together they return. Separately they drive their teams to new heights.

Yes, Houston, we have a winner and it is delivered by Ron Artest.
Yes, Detroit, we can beat the Boston’s and Orlando’s as long as we have a big time performance from Rip Hamilton.

Ron Artest?

When the Houston Rockets acquired Ron Artest, you read in this space that he was brought in as a replacement for Tracy McGrady, not as a complementary piece. I wrote that at the time because I believed that Artest was the perfect fit for the Rick Adelman system - a fit that McGrady could never be. Adelman knew that, he communicated it, and GM Daryl Morey made it happen.

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Rip Hamilton?

The Pistons are 2-0 since a back injury took Iverson out of the rotation, and those two wins came over two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference: Orlando and Boston. Hamilton recorded 31 points (11-18FG) and six assists against Orlando, followed by 25 points, nine assists, and six rebounds against Boston. The chemistry that’s been missing is back, and it’s no coincidence that it’s returned as Iverson sits.

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Oh, by the way, the Nuggets came into Detroit tonight and Chauncey Billups put up plenty of daggers for 34 big ones, but Rip had 21 and the Pistons won the game.

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