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March Madness Betting pundits will tell you that the drama has ended. Carmelo Anthony is finally out of Denver after being traded to the New York Knicks. The initial thought was that the Nuggets would be taking a step backwards but it hardly looks like that now (excluding Saturday night’s loss to the Clippers).
Fast forward a few weeks and those looking at March Madness odds note it is the Nuggets, not the Knicks who are burning up the NBA.
Before facing the Clippers on Saturday, the Nuggets were 5-1 since sending Anthony and Chauncey Billups to the Knicks in a three-team, 13-player trade that brought them Danilo Gallinari, Raymond Felton, Wilson Chandler and Timofey Mozgov from New York and Kosta Koufus from Minnesota.
They are the highest scoring team in the NBA and their current hot streak included a 120-80 shellacking of the Charlotte Bobcats. In that game, the Nuggets had seven players score in double figures.
While the Nuggets have a long way to go and a tough road ahead, coach George Karl loves how the team has committed to competing through defence, which was always a deficiency in Denver since he took over the team.
Without Anthony in the lineup, the team concept has taken over and now Denver is one of the deepest teams in the NBA.
A key to Denver’s recent resurgence has been the play of Kenyon Martin.
K-Mart was putting up double-doubles with regularity until being sidelined early last March for 18 games with a knee problem. He eventually underwent knee surgery during the summer and missed the first two months of this season.
It took a while for Martin to bounce back but now he is on a run of averaging almost a double-double once again, and has shown signs of being all the way back after a year of knee trouble.
Martin has also been showing leadership to the younger players with the departure of Anthony and Billups.
All this is going on as the more publicized Knicks are struggling to find cohesion with their new star. New York has had a few big wins and has electrified the city but at the same time, they have lost to Cleveland twice. The offensive flow is not what it was before the trade and NBA pundits are wondering if they are actually better than they were before the deal.
In the long run, New York got the All-Star but for right now, it is the Nuggets that are playing like gold.
Filed under: MLB Tagged: | Carmelo Anthony, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks
