cpawfan

Welcome to my spot for my often in the minority thoughts about sports.

I'll start this off with my thoughts on Kenyon Martin. As the self proclaimed, biggest Kenyon fan on bbb.net, this will probably be written of as a homer stance. While I admit I'm optimistic, I'll try to address all of the sides.

The knees - There is a lot of talk about his knees. Lets start with this, it is a problem with one knee, not both. Kenyon has missed a fair amount of games the past 3 seasons with what was termed tendonitis. However, after looking into things, I don't believe that is true and I believe he has been involved in misleading the media. An athlete doesn't go from tendonitis to microfracture surgery without something serious happening. My opinion is that the surgery he had last summer (which was inaccurately reported as minor surgery to clean up the knee) is a surgery he should have had after the 03-04 season. Based upon the reading I've done in various newspaper articles and trying to connect the dots, I'm convinced his reduced level of play was mostly related to trying to play through pain in 04-05 as he wanted to avoid surgery because of his big contract.

Then we have last season, where it finally came out that he did have microfracture surgery and came back to quickly. The worst part of this to me was the Nuggets continued to lie to the media and the fans about his condition by stating that he was missing games because of tendonitis all the while the Suns were doing the proper things in publicizing Amare's progress from the same surgery. To me, the biggest question is did he damage his knee further by playing to early after the surgery. Most of what I have read indicates that he didn't so I'm taking that optimistic view. If nothing else, his pain level should be a lot lower in 06-07 than what he dealt with the past two seasons.

Practice - Apparently the Nuggets also were either ignorant of what recovery from microfracture surgery entails or were dishonest with the coaching staff and the players about Kenyon's condition because a lot was made by Karl and by some unamed players that there were serious concerns about Kenyon not practicing for the past two seasons. On top of this, there are rumblings from his Nets days about him being a training room prima donna. All of this could very well be true, but I still have problems reconciling this with the player that Bob Huggins called his best listener and the player that helped enforced Huggins no practice, no play mentality. I guess millions of dollars does change people.

Lockerroom - A lot was made of Kenyon's comments about Zo's kiddneys and the resulting near fight in the Nets lockerroom. Something that both of them got past that season. There are also stories of Kenyon pushing RJ into a locker another time; however, they are obviously still very good friends. Next, when he got to Denver, he got into a fist fight with Nene during practice. The stories of how it happened are consistent, yet the stories about what it meant are not. Apparently, Nene use to bully everyone in practice with his elbows and he tried to do the same thing to Kenyon. Kenyon warned him to stop and Nene continued at which point Kenyon popped him. Some said that fire and spark was what the team needed, while other said it set off an unhealthy level of animosity.

Then you add some of his teammates complaining about him not practicing last season and his tirade to the coaching staff during the playoffs that got him suspended and you have someone that is being labled as a cancer. Kenyon obviously has a bad temper and can get very amped up. This is where Jason Kidd helped him the most by being able to help him focus his energy. The question is can, Kenyon learn to control himself?

Performance - Many people said Kenyon was made by Jason Kidd and point to the reduction in his stats with the Nuggets as proof. While the per game numbers took a hit, if we look at the per 40 minutes production numbers, we see that his scoring barely changed, while his rebounding dropped which is understandable when you go from Jason Collins as your center to Marcus Camby as your center. Also his FG% and TS% increased while he was in Denver. Choose to interpret it how you want, but to me, when coupled with the amount of knee pain he dealt with the past two seasons and actually breaking down tape of his games, I find no reason to doubt that he will produce again at his all-star (granted in the East) level.

In summation, I believe that whichever team trades for Kenyon will get a steal of a deal because his value is so low.

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gambitnut

How much do you think he is worth right now? How much do you think he is really worth? There has been a debate in the Blazer Forum about a rumored Zach Randolph for Kenyon Martin trade, how do you think Zach Randolph fits in with the first two questions?

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cpawfan

Since perception is reality, I believe other GMs are only going to offer other bad contracts to the Nuggets at this time while the Nuggets are trying to hold for either expiring deals or a bad deal combined with a good young player.

For his true worth, it really depends upon the team that he goes to. In one sense, because Kenyon can defend multiple positions, he could fit on any team; however, offensively, he is an average half court player that does best in an uptempo system. Now there are a lot more teams that appear to want to play uptempo, but most of them already have starting PFs. A trade involving him is likely going to be a change of scenery trade for both teams.

I can't see the Blazers doing a swap of these two for the simple reason that the Blazers need Zach's scoring. So along those lines, I can't see the Blazers moving Zach unless they got a big scorer back which isn't easy to do. To me Zach is a classic stats guy, a player that puts up nice stats that don't lead to either wins or losses while Kenyon is a classic more than the stats guy that brings a lot of things that don't show up on paper.

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cpawfan

I realized today that I'm actually rooting for the Knicks to make the playoffs. This isn't because I like the Knicks, rather it is out of pure spite. I find Larry Brown to be a completely overrated coach and I can think of no greater end for his career than for Zeke (whom I don't respect) to take the same team Brown couldn't coach to the playoffs.

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cpawfan

I love this time of year. Training Camps have started in the NFL and baseball had its first trading deadline which is when I've started getting interested in baseball the past 5 or 6 years.

Plus, my oldest son just had his first football practice and as cliche as it sounds, that click clack sound in the parking lot just really brought home how much I love this time of year.

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Welcome to the new (old) NBA Draft Forum

Got an opinion on Noel vs Zeller vs Len vs Austin? Tell me here