Paul Pierce on comparisons to Melo: "I've never got a DUI"...

If Melo can ever play the type of defense like Pierce and stay the same way offensively or even better, he'll annihilate the whole NBA.

Right now the distance between Melo and Pierce is like from Pluto and Sun. He's light years away.

- Snake -

hehe alright i just wanted to be a smart ass here but pluto is actually less than one trillionth of a light year from the sun

Alright, more smart assing in a way that is going to make me sound like a complete prick.

Pluto is 19,702 light seconds from the Sun, or 5hr 28min 22sec away from the Sun at the speed of light to its semi-major axis. That would be .0006 (one sixty-thousandth) of a light year. Less than one trillionth of a light year would would be .00003 light seconds, or about 9,454 meters (5.87 miles). You probably drove further to work this morning than one trillionth of a light year.

To comment on the OP, Bill Simmons had a really good Pierce-Melo comparison in his ESPN article today. Basically saying that what the Nuggets are dealing with now is similar to what the Celtics had to deal with early in Pierce's career, and now he is about to win the Finals MVP. I would really hate the see the Nuggets trade Melo.

man pluto ain't even a planet now remember!

haha

"The 24-year-old still faces a DUI charge stemming from his April 14 arrest in Denver. He is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday on that charge."

The Rocky Mountain News on the status of Melo's legal situation

yeah i realized the error when i posted it. I don't do math before noon usually. But i have to find some error in your comment so fyi, my job is on my block and in the neighborhood of 100 meters from my house, firstly i am not lazy so there was no driving involved and my distance from my work is actually 1.057000834e-14 lightyears, or around 1 one hundred trillionth.....HA!

I saw that Simmons article about how he would never trade Melo. He had a long list of trade suggestions for other teams to offer. The problem with comparing the situation in Denver with Boston (and Pierce) is that it wasn't Pierce who made that team into champs, as much as he was the beneficiary of the new attitude and roster. Remember, Boston has had one of the worst teams in the league for years, and it was a roster centered on Pierce.

Saying that it's a model for the Nuggets to follow, i.e. sticking with the talented yet immature and underachieving player, is a joke. Boston won because they added Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, James Posey, Eddie House, Sam Cassell and PJ Brown all in one year. That's 2 (selfless, hungry) all-stars and 4 seasoned vets, two of whom had championship experience. They had a backlog of young players and draft picks (acquired over a span of many years) that they were able to swap, and some very friendly trading partners looking to dump salaries. Look at the NBA landscape and tell me where there are other opportunities like that. It's already been discussed on this site how difficult it would be to trade much of the Denver roster, but that's what happened in Boston.

I'm a Melo fan, but there's no getting around the fact that rebuilding around him is only possible if we first are willing to watch the team decline and suffer huge stacks of losses first, to clear out the overpaid veterans and stockpile picks and short contracts. It's not worth it, especially given the luck that would still need to be involved.

Off Simmons list, I would take Caron Butler or the combo of Josh Howard and Jason Terry. I'm afraid Billups is too far past his peak, and fighting too many injuries to help any more. I want no part of Mike Miller (even with a draft pick) or Tracy McGrady. Richard Jefferson and two picks (10, 21) isn't likely to work with the Iverson/Camby/Martin core and gets in the way of developing JR Smith.

Sorry for the long-winded post...

You shouldn't apologize for you're post mike, it's dead on. Enough said.