The Nuggets are not going to be able to win a championship with JR Smith playing a significant role on the team. He needs to mature before he will be a contributor on a championship team and the Nuggets would be better served by trading him for a big man, a solid role player, and salary cap relief next year than they would be by keeping him on the team.
This is the trade (or some variant of it) that I absolutely want to see- JR and Malik Allen to the Nets for Tony Battie and Courtney Lee:
http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=yl5twwd
The Nuggets get two quality role players and do not lose anything on the court by giving up JR. The Nets get a bonafide scorer in JR and the chance to avoid becoming the worst team in NBA history. They are in full salary dump mode so they can try to sign two guys to max contracts this summer and while JR would cost the Nets ~$4.8mil more next year than Courtney Lee, setting the NBA single season record for losses is not a way to attract premier free agents. Besides, if the Nets still want to cut salary, JR and his contract are still going to be a wanted commodity and they could move him before/during when they start trying to sign free agents. This seems like a win-win trade for both teams and I really hope that the Nuggets could find a way to get it done.
That's the gist of the post- the rest of it here is just my reasoning for the trade that you don't need to read if it's tl;dr.
As a side note I've been reading Denver Stiffs for a long time but I haven't posted until now because I only recently discovered the magic of the ESPN trade machine and this particular trade.
The primary motivation for this trade is that -even as well as he has played recently- having JR on our team right now is not going to help us win a NBA title. The dude has the tools to be an All Star but he doesn't have the mental toughness to be an All Star OR even to be a solid role player right now. He's still young and he can work on his mental game but I don't see him learning championship-level toughness on this Denver Nuggets team before his contract is up at the end of next season.
The Nuggets do not need JR to win the title. Ty Lawson can do most of the things JR did last year that made him valuable in the Nuggets Western Conference Finals run. While Ty doesn't have JR's offensive polish (can you call it polish?) to create his own shot consistently and he doesn't finish as well as JR does I think the Nuggets have the offensive firepower to win games without JR's 15 points/game now that Carmelo is back. JR was suspended for the first few games of the season and the Nuggets did well without him until they got worn down from only having 7 guys who could give them quality minutes
Courtney Lee would replace JR in the rotation and I honestly think he'd be a more useful piece on a Nuggets championship team than JR. Last year in the playoffs as a rookie, Lee played with composure and was a solid role player on the Orlando team that went to the Finals. His game is really similar to Arron Afflalo's: he's got the same desire to play D, same ability to knock down the corner 3, and same solid basketball IQ. Getting Courtney Lee would seriously be like cloning Afflalo and I think having two Afflalo's would be a good thing.
Tony Battie is an experienced big man who is comfortable coming off the bench and he'd be a legit 4th big on the team. He could give the Nugs 10+ minutes per game of solid D and rebounding whenever we need it and he even knocks down 70% of his free throws.
The last thing the Nuggets gain with this trade is that Battie's contract comes off the books next year. This year the Nuggets are above the tax line by ~$5.4mil and that's gonna cost them $5.4mil in tax PLUS ~$4.5mil in money that they would have gotten if they were under the tax. Take a look here - that all adds up to ~$10mil that the Nuggets organization is just gonna have to go without this year. But we'd be in a better place next year if we had Battie's expiring contract instead JR's. The salary cap+luxury tax is expected to drop and as Andrew pointed out in the KMart-for-Shaq post, the Nuggets do not have any salary cap wiggle room next season. Trading JR for an expiring contract and a useful piece could be a boost for the Nuggets in the future as well as the present.
Plus I think Kiki still owes the Nuggets for including 3 (three!?!?) first-rounders in the Kenyon sign-and-trade.
