Why did the nuggets trade earl boykins and julius hodge for steve blake?

Question

Why did they trade boykins, whos a great scorer and passer and can push the tempo, and hodge who is a young guard/foward for steve blake who is a 6-3 guard? I Dont get it? Boykins is one of the players i love to watch and i thought denver needs a tough rebounder? Why did they pick blake when they have like iverson and jr smith already?

Answer 1

They were trying to avoid luxury tax implications by cutting salary. Blake is a cheap but serviceable backup point guard. By all accounts, they would have preferred to dump Reggie Evans to save that money, but presumably could not find a taker.

People who are thinking they could have gotten more than Blake are missing part of the point; the problem would be to get more talent than Blake, but who aren't getting paid any more than Blake. That is the problem. Furthermore, there aren't many ways you can trade away more money than you get back. Notably:
- You can trade with a team under the salary cap. There are very few of those teams, and I can easily believe none of them wanted Boykins, and certainly weren't looking to give back anything interesting for him.
- You can trade with a team that has a traded player or injury exception that allows them to take the expensive player without giving anything back. That is what happened in this case; effectively they traded Hodge for Blake, and traded Boykins for nothing, enabled by an injured player exception Milwaukee received due to Bobby Simmons' injury

But the point being - very few teams in the league could take Boykins off their hands without giving back salary (which would have defeated the purpose). When you have fewer teams to deal with, there is less demand, and you aren't going to get as much back.

Answer 2

I've been trying to figure that out also as a Nuggets fan here in Denver. Boykins is a crowd favorite,he's averaging 15.3 points a game,Blake is only averaging just over 3 points a game.
Maybe the team is trying to send a message to the players that everyone is expendable in light of the recent affiliation that the Nuggets players had with the New Years disaster in downtown Denver after a night club celebration.
Of course Boykins and Hodge were not there,and Hodge just returned into the lineup after recovering from a shooting last year.
George Karl likes his team to have a "running" tempo and I noticed that in the last game ,the strategy was going to the basket more,instead of taking outside shots. The result was the lowest point total that the Nuggets had all season.
It will be interesting to see what the Nuggets decide to do with Kenyon Martin once he returns off the injury list.
They plan on using Blake as a "bench" guy to fill in time for J.R. Smith and Iverson. They plan on moving Iverson's position also once all the players return off of their suspensions according to an article I read about the trade.
I wasn't too happy about Andre Miller being traded to Philadelphia,he was really coming into his own this year and pushing his point total and rebounding up.
I think that the playing time factor had a lot to do with the trade,and Boykins never looked happy just coming in off the bench and filling in,I think he will get more playing time with the Bucks. Hopefully he will do well there . Once Carmello returns to the lineup,with J.R. and Iverson,playing time for Boykins would have diminished.
Hopefully the organization knows what they are doing.
Don't forget that Nene has seen more playing time recently,although I wish he would be more consistent,some nights he looks sluggish to me,other nights he looks like a completly different player once he gets going,but his energy level seems to happen in short bursts .
Najera and Kleija has also seen more playing time recently.
It looks as though everyone on the team is expendable,except for Carmello whom they signed for a long term contract.
Go Nuggets. !

Answer 3

a good flow on both elements. Blake will be requested to bypass the ball, which he's likely more suitable vulnerable to do than shoot, some thing Boykins would have difficulty doing. even as Carmelo comes back, he, Iverson, and Smith will take about 70% of the images, and Boykins is truly no longer as efficient. Blake will be there to distribute even as Karl strikes Iverson to SG for the period of a few possessions. And Boykins will be a good bench participant for the greenbacks even as they get Mo Williams and Redd healthful back. With Villanueva's damage, Boykins will provide an excellent offensive advance off the bench.

Answer 4

Though they neede a decent salary space and NBA consideratiosn, the Bucks also need a Guard to replace ailing Maurice Williams. It was also reported, you can read it in Yahoo!Sports, that when anthony would be back, the nuggets could not have three scorers which could prove to be a problem when they would choose their primary scorer, which would be Melo or AI, but for me, at least Earl could bloom to his full potential in Milwuakee which currently has injury problems and needs a consistent backcourt to be spearheaded by one of the most promising little guys to have ever played this game. I know its a bad deal, but it was for the better...

Answer 5

They needed salary cap space. But my reason is that when carmelo comes back to play with a.i., they need a DISTRIBUTOR...and i think steve blake fits the role perfectly. Boykins gets dimes, but he also likes to shoot. They'll have plenty of that when carmelo returns..

Answer 6

someone just beat me to the most logical answer.....
just to add, with the return of jr and the much awaited return of melo just around the corner, earl become expendable largely because the nuggets already has a trigger happy guard named allen so they don't need a trigger happy earl anymore.

Answer 7

I understand the cap space, and stuff, but couldn't thay have gotten a little more talent than Blake?