Cloudy Notion: Can Al Harrington keep up this pace?

ITS OVER 9,000!......................calories.

six games in, and Al Harrington has been the opposite of what he was last year. He was Slow, made poor decisions, bad choices on the court. Took too many 3 point shots and missing despite being a career average player from down under. However, in the Nuggets impressive start this year, Al Harrington has statistically been the Nuggets second best player, and if you had a poll at the beginning of the year if he would have been a crucial factor in the first 6 games and not a "we win in spite of him" type of player, well no one would have said he would have been at all considered for being a valuable asset this season.

It does however, invoke similar feelings we had towards him at the start of last season, when he came in, many thought he would be a great shooter to space out our offense with Carmelo Anthony. He had some high scoring games at the start of that season. So it is too early to tell whether he can maintain this pace, or just cool it down a little bit.

How effective has he been? Well so far in the six games for us, he has been second on our team in PER, AKA player efficiency with 20.44 and he leads the team so far in "simple rating" at around 17.5. He has proven to be clutch in certain times this year and is averaging 6.5 rebounds along with 15.7 points and is shooting 35% from beyond the arch, being our only consistent three pointer this year, believe it or not.

So if he maintained this pace, he would easily be a candidate for 6th man of the year. Would I put him in the starting rotation and bump Nene up to the 5 and leave the Russian on the bench? No, as giving up size might not benefit us in the long run, I feel that Harrington makes a good veteran presence off the bench and will be key in utilizing our strength this year, that being in waves and waves of good players off the bench.

Al Harrington, if you want to be a ninja turtle, you need eye sockets in your bandana.

However, the one question I believe you all are thinking right now is, do we even want Harrington to be our "second best" player? Doesn't that thought sort of scare you when you are trying to compete for the playoffs? Hasn't Harrington single handily disappointed more franchises with his lack of ability or motivation I should say?

Consider this, he had a 20 ppg season in his first season with the Knicks, and then dropped that number the next season by 3 points. His stats decrease in one area per year with a different team, eventually he just turns into trade bait rather than being a piece to a winner's puzzle.

So how can we really be sure that Harrington isn't just fools gold and not the real thing? I wouldn't be one to quickly advise cheering him on and saying that he has totally redeemed himself because he hasn't. He still has a lot to make up for from his last seasons performance. I also noticed that he does not pass enough when the ball goes to him. He needs to improve on these kind of things, but for now I will cut him some slack.

So the big question is, what do we do with him in the next off-season? Do we trade him while his value is hot? Do we keep him and keep him around as our 6th man? Do we amnesty him next off-season to better our chances of resigning Gallo?

Enter your own caption folks!