Your newest Denver Stiff: Malik Allen...

As you all know by now, The Denver Post's Benjamin Hochman is reporting that our Denver Nuggets will be trading Sonny Weems and Walter Sharpe to the Milwaukee Bucks for forward Malik Allen. I first saw the news over at NovaFantasySports.com this morning but it took a few hours to get confirmed by other media outlets.

This trade isn't a game changer by any means, but it's a good trade nonetheless. Salary-wise, the trade is a wash. But more importantly, it frees up a roster spot for the Nuggets to sign someone else off the NBA scrap heap while giving them the extra big man (Allen is listed at 6'9", 255 pounds) they've desperately needed. Having Sharpe - who's out for most of the season recovering from a torn ACL - eat up a valuable roster spot wasn't helping matters, either.

For someone who's been in the NBA for eight seasons, I know very little about Allen's game. He's bounced around with six teams but is fairly productive per minute when given some playing time. For a guy who's 6'9", his career field goal percentage (44.3%) isn't good, but if memory serves he's a scrappy defender against bigger guys and can hit a long range jump shot. His best overall NBA season was his second with the Miami Heat, when he produced 9.6 ppg and 5.3 rpg.

As far as Weems is concerned, a lot of fans will be sad to see Weems go (evident by the numerous support he received when I called out his bad play in Summer League over the weekend). But as stated in Sunday's post, I just wasn't a fan of Weems' game. He's like a poor man's J.R. Smith without the jump shot. And if you consider that virtually all of his "makes" during Summer League were off dunks and layups and yet he still shot less than 33% from the field, Weems wasn't going to contribute in Denver anytime soon.

It's always a bit sad to see a young player go who had very little time to improve on our watch, but I suspect Weems' Summer League performance did him in with George Karl and a move had to be made. Will losing Weems come back to haunt us like losing Von Wafer did? Doubtful.

And Sharpe was just a throw-in for the Arron Afflalo deal to be consummated. Sharpe's tenure as a Nugget might be one of the briefest of all time.

So we'll say our collective goodbye's to Sonny Weems and welcome Malik Allen to Denver. Allen isn't the "Nene/K-Mart Insurance" we've been looking for, but for the first time in a long time we have a tall forward at the end of the bench instead of another swing man who can't shoot.  It's a good but relatively inconsequential move.