By Jeff Wade -- DallasBasketball.com
We?re a week removed from the trade deadline and now seems like as good a time as any to emerge from the euphoria surrounding the Mavs new acquisitions and take a look at how the other transactions from last Thursday will alter the NBA landscape.
Every conceivable angle of the Mavericks/Nuggets deal has been thoroughly examined from the Dallas perspective (and none better than right here at DB.com I might add), but I?m a little perplexed at the negative reaction the Nuggets have received from their fans and the Denver media. In one pull of the trigger, Kiki Vandeweghe was able to eliminate the death cloud hanging over the Denver franchise, thus allowing him to build the team the right way from the ground up.
When Vandeweghe took over what former Nugget head honcho Dan Issel had run into the ground, he was handicapped with a myriad of bad contracts and bad attitudes. Any time a player publicly demands to be traded, you?re going to be dealt from the bottom of the deck making it impossible to receive fair value for your asset. Considering Nick Van Exel?s shaky history of tenuous relationships with coaches and his massive contract the task at hand was borderline impossible.