February 23, 2012

NCAA chief: Eight-team college football playoff possible

By Dave Krieger

Frustrated by the glacial pace of progress toward a true college football championship, fans appear willing to settle for the four-team playoff now under discussion as the best they can do. So it came as something of a surprise when Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, suggested the possibility of an eight-team playoff Wednesday during an appearance on the Dave Logan Show.

In fact, Emmert, who has been promoting a variety of reforms since taking over the NCAA 22 months ago, said “there’s a good probability” some form of playoff will be approved by the end of this summer.

“In 1A football, football at the highest level, there’s never been a championship, there’s never been a systematic way to determine who’s No. 1,” Emmert said.

“All the other college sports do have such a championship. The BCS was in my opinion a very good step in the right direction where we finally, after 80 years, had No. 1 playing No. 2. If the conferences and the university presidents that I work with would like to move toward a championship, and I think there’s movement in that direction, then we’re more than happy to run it for them. We know how to run championships. We’re really good at that.

“I think we’re likely to see some significant change to the BCS or movement toward a four- or maybe even an eight-team playoff system, but we’ll have to wait and see. It will probably be decided this spring and into the summer. There’s a good probability that we’ll get some kind of model like that, I think.”

As Emmert, the former president of the University of Washington, tries to drag the tradition-bound NCAA into the 21st century, he also faces a more complicated problem — whether to provide some form of revenue sharing to the collegiate athletes in football and men’s basketball who collectively generate billions of dollars in television revenue for the NCAA and its member institutions.

Emmert said he would never support paying salaries to players or making them employees because that would make them professionals. But faced with a particularly ugly season of scandals in 2011 — from a booster providing players with prostitutes at the University of Miami to athletes exchanging memorabilia for tattoos at Ohio State — Emmert has been pushing a proposal to enhance athletic scholarships with an extra $2,000 stipend.

That plan was tabled last month at the NCAA convention after many schools objected, expressing concerns about the cost. Another reform to allow multi-year scholarship commitments to athletes was approved, although that too had its critics among schools fearful it would tie the hands of new coaches.

“I’ve been really clear, as have all of our university presidents, that we should never, ever pay students to be athletes, that that’s not the business that we’re in,” Emmert said. “We’re in the education business. And our student-athletes should be just that, serious students who happen to also play sports.

“But on the other hand, we also want to make sure that they’re getting a fair shake. So we just, for example, last week approved a new policy that allows universities for the first time in 40 years to actually make multiple-year commitments to student-athletes, so they know that they’re going to have scholarship support for more than one year, assuming they do everything right in the classroom, assuming their behavior is right. They take care of their stuff, the universities will take care of them,” Emmert said.

“The other thing that we’re working on right now that’s still in the construction phase but will probably be rolling out here in a few months is the idea of covering the full cost, the real cost, of being a college student. A college athlete right now, if they’re on a full scholarship, they get tuition, fees, room, board, books and supplies, which any of us would love, but above and beyond that, we also know that there’s travel costs, there’s miscellaneous expense costs, there’s clothing allowances. And that shortfall between what an athletic scholarship is today and what (the real costs are) on average across the country is about $3500. So we’re looking at what we can do to close some of that gap, so that students who are spending so many hours a week and a year on their sport, who rarely have a chance to work part-time jobs, in fact have everything that they need to be successful in their university studies.”

It’s a complicated proposition. At the many schools where the athletic department does not operate in the black, adding $2,000 a year to the cost of every athletic scholarship would require cuts elsewhere. Critics point out that many of the same schools complaining about the cost pay enormous salaries to their football and basketball coaches.

Emmert seems aware that the NCAA has to deal with two growing problems. The first is a widely-held perception that all its high-minded rhetoric about amateur athletics and student-athletes conveniently allows it to collect and distribute billions of dollars in TV revenue to member institutions without sharing any of it with the athletes who generate it.

The other, more immediate, problem is that many of the athletes generating that revenue in football and men’s basketball come out of poverty, leaving them susceptible to boosters, agents and others willing to circumvent NCAA rules by providing cash and other benefits under the table. That, in turn, leads to a never-ending parade of embarrassing scandals like those at Miami and Ohio State last year.

The NCAA has always been reluctant to admit that the university system represents a de facto farm system for the NFL and NBA. As a result, some college athletes do not quite meet the “student-athlete” ideal. High school basketball prodigies, for example, could once jump directly to the NBA, as stars such as Kevin Garnett and LeBron James did. Today, such players are required to spend a year in college (or overseas) because of a minimum age instituted by the NBA.

Many college coaches, including Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, have complained this rule leads to a “one-and-done” mentality among the nation’s top basketball players that takes away from college basketball and makes a joke of the “student-athlete” ideal.

“Coach K and I are in complete agreement,” Emmert said. “I want young men and young women who play our games to be in college because they want to be in college, not because they have no choice or because they see it as simply an intermediate step.

“I love when somebody has the skill and ability to go make a living playing sport. I think that’s fabulous. But to have them just come to us for one year — or, let’s be honest, one semester — simply because they have no choice and they don’t want to be there and they’re not serious students, I think that detracts from intercollegiate  athletics and doesn’t help and I’m hoping that the NBA and the NBA Players’ Association can see clear to change that rule.”

Alas, that’s not likely considering the debate during the most recent NBA labor dispute was between maintaining the 19-year-old minimum age and extending it to 20.

The NCAA has long faced a dilemma it would prefer not to acknowledge. Among most of the 26 sports, 89 championships and 400,000 athletes under the NCAA umbrella, the student-athlete ideal is alive and well. But the constant stream of scandals in football and men’s basketball taints them all and makes the organization’s pious claims sound hollow.

There are certain contradictions that neither Emmert nor anyone else can do much about. College football and basketball are, in fact, the main feeder system for the NFL and NBA. That’s not changing. The NCAA and its member universities represent a free farm system for those professional leagues. Football and men’s basketball generate billions of dollars in commercial revenue that support many other sports and university expenses. So neither the pro leagues nor the NCAA are about to abandon the current system.

But the NCAA does have an interest in cleaning it up because the scandals, predictable as the seasons, are embarrassing and undercut the credibility of everything else the organization does. Since taking over the NCAA in April 2010, Emmert has aggressively pursued an agenda of reform and greater transparency. He deserves credit for doing so. How successful he is remains to be seen.

“I’ve been focusing on the integrity questions,” he said, “making sure that our rules actually make sense and that we apply them in ways that promote the kind of behavior that we’d all like to see around college sports.”

As part of his ongoing outreach efforts, Emmert will be in Denver on March 8 to speak to a City Club of Denver luncheon at the Marriott City Center downtown.

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February 21, 2012

Just what sort of quarterbacks are the Broncos looking for?

By Dave Krieger

Here’s what we know: Tim Tebow is the Broncos’ starting quarterback going into training camp this summer, but with only two quarterbacks under contract — Tebow and second-year undrafted free agent Adam Weber — the Broncos are planning to add at least two more to the roster between now and then.

Here’s what we don’t know: What kind of quarterbacks do the Broncos want to add? Do they want someone like pending free agent Jason Campbell of the Raiders, a career-long starter who would want a genuine opportunity to compete for the starting job? Or do they want an older veteran, someone like 37-year-old Jake Delhomme, who has a long history with head coach John Fox and would likely be willing to accept a role as Tebow’s backup and confidant?

If Broncos’ brass knows the answer, it’s not saying.

“We’re in the process right now of going through that, going through the free agency,” John Elway said Monday on the Dave Logan Show.

“We got done with our free agent meetings today, going through the process of ranking every position, not only the quarterback position but obviously every position. So I think as we go over and discuss each position we’ll come to a conclusion of what we’re looking for at each position, whether that be the quarterback or the defensive line position. I think the bottom line is you’re always looking at a chance to try to get better and bring in somebody that is going to come in and compete and make the people they’re competing with better.”

Coach John Fox was no more forthcoming, telling the Denver Post: “Who, what, where, when, what market — it’s still way too early (to say) how we get those quarterbacks.”

Actually, it may be a little early, but not much. The NFL free agent market opens March 13 — three weeks from today. A long and varied list of quarterbacks will become free agents that day if their current teams don’t sign them to new contracts in the interim.

It begins with an impressive name that won’t actually be available. Although they’ve been talking about it for 18 months, the Saints and Drew Brees still haven’t reached agreement on a new deal. Nevertheless, Brees will be back in New Orleans next season, even if the Saints have to slap a franchise tag on him.

Alex Smith of the 49ers is in approximately the same situation. If his success under coach Jim Harbaugh last season didn’t make his return to San Francisco obvious, his decision to carry Harbaugh’s bag at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am did.

There’s also Matt Flynn, the 26-year-old Packers backup with two career NFL starts. Thanks mostly to one really good start at the end of the season, he’s about to hit the free agent jackpot, probably in Miami, where Green Bay’s former offensive coordinator, Joe Philbin, is now head coach.

Then there’s Peyton Manning, who could be waived prior to March 8, when the Colts owe him a $28 million bonus. Manning will be 36 next month and missed all of last season with a neck injury. His health and arm strength remain question marks after four surgical procedures. Some team that believes it’s one quarterback away from a Super Bowl — say, the Jets — might take a shot if Manning and the Colts can’t rework their deal, but it won’t be the Broncos.

After that, the list of available quarterbacks goes downhill pretty fast. Campbell, 30, is probably the best of the lot. Like Tebow, he was the 25th pick of the draft, in his case the 2005 edition. Campbell has never been a backup, starting 70 of the 71 games in which he’s appeared, so it’s unlikely he’s signing anywhere he doesn’t have at least an even chance to win the starting job.

Also on the free agent list: Delhomme, Kyle Orton (uh, no), Brady Quinn (not if he can help it), David Garrard, Chad Pennington, Chad Henne, Vince Young, Kyle Boller, Dennis Dixon, Shaun Hill, Byron Leftwich, Luke McCown, Charlie Whitehurst, Kellen Clemens, Derek Anderson and . . . well . . . you get the idea. The usual suspects.

Tebowmania is another variable likely to cull the list. On some teams, the backup quarterback is the most popular guy in town. Not on this one.

The other addition to the quarterback depth chart is likely to come from the class of 2012. The top prospects, Andrew Luck of Stanford and Robert Griffin III of Baylor, will be long gone by the time the Broncos exercise their first draft pick (No. 25). Most of the rest should be available, either there, later in the draft or in the aftermarket of undrafted free agents.

Among them: Ryan Tannehill of Texas A&M, Brandon Weeden of Oklahoma State, Nick Foles of Arizona, Brock Osweiler of Arizona State, B.J. Coleman of UT-Chattanooga and Kirk Cousins of Michigan State.

The Broncos have to answer an interesting question here, too: Do they want a traditional pocket passer in the mold Elway prefers? Or do they want somebody on the roster other than Tebow who can run the read option? That, in turn, depends on whether they believe Tebow will progress enough as a pocket passer this offseason to render the read option a one-year experiment rather than a staple of their offense.

If they want another mobile quarterback who could run last year’s offense in a pinch, they might take a look at former Rockies prospect Russell Wilson of Wisconsin or Darron Thomas of Oregon.

In short, given the available alternatives, it’s not clear that Tebow will have any serious competition for the starting job.

With Fox entering his second year as coach, the Broncos’ emphasis remains on the defensive side of the ball, where they need help along the interior of the line, in the backfield and potentially at middle linebacker, depending on their current view of Nate Irving, the third-round draft pick last year who was unable to supplant Joe Mays as a rookie.

The many and varied Tebow-oriented debates aside, he went 8-5 as a starter last season, putting him pretty far down the Broncos’ list of immediate issues. So while the club will be adding bodies at his position, it’s looking all but certain Tebow will get a chance to build on his successes in 2011 as the Broncos’ starter in 2012.

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February 18, 2012

Nuggets in survival mode

By Dave Krieger

If you watched the Nuggets during the first 19 games of their lockout-compressed NBA schedule, you saw a deep, relentless, energetic team perpetually in attack mode. They went 14-5, were among the top seeds in the West and led the association in scoring.

If you’ve watched them since, you’ve seen a lethargic version of that team, lately trying to compensate for the loss of leading scorer Danilo Gallinari to a high ankle sprain that could keep him out a month (he was injured Feb. 6 in a home loss to Houston). They are 3-9 since Jan. 29 and have fallen to the bottom of the Western Conference playoff bracket.

Although they remain one of three NBA teams averaging at least 100 points a game, they are also one of only five surrendering at least 100. The other four teams in the latter category — Sacramento, Golden State, Charlotte and Washington — have a combined record of 32-86.

“I hate excuses,” coach George Karl said on the Dave Logan Show. “You don’t coach excuses. You coach how your team is playing and you work hard through it. But when you communicate with your players, you’ve got to be realistic. There are some things out there that are having an effect, not only on our team but every team in the NBA.”

In particular, Karl said he saw a change in his team earlier this month after it played three games in three cities in three nights, normally a scheduling no-no but permitted this season because of the compressed schedule that followed a long labor dispute.

“I’ve seen our team since those three games in three days, there’s been a reciprocal kind of backlash,” Karl said of the games in Los Angeles on Feb. 2, Denver on Feb. 3 and Portland on Feb. 4.

“Some nights we have it and some nights we don’t have it. The injuries have shrunk our skill set so the running game and the attack game, we’re still leading the league in attacking teams’ defenses, but we’re not having that talent of power that wears teams out. We’re not wearing teams out as much as we did earlier in the season, and I’m hoping it’s just because of injuries. I mean, we’re missing almost 85, 90 minutes of the game from our starting lineups and we’re trying to fill that in with guys that are playing hard and trying.”

Gallinari, the starting small forward, has missed the past six games. Starting center Timofey Mozgov missed seven in a row before returning for a one-point loss in Memphis on Friday night. Starting power forward Nene has missed the last three.

Karl’s trio of veteran bench players — Andre Miller, Al Harrington and Rudy Fernandez — has played well together, so he has looked farther down his bench for injury replacements to his starting lineup. The result has sometimes been a starting group that is not competitive early in games. Starting shooting guard Arron Afflalo carries a team-worst plus/minus rating of minus 68. Three of the team’s top four plus/minus ratings come from the bench — Miller (plus 144), Harrington (plus 88) and Fernandez (plus 83). The fourth is Gallo at plus 107.

This presents a couple of dilemmas for Karl. One is whether he should continue bringing Miller off the bench. The Nuggets’ top eight five-man groups in plus/minus include the veteran point guard. In part that’s because the Nuggets’ bench is better than most of its counterparts, but the stats also show that five of the team’s top eight groupings include both Miller and starting point guard Ty Lawson.

The second, related dilemma is whether Karl should break up the bench crew to help the starting lineup. For the time being, he is compromising, leaving Miller with the second group but moving one of his three key bench scorers into the starting lineup.

“What we talked about is maybe we’ve got to put Al in the game with Ty a little bit more often and let Andre have the second unit and try to find some shots and scoring without Al,” Karl said.

In Memphis on Friday night, he moved Harrington into the starting lineup in Nene’s place. Harrington didn’t get much done, but another bench player, Corey Brewer, scored a game-high 26, all of them in the second half, starting for Gallo.

Another option is to increase the minutes of the team’s rookies, who haven’t played enough to have the tired legs some of their veteran teammates are showing. First-round draft pick Kenneth Faried came off the bench for 25 minutes in Memphis and responded with 18 points and 10 rebounds.

“I don’t deny that I’ve had the thought of trying to expand maybe one or two guys going into a game after three games in four nights or something like that,” Karl said. “Maybe instead of going with nine guys, try to maybe go with 10 or 11 guys. But you know what’s kind of funny about it is two guys that don’t look energized are two guys that from a standpoint of performance I think have done a great job with us, and that’s Andre and Al. They’re our oldest guys, and now Bird (Chris Andersen) has come back and played very well and he’s one of our older guys, too.

“It’s kind of trying to balance that out because we’re still in a good place from the standpoint of record and schedule. I think we’ve got to stay positive on trying to get a good seed in the playoffs, that our goal is to win as many games as possible and not maybe experiment too much to where you lose a game because of your experimentation.”

One option that has pretty much disappeared is practice. You remember practice. It used to be how teams solved problems and tightened up — particularly on defense — during the season.

“Practice is becoming an obsolete piece of the league right now,” Karl said. “There’s just no way, with the energy . . . . Practice has now become kind of drill stations and maintenance stations for your younger players.”

So Karl is left to hope the injury bug will pass and the Nuggets will be able to bring their aggression in waves again before they fall too far behind in the standings.

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February 17, 2012

Is Denver’s skyline for sale?

By Dave Krieger

Is Denver’s skyline for sale? And, if so, what’s it worth?

The first of these questions has gotten a lot of attention in the debate leading up to today’s hearing before the city planning board on The Sports Authority’s proposal to install three 178-foot, lighted signs along the metal band that undulates around the top of the stadium where the Broncos play in northwest Denver.

The second question has gotten almost none.

The Sports Authority, a Denver-based nationwide sporting goods retailer, took over the stadium naming rights deal from Invesco Funds Group last summer. It has proposed amending the comprehensive sign plan that governs signage at the stadium to permit much larger, more prominent signs than Invesco installed to identify it as the naming rights holder.

Opponents of the signs — each of which would be nine and a half feet high and 178 feet long — include a host of neighborhood organizations, a handful of Denver City Council members and at least one editorial columnist who generally opposes government interference in the free market.

“I object to it on aesthetic grounds because the stadium is an attractive stadium and that’s no accident,” Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll said on the Dave Logan Show.

“I object to it on commercial grounds since the taxpayers get nothing in return for the addition of these huge signs in their faces. And I object to it on procedural grounds. Nobody warned anybody when this transfer of naming rights occurred at an Aug. 16 meeting of the stadium board that these sorts of signs were in the offing. And yet, lo and behold, all of a sudden there’s this proposal and it seems to be just taken for granted by city bureaucrats, by the stadium district, by the Broncos’ management team, the stadium management team, that this is going to be a fait accompli.

“And you know, maybe it is. Maybe it’s a juggernaut that can’t be stopped. But I, at least, and a whole host of neighborhood organizations that were on this case long before I was, think it’s bad policy, it’s bad for Denver and it’s going to mar the skyline.”

You can read Carroll’s columns on the subject here and here.

The Broncos, through a subsidiary that manages the stadium, now known as Sports Authority Field at Mile High, stand behind their corporate partner.

“The proposed signs celebrate a couple of things,” said Andy Gorchov, general manager of Stadium Management Co. “They celebrate, obviously, the naming rights partner and the new name of the stadium. The one thing that people may say is this is a form of advertisement. But it’s not. It’s actually the name of the building. So that’s an important distinction to make.

“It also incorporates the Broncos’ logo as part of the combined sign elements. That’s something that has not had any kind of a presence on the outside of the stadium before. As the home of the Broncos, to be able to incorporate the Broncos’ logo is something that we’re definitely excited about.

“But additionally, it also incorporates the legacy ‘at Mile High’ term. So combining all three of those was the intent of the design, as well as giving it enough of a size where it has sufficient legibility and visibility from a reasonable distance away. I think we believe that the old signs, though everybody liked them, they were small and they were difficult to read from a distance. The proposed sign was designed to improve that.”

You can find the application to amend the comprehensive stadium sign plan here.

Last week, the city’s community development and planning staff completed its review of the proposed amendment to the sign plan and recommended that the planning board approve it.

“The criteria, some are very concrete and very scientific, others are more subjective,” said Kelly Leid, Denver’s director of development services. “I think the aspect of the city’s role in this is to say, ‘Look, we have a responsibility to, one, follow a clear and consistent and transparent process.’ The comprehensive sign plan has a process we follow and we’ve done that.

“The second is we’re obligated to review the application when it’s submitted, which we have done. To the extent there are impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods, we take those very seriously and we have to evaluate those and look for, are there any mitigating factors that can be taken into consideration that may impact the neighborhoods?

“And then lastly, and I think of equal importance, is that we have to have a system that is predictable. And by that I mean, in this case the applicant relied on a set of rules that were in place for the comprehensive sign plan, they’ve submitted a request to amend that sign plan based on those criteria, and we have to make sure as a city that we’re providing a system of predictability in the review of that plan.”

Area neighborhood organizations describe the likely local impacts of the signs in somewhat stronger terms.

“The neighborhoods surrounding the stadium, believe it or not, are kind of a nice, quiet, serene place to live and raise families,” said Michael Guiietz, co-president of Jefferson Park United Neighbors, the neighborhood that abuts the stadium to the west.

“We’re all aware that there’s 10 Bronco home games that are going to happen and they’re going to create a certain amount of energy. We just don’t want that energy to be translated to these giant, red, lighted signs that are going to be on 365 days a year up until 2 a.m. in certain instances.”

As I understand the most recent negotiations on that issue, The Sports Authority has agreed to turn off the signs facing west and north, toward residential neighborhoods, at midnight. The sign facing east, toward downtown, would remain on until 2 a.m.

The web site for the campaign against the signs is here.

The city skyline is often photographed from the east so as to include the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop. Depending on the angle, these photos often include the stadium. In photos of the skyline taken from the west side of town, the stadium is in the foreground. Putting aesthetic objections to the proposed signs aside for a minute, one would think that the right to put a commercial brand on a public building that is part of the skyline would be a fairly expensive proposition.

So perhaps the most surprising aspect of the debate is that at no time has the city or the stadium district asked The Sports Authority to pay an additional fee for the right to vastly augment the signage that went with the original naming rights deal. The money from the naming rights deal — approximately $6 million a year — is divided between the Broncos and the stadium district, which uses its share for upkeep of the facility. If there is excess, it is supposed to go back to the counties that provided the public funding that got the place built.

I don’t know where in the bureaucratic process this possibility should have or could have been raised, but the failure of public officials to broach this topic raises the question of their fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers to maximize revenue from the facility.

If the free market allows The Sports Authority to put its brand on the Denver skyline, then the free market should also require it to pay a market rate for the privilege. And that doesn’t mean just picking up the existing naming rights fee, which included much more modest signage rights.

At least, that’s how it looks from here.

Today’s public hearing before the planning board is at 3 p.m. in the Webb Municipal Office Building, 201 W. Colfax Ave., 4th floor. Those who want to speak should arrive early to sign up.

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February 13, 2012

Tiger-Lefty rivalry finally comes of age

By Dave Krieger

The New York Times published a column Sunday with a headline that sounded like a dispatch from the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

Alas, The Front-Runner’s Missing Magic turned out to be about another front-runner.

But watching Tiger Woods falter on a Sunday once again was a reminder that for all the predictions he is this close to climbing back on top, the golf world is still upside down.

For years, Woods waxing the over-hyped Phil Mickelson was what passed for competition atop the PGA Tour. When Mickelson was even close enough to be paired with Woods on the final day of a tournament, you could pretty much count on Woods doing his relentless, almost robotic winning thing while Mickelson made some daring, high-risk play that blew up in his face and sent him careening down the leader board.

But a funny thing happened as the two golf prodigies became tour veterans. Mickelson has found his game and Woods has lost his. Tiger won his first major at age 21. Lefty, perennially disappointing early in his career, didn’t win his first until he was 33.

When they showed up at Pebble Beach on Sunday to finish this year’s Pro-Am, Woods had 14 major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus. Mickelson had four — not much of a rivalry if you remember the days of Nicklaus (18 majors), Gary Player (9), Tom Watson (8), Arnold Palmer (7) and Lee Trevino (6).

So it might have surprised casual fans to know that while Woods has won three tournaments while paired with Mickelson in the final round and Mickelson only one, Lefty had outplayed Tiger the previous four times they’d been paired on the final day of a tournament, as they were again Sunday. The Pebble Beach Pro-Am is not a major, of course, but the course is in the U.S. Open rotation, so it’s a pretty fair measuring stick. In fact, Woods won the Open there in 2000.

The decline of Woods since 2008, when he last won a major, has been the stuff of supermarket tabloids. His marriage to a Swedish model, Elin Nordegren, fell apart amid spectacular revelations of Woods’ serial infidelity. Tiger apologized, got divorced, underwent knee surgery, fired his swing coach, fired his caddie.

In stark, almost too obvious contrast, Mickelson was simultaneously at the center of a sorrowful, heartwarming family tale as both his mother, Mary, and wife, Amy, were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. When he won the 2010 Masters with the recovering Amy on hand, there was hardly a dry eye in Augusta.

“That’s a win for the family,” Jim Nantz of CBS said when Lefty holed out.

Fast forward to Sunday. Supposedly, Tiger was finally back. He had put up three consecutive rounds in the 60s for the first time in more than two years. He entered the final round four shots back of leader Charlie Wi, but as Wi imploded, the door opened.

Instead, Woods stumbled, as he has so often on Sundays lately when he has been in a position to contend. He finished with a 75.

Mickelson charged, holing putts from long distance and posting an eight-under 64 that gave him the tournament title, his 40th on the PGA tour.

“I just feel very inspired when I play with him,” Mickelson told reporters afterward. “He brings out some of my best golf. I hope that he continues to play better and better, and I hope that he and I have a chance to play together more.”

No wonder. It’s now five consecutive times Mickelson has bested Woods when they’ve played together on a Sunday.

Looking ahead to the year in which he turns 42, Mickelson predicted there might be more wins out there waiting for him. Woods, five years younger, is still waiting for that feeling to return.

Lefty will never catch Tiger by the numbers, but the rivalry that never really was has finally become a pretty good show.

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February 8, 2012

Yo, Tom Helmer: Sorry to see you go

By Dave Krieger

Rockies telecasts will have a different feel this season, and not just because of a roster overhaul that has the AARP interested in press box credentials.

No, the new feel on the telecasts will have more to do with the departures of Root Sports staples Alanna Rizzo and Tom Helmer.

Rizzo’s exit is not a big surprise: The camera likes Alanna a lot and and she reciprocated by building relationships with players that gave her interviews a relaxed, conversational feel. It was only a matter of time before she moved on to the national stage, in this case a studio job back east at MLB Network.

Helmer’s exit is more puzzling. He broke the news himself Tuesday on Twitter (@Tom_Helmer):

“I have loved every minute of covering the Rockies, DU, CU and CHSAA. Sorry it won’t continue as ROOT Sports is moving on without me,” he posted.

“I will miss the fans at Coors Field the most. You made it so much fun and I hope I gave you some small piece of enjoyment as well.”

About an hour later, Root (@ROOTSPORTS_RM) confirmed:

“Thanks to @Tom_Helmer for all his hard work and dedication over the last 6 years. We wish him the best.”

Helmer hosted the bulk of Root’s pre- and post-game Rockies shows and did it with flair. Crowds would hang around the center field Rockpile waiting for him to jump on the desk and lead the cheers after the Rocks won. It was schtick, for sure, but it was fun schtick and better TV than most post-mortems. Some of his fans took to Twitter to complain about his departure with the hashtag “savehelmer.”

“It will be BORING without you,” tweeted one.

“You guys are high on crack letting Tom go,” said another.

“Baseball is all about familiar,” said a third. “It’s an old pair of slippers. A thread-bare blanket. No place for sudden changes. We love @Tom_Helmer.”

Even Rocks center fielder Dexter Fowler weighed in:

“@Tom_Helmer Sorry to hear that, I enjoyed the time working with you, it’s been a pleasure. Good luck on your future endeavors!”

“Thank you for the hundreds upon hundreds of comments,” Helmer tweeted this morning. “I have read every one. You’ll never know how much it really means to me.”

In addition to his pre- and post-game duties, Helmer filled in for Drew Goodman on play-by-play occasionally and did an excellent job.

He has two traits in particular that I’ll miss — a quick wit and a genuine affection for the English language not that common on TV.

He and I had a running gag in the Coors Field press box about the chronic overuse and misuse in our trade of the word “ironic.” If Jeff Baker gets traded to the Cubs and then the Rocks play the Cubs, that’s ironic.

No, it’s not. If it’s anything, it’s coincidental, and given the eventual inevitability, barely even that.

You know what’s ironic? Root Sports dumping an energetic on-air talent who knows what “ironic” means.

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February 6, 2012

Jeremy Guthrie part of Rockies’ bridge to the future

By Dave Krieger

Just two weeks before pitchers and catchers report to the Rockies’ spring training complex in Scottsdale, the club finally got its innings-eater.

Jeremy Guthrie has thrown 200 or more innings in each of the past three seasons as the largely unappreciated pitching mainstay of a perpetually rebuilding Baltimore Orioles team. Throughout that stay, the former first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians was a mix of fiery competitor and goodwill ambassador for a franchise spinning its wheels.

And yes, that’s three former first-round picks by the Tribe as candidates for the Rockies’ starting rotation: Guthrie (2002), Drew Pomeranz (2010) and Alex White (2009).

Guthrie’s record in Baltimore wasn’t great (47-65), but his winning percentage (.420) was better than the team’s (.415) and his earned-run average (4.19) was fine considering he pitched in the murderous American League East at hitter-friendly Camden Yards.

“We spent a lot of time breaking him down, really since the trading deadline of last year,” Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said.

“When we went through the Wandy Rodriguez thing,” — the Rockies put in a waiver claim on the Astros starter last season but couldn’t work out a deal before Houston pulled him back — “he was somebody on our list that fit kind of what we were looking for — the guy that might be a little overlooked because of where he pitches, the position he pitches in, the role that he was used in, that’s been extremely durable, well above-average athlete, extremely competitive, very tough guy. That’s exactly what we saw as a fit for us.”

Within a couple of hours of Monday morning’s trade announcement, Guthrie tweeted a picture of himself Tebowing on a pitching rubber in a Rockies cap and Tim Tebow jersey.

“X-Factor in this trade: my new strikeout celebration is suddenly more appropriate! @TimTebow,” he wrote.

Having followed Guthrie’s Twitter feed when he was with the O’s, I can tell you this much: Rockies fans are going to enjoy this guy.

“He rides his bike to the ballpark,” O’Dowd said. “I think he’s one of those physical fitness freaks. Knock on wood, he hasn’t spent a ton of time on the DL. We liked the competitive nature of how he goes about preparing to do his job. I think he’s a real good get for us.”

To acquire him, O’Dowd gave up starter Jason Hammel and reliever Matt Lindstrom. Although both have live arms and remain intriguing, Guthrie is an upgrade over Hammel for the rotation and the Rocks have numerous candidates to replace Lindstrom in the bullpen.

Orioles fans, on the other hand, are a bit confused. They felt sure that new general manager Dan Duquette would use Guthrie to acquire talented prospects who would help with the rebuilding rather than exchange him for other mid-career veterans. In a poll on the Baltimore Sun web site that offered seven possible takes on the deal, the most popular in early voting was “Don’t understand it.”

Guthrie and the Orioles had been preparing for a contentious arbitration hearing, with Guthrie seeking a salary of $10.25 million in his final year of arbitration eligibility and the Birds offering $7.25 million. After hearing of the pending trade back to his native West — Guthrie was born in Oregon and went to Stanford — he swiftly agreed to a one-year deal for $8.2 million.

That’s pretty close to the combined salaries of Hammel and Lindstrom and leaves the Rocks’ prospective payroll a shade below $90 million, or about where it was last season.

Guthrie is not a No. 1 starter by talent, but by necessity that’s the role he filled in Baltimore without complaint. He’s a fly ball pitcher, so he’ll give up some dingers at Coors Field, but he throws in the mid-90s and is known for competitive zeal and good humor, not to mention a love of sneakers.

He’s also another important piece of the bridge the organization is building to the future. No longer content to wait on the development of homegrown talent, the Rocks overhauled their roster after a disappointing 2011 campaign to bring in veterans with a competitive edge who would take the pressure off not-quite-ready-for-prime-time prospects.

“We went into the offseason with a specific game plan, but I can’t tell you that anything ever would connect the dots the way this winter did, one to another,” O’Dowd said. “It usually does not happen that way. This winter, for whatever reason, it did. That doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out great. It just means we had identified a group of guys within each category we wanted to get and we were able to get a lot of them.”

Consider: With Guthrie (208 innings in 2011) and Jhoulys Chacin (a franchise-leading 194) heading the rotation going into spring training, there’s less pressure on the 23-year-old Pomeranz to replace Ubaldo Jimenez as the staff ace immediately and less pressure on veteran Jorge De La Rosa to come back from Tommy John surgery before he’s ready.

If all four are starting in June, with White, Juan Nicasio, Guillermo Moscoso, Tyler Chatwood and Josh Outman competing for innings in the bullpen or minor leagues, the Rocks could be deeper in starting pitching than they’ve ever been, with the flexibility to make further moves if needed.

Veteran catcher Ramon Hernandez is the bridge to Wilin Rosario or Jordan Pacheco. Veteran infielders Casey Blake and Marco Scutaro are the bridge to Nolan Arenado and Josh Rutledge. Veteran outfielder Michael Cuddyer could be a bridge to a prospect or a big bat on the trade market.

The Rocks are no longer content to throw their prospects into the big league pool and let them sink or swim. Frankly, too many of them sank with that approach. Except for young stars Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez, much of the last wave — Chris Iannetta, Ian Stewart and Seth Smith, to name three — did not live up to the organization’s expectations.

Whether Guthrie is more than a one-year rental remains to be seen. If he eats innings as expected and long-term contracts for middle-of-the-rotation free agent starters remain scarce next winter, the Rocks might well be interested in bringing him back.

“Our thing is not so much the dollar in the given year, it’s just we don’t want to commit a lot of length to anybody and create  lack of flexibility for ourselves,” O’Dowd said.

There are no guarantees the various veteran acquisitions will perform, as Ty Wigginton and Jose Lopez demonstrated a year ago. But they all fit the profile the Rocks constructed after last season’s disappointment — pro’s pros more focused on winning than accumulating service time.

If they don’t work out, the organization will be one year closer to handing over the keys to the generation of Pomeranz, Rosario, Arenado and Rutledge. If they do, the Rocks might just surprise again, but this time in a good way.

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February 3, 2012

Craig Morton turns 69: ‘Life is not that bad’

By Dave Krieger

Not to make you feel old if you remember the Broncos’ first trip to the Super Bowl as if it were yesterday, but Craig Morton’s 69th birthday is Sunday, the same day as Super Bowl XLVI.

“I live in northern California, right outside of San Francisco in Mill Valley,” the former Cowboys, Giants and Broncos quarterback told us on the Dave Logan Show recently.

“I was working with the University of California at Berkeley for the last seven years as a fundraiser and helped raise about $320 million. They had some cutbacks and so they kind of said, ‘Well, I guess you’re getting real old, Craig, so we’ve got to get rid of you.’

“So I’m just sitting here looking at the tulips and I’m looking at San Francisco across my little balcony here, so life is not that bad.”

Morton played in the AFC championship game that catapulted the Broncos to their first Super Bowl after spending the preceding week in the hospital, but he wasn’t above playing it up a little to inspire his teammates.

“I was in the hospital from after the Steeler game until Sunday morning of the championship game,” Morton recalled, referring to the Broncos’ 34-21 victory over Pittsburgh in the divisional round.

“I couldn’t move the leg. They would try everything. Jack Dolbin really helped me a lot. He found this machine called the galvanic stimulator and it helped pump some blood through it. They’d come in five times a night and try to drain the blood from my leg.

“A friend of mine came in to pick me up to take me to the stadium on Sunday morning and he said, ‘You’ve worked all your life for this opportunity again; do not consider not playing.’ When he said that, I said, ‘Get me to the stadium.’ I sat in the whirlpool for a few hours and I really played it up. I sat on the training table and made sure everybody could see my black leg as I was turning colors.”

Various accounts at the time described Morton’s hip as black, blue and, in some places, a certain shade of green.

“I could back up and throw,” he said. “If I had to run, I couldn’t do it. But it worked out. I just said, ‘If they don’t touch me, we’ll win this game.’ I think they touched me twice. The defense played great and Haven (Moses) came through and the offensive line came through and we did it.”

As a result of that victory over the Raiders, Morton became the first player in NFL history to start Super Bowls for two different teams — the Cowboys in Super Bowl V and the Broncos in Super Bowl XII. Kurt Warner later became the second.

Part of Morton’s enduring affection for his days in Denver arises from Denver’s enduring affection for him. In Dallas, he’d been part of a running quarterback controversy with Roger Staubach. In New York, by his own account, he was not exactly a fan favorite.

“What (Cowboys) coach (Tom) Landry did to me two or three times, this is kind of his relationship with me,” Morton recalled. “He’d call me at about 10:30 at night when he was trying to make his decision who to go with, Roger or myself. And he’d say, ‘Craig, you’re home.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m home.’ Whatever my reputation is, I would never break curfew. I mean, who wants to feel bad? I’m a single guy, (but) I’m not going to go out the night before a game or any of that stuff.

“And he says, ‘Can you come over?’ So I said, ‘Sure.’ So I go over and his wife, Alicia, would answer the door. Tom would be there and he said, ‘Come into my study.’ And I go into his study and I sit down and he says, ‘Craig, you know, I’ve just got this feeling, I think I’m going to go with Roger. Thanks for coming over.’ And that was it.

“And I said, ‘What do you mean you’ve got this feeling? And what do you mean coming over here for five seconds? Let’s get into this a little bit more.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that in person, so thanks for coming over.'”

When he finally asked the Cowboys for a trade, they moved him to New York. He played two and a half seasons there before the Giants moved him to Denver before the 1977 season.

“Going to Denver was a whole new deal because I wanted to leave New York so badly because we were so bad and they didn’t like me at all,” Morton said. “The last game I played with the Giants was against Denver and I said, ‘Boy, this team could be great if they just had a quarterback that wouldn’t make any mistakes.’

“Then coming in and seeing what their offense was, that’s exactly what they did, is play to (defensive coordinator) Joe Collier and his defense. That’s what my role was. I knew it. They didn’t have to tell me. You knew, just give the defense a chance to give you better field position.”

Morton got to see a limited number of telecasts featuring this year’s Broncos, but I asked him for his take on the option offense offensive coordinator Mike McCoy installed to take advantage of quarterback Tim Tebow’s skill set.

“I don’t know if he could play any other offense,” Morton said. “I’ve heard that John (Elway) was considering working with him. He’s got a lot of work to do in his footwork and his hips. But he’s got great talent and he’s a winner and he’s one of the great role models I’ve seen in the last 20 or 30 years and man, I hope he’s successful.

“He’s got a pretty good arm. He’s got some hitches in it, but with his athletic ability and how strong he is, he can get that ball up a little higher and he can throw that ‘out’ at 15 (yards). He just needs a little work on it. But he wins. And I know Elway will make the right decision because he’s the best quarterback I’ve ever seen play. If he can rub a little bit off on Tim Tebow, then he’ll have great success.”

It’s been 34 years since he helped the Broncos win their first AFC championship, but Morton still has fond memories of that team.

“We were a great, close team that had a tremendous amount of fun,” he said. “We spent hours after games together. We had dinners together. We had great guys that loved Red Miller, that loved Fred Gehrke and just loved the whole situation that we were thrust into. Denver adapted to us and cheered us on and painted everything orange. It was just a magical thing that certainly will never happen again.

“Our team was just fortunate to be as close as we were. And we let the whole town in on our fun, too, so that was a great time.”

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February 1, 2012

Do the Nuggets need a closer?

By Dave Krieger

Last weekend, on the heels of a six-game winning streak, the Nuggets were riding high. Their record of 14-5 was second-best in the NBA’s Western Conference. So it seemed like a good time to ask coach George Karl if his team was really as good as it looked.

“I reminded the players of the six-game winning streak, which was great, because five of them were on the road, it’s fantastic, but there was only one winning team in there,” Karl pointed out. “And 16 of our next 18 are against winning teams. So we will know a lot more come March 1st than we know right now.”

Since then, Karl’s team is 0-2, having lost close games to pretty good teams — the L.A. Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies (the Clippers were 10-6 when they met the Nuggets; the Grizzlies 10-10). In both cases, the Nuggets had a chance to win at the end. In both cases, they couldn’t find anyone to make a big shot when they needed it.

This, of course, is the flip side to the Nuggets’ depth. As many of their opponents have pointed out, their second team is nearly as good as their first. Sometimes, it’s better. But spreading the scoring around the way they do, it’s not at all clear who they want to take the last shot in a close game.

Already, Karl has been asked the question often enough that he finds it annoying. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less legitimate: Do the Nuggets need a closer?

“I think it’s a process that you just have to develop,” Karl said when I asked him about it after the loss to the Clippers, in which the leading scorer was Chauncey Billups, also known as Mr. Big Shot, whom the Nuggets traded away a year ago.

“I think we’re going to rely a great deal upon how we play, and how we play is we make stops, try to run, play before (the defense) sets up. Then, as the game goes on, figure out the matchup that you like. In Philadelphia, it was Andre (Miller). In Washington, the pick and roll game gave Al (Harrington) a lot of good looks. Hopefully, Nene and Ty (Lawson) will jump into some of that responsibility along the way.

“I’m not as fearful of that as people are making out to be because I think you win games with other things as much as you do going to a closer or a go-to guy. But if they want to put that on our heads right now, most close games this year, we’ve won. Tonight we didn’t.”

Tuesday night, after the overtime loss in Memphis, Karl was even less tolerant of the question, pointing out all the things the Nuggets could have done earlier in the game to prevent it from coming down to those final shots.

But this begs the question. Lots of NBA games, particularly between good teams, do come down to the end. As the Nuggets learned when they had Carmelo Anthony, a star scorer can slow down your offense by constantly playing one-on-one. He can render it predictable and easy to defend. But as Melo demonstrated at the end of regulation against the Nuggets in New York two weeks ago, that go-to guy can also step up and make a big shot when you have to have it.

“You just don’t pinpoint somebody,” said Billups, who might be the Nuggets’ closer now if he hadn’t been traded to New York with Melo. “Somebody’s got to do it time and time again and earn that right. It’s tough not to have that. Playing late and playing good teams, it’s always going to come down to end-of-game situations. So somebody may emerge as that, but you’ve just got to kind of let it play out.”

The Nuggets have numerous candidates:

Danilo Gallinari is their leading scorer at 17.4 points per game, but he’s only 23 and prone to inconsistency. He’s shooting just under 30 percent from long distance this year and just under 45 percent overall.

Ty Lawson is their second-leading scorer at 15.5 per, but he’s only 24 and also the starting point guard, where he sometimes finds himself caught between being a scorer and being a playmaker.

Al Harrington is a veteran scorer off the bench who has had an excellent start to the season, but he’s more accustomed to being a complementary player than a leading man.

Ditto for Rudy Fernandez, the Spanish sharpshooter and playmaker the Nuggets obtained from Dallas before the season began.

Arron Afflalo got a big new contract to be the Nuggets’ starting shooting guard, but he’s shooting less than 43 percent from the floor.

Nene, their highest-paid player, is a versatile inside scorer, but getting the ball inside in crunch time can be a challenge, as the Nuggets demonstrated against the Clippers.

Andre Miller is a reliable veteran and capable scorer, but he’s generally a pass-first playmaker.

Statistically, their best three-point shooter so far has been Corey Brewer, an athletic swingman known more for his defense, but it’s a small sample size: 12 for 26.

At the end against the Clippers, Nene was tricked into committing an alleged offensive foul and Fernandez and Harrington missed shots. Against the Grizzlies, Miller missed at the end of regulation with a chance to win and Fernandez missed at the end of overtime with a chance to tie.

As much as Karl dislikes the question, chances are he’s going to keep hearing it until the Nuggets win a few games against good teams by making big shots down the stretch. Coming off two close losses, they’re looking at consecutive games against the Clippers, Lakers and Blazers to close out the week.

Having a deep bench is a valuable luxury in the NBA, particularly this season, with games packed closer together because of the lockout. But however you get there, lots of games come down to the final minutes.

Early in games, the Nuggets share the ball beautifully in a fast-paced offense that produces open looks for many different players. Late in games, when defenses and offenses alike tend to tighten up, the Nuggets have struggled lately to replicate that free-flowing style.

Sooner or later, they will have to find somebody willing to take and able to make the big shot if they intend to be serious contenders.

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January 30, 2012

For Chauncey Billups, it’s all good again

By Dave Krieger

Chauncey Billups’ return home was everything he hoped — and maybe one veteran move more.

When he was introduced as a member of the visiting Los Angeles Clippers’ starting lineup Sunday night, the full house at the Pepsi Center gave him a standing ovation. Even Tim Tebow showed up to watch, sitting courtside.

(During a timeout, Rocky, the Nuggets’ mascot, got Tebow to sign a football. Then he punted it into the stands. Rocky, not Tebow. Let’s just say Britton Colquitt has nothing to worry about.)

Billups is no longer bitter about the trade that uprooted him from his family and home town 11 months ago, but he did have a little something to say about it, pouring in a game-high 32 points, flushing six of 12 three-pointers and drawing a foul in the final 18 seconds that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so damaging to the Nuggets.

The result — a victory for his new team over his old one and happy goodbyes to the 30 family and friends he estimated were on hand.

“Everybody knows how I feel about Denver and these fans and the people here,” he said in the visitors’ locker room afterward. “It feels good to get that reciprocated and know that they feel the same way about you.”

Billups has come to terms with once again being a pawn in the NBA’s byzantine player movement rules, but he wasn’t so sanguine when he got thrown into the Nuggets’ Melodrama and shipped to New York with Carmelo Anthony even though, unlike Melo, he had no interest in leaving.

“I was just frustrated having to be caught up in that,” he said. “It really wasn’t my fight, although I had to go down. So that was frustrating, knowing that it’s going to be what it’s going to be but not because of anything I did. I’ve accomplished a lot in my career and I’ve done a lot. Being thrown into deals is for some people that haven’t accomplished what I’ve accomplished. So that was the frustration that I had from it, but it is what it is.”

I asked if it occurred to him it was the second time his hometown team threw him into a trade for salary cap purposes, a previous Nuggets regime having thrown him into the Ron Mercer trade to Orlando 12 years ago.

“Did it occur to me?” he asked incredulously. “Of course, man! Of course. It sucks, you know what I’m saying? But it’s kind of how this business goes. But everybody’s all good now. The Nuggets are good, I’m good. Everything happens how it’s supposed to.”

That wasn’t the last indignity of 2011. When the lockout ended, the Knicks released Billups under an amnesty provision that allowed them to wipe his $14 million salary off their payroll, leaving enough room under the salary cap to acquire center Tyson Chandler.

In a particularly demeaning feature of the amnesty provision, teams putting in waiver claims had to bid the salary they were willing to pay — that is, the part of the guaranteed $14 million they would take off the Knicks’ hands. The Clippers won the auction with a bid reportedly just over $2 million.

Billups lobbied publicly for teams not to claim him so he could become a free agent and choose a destination himself.

“If I get claimed by a team I don’t want to play for, I would absolutely consider retirement,” he told ESPN in early December. “The game’s been really good to me and I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me. I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve saved most of it. I don’t need the money now. I want to be able to play for something, a championship, and I want to be able to have my own destiny in my hands. If I don’t, then retiring might be a decision I make.”

Undaunted, the Clippers claimed him off waivers. Their second-year coach, Vinny Del Negro, went about trying to sell Billups on joining an improving young team that had last season’s rookie of the year, Blake Griffin, and was in the process of trading for four-time all-star Chris Paul.

“I talked to Chauncey a lot about it,” Del Negro said. “I just told him how I work and how we do things and the outside perception of the organization is not the actual thing that goes on inside our practice facility and inside our organization. I told him, ‘Once you get a feel for it, I think you’ll respect that.’

“I just told him honestly what I thought he could bring and I think it just took him a little bit of time to kind of realize that those weren’t just words, it was actually the fact. He’s such a pro and he knows how valuable he is to our team. After he got acclimated to everything going on, I think he’s in a good place now and we need him to play well and he knows that. And he’s going to be a big part of our continued growth and hopefully our success this year.”

He certainly was Sunday.

“I think we saw Chauncey do a similar thing to Detroit when we went back to Detroit,” Nuggets coach George Karl said afterward, referring to Billups’ way of reminding former employers that he remembers their letting him go. “When he gets in that zone . . . .”

So the conversations with Del Negro helped change Billups’ mind about retirement.

“He empathized with me a little bit and felt bad about the position that I was in because guys like myself don’t deserve to be in those positions,” Billups said. “He just told me how it really was. Like, how he coaches, what’s expected, what it’s going to be, how he thinks myself and Chris can play together and be effective. And it’s been good.”

At 35, Billups is no longer thinking about retirement. He’s back to wanting to play as long as he’s able to have nights like Sunday, his 42nd career game of 30 or more points.

“I feel like I’ve got some good years left in me,” he said. “As long as I can stay healthy and can be effective out there, I’ll keep going, man. I’ll keep going.”

With 18 seconds left in Sunday night’s game and the Clippers clinging to a two-point lead, the Nuggets fed the ball to Nene near the paint. Because of a defensive switch, the 6-foot-3-inch Billups found himself guarding the 6-11 Brazilian power forward. He tried to front Nene to prevent him from getting the ball. There was a little contact. Billups went flying, as if he’d been shot. A referee dutifully called Nene for an offensive foul. Karl went ballistic.

“We knew we was switching and I figured at some point I’d probably be on him,” Billups explained. “They wanted to exploit the mismatch, which they went to, Nene versus me. I was just kind of fronting him and as soon as he grabbed me and pushed me, I’m gone.”

“He must have hit you really hard,” I said.

“Yeah,” Billups said, not quite able to suppress a smile. “I mean, my back is hurting, everything. I need a chiropractor, man.”

The Clippers are Billups’ eighth NBA team if you count the Nuggets only once but also count the Magic, for which he never played a game. Thursday, when the Clippers and Nuggets play a rematch in L.A., will be his 1,000th career game. He and the Nuggets’ Andre Miller, who will hit the milestone in the same game assuming both play the intervening games this week, will become the 107th and 108th players in NBA history to do so.

“It’s crazy,” Billups said. “When I was growing up, I just wished that I played one NBA game and had that jersey and take a picture of it so I could just tell people I played in the NBA. That’s the blessing that I’ve had. One thousand. Hopefully, I make it there. One thousand. Unbelievable. It’s humbling, man.”

Both times they traded him, the Nuggets had their reasons. Mostly financial, both times. But whenever people start railing about the lack of loyalty in the modern pro athlete, think about Chauncey Billups. Denver has not produced a better basketball player. He wanted to be here. The hometown team sent him away not once, but twice. It was just business.

The Clippers are now 11-6, in first place in the NBA’s Pacific Division. The king of Park Hill may get the last laugh yet.

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