Revisiting the currently one-sided Iverson for Billups trade

Thus far the Allen Iverson for Chauncey Billups trade is looking one-sided in favor of the Denver Nuggets.

Billups is playing MVP caliber basketball while AI has been below average. Why would Joe Dumars make such a foolish blunder? I still cannot figure that out.

And don't start talking about "salary cap space". You can stow that patter. Besides Shaquille O'Neal -- and he had Hollywood aspirations -- what other significant free agent transfer signing has occured in the salary cap era? I can't think of any. Oh, I can think of a lot of teams who have cleared "space" for players who never came... the Clippers for Kobe, the Bulls for Duncan. That's about all these exercises ever amount to. "Covering fire" for the owners real agenda -- clear the books of some hefty labor costs. In fact, I think all this "clearing space for LeBron" nonsense is going to be looked back upon as what it was all along -- costcutting in hard economic times.

And therefore I'm afraid all Detroit has done by trading Billups is officially slam its championship window shut. That's kind of stupid if you ask me. In basketball windows don't open that often unless you wear Kelly Green or Purple and Gold. Sure, lots of fans think they do. But they don't.

The fact is, in basketball, rebuilding sucks. Free agency? The lottery? Good luck. Basically, rebuilding in basketball means you wait around and hope that Lady Luck kisses you again someday. All you can do in the meantime is put the pieces in place so that if and when she does you are ready to accept her advances... like Ainge was in Boston. That's about all you can do.