Great Article About Chauncey Billups

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/ ... 11/billups

I thought Chauncey would be one of those players who'd never reach the next level, but he finally turned his career around in Minnesota and Detroit. You have to admire how he WILLED himself to be a great player. Couple of more seasons like this, and he's a HOFamer, IMO.

If cats like Tim Thomas and Lamar Odom had that kind of desire, they'd be doing something instead of being known as underachievers.

Fantastic read, thanks for the heads up.

John C. Billups can make any team into a powerhouse. he is just that type of a competitor

Great read. Read it all the way through even while at work

Mitchell and Terrell, I guess they were great mentor to Billups. Inspirational life story...

Great read.

I'm glad that people are recognizing how good Billups is.

Glad to have a guy like that on board at Denver sounds like Iverson was a terrible influence on Melo and Smith im so glad he is gone now after hearing about that.

Great read. I found it yesterday and was really impressed. Usually local writers tend to exaggerate a bit, but this really is great story about guy who truly deserves it.

I think it's fair to say his whole career pre-Pistons has turned out to be a series of "hindsight is 20/20" moments as each team has given up on him or gone in a different direction for whatever reason. This one stands out though because he was on the cusp of the player he would soon become:

In the playoffs, against a loaded Dallas team, Chauncey averages 22 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.7 assists, and although the Wolves are swept, his timing is stellar. He's a free agent now, and learns he has a secret admirer: Detroit GM Joe Dumars. Dumars offers him $4.5 million, the mid-level exception, which the Timberwolves are willing to match. But there's a caveat: G.M. Kevin McHale tells him, "I have to be honest. Terrell's still our starter."

That's not to disrespect or take anything away from Terrell Brandon of course. He was a proven vet and once Mark Price was traded to Washington in 1995 he stepped into the starting role fulltime and established himself as a fine point guard for the next phase of his career. But his career came to a grinding halt due to injuries very soon after that while Billups' career has obviously taken off, so I would suggest it's a decision that Kevin McHale would like a mulligan on.

Great read! Thanks for the link! Go Nuggets!

Yes, very cool article. Billups has a long way behind him and finally earns what he deserves.

Yes, very cool article. Billups has a long way behind him and finally earns what he deserves.

It's a must-read for every college baller with NBA dreams. He dealt with setbacks, worked on his game, and look at the results.

Certainly a lot more inspirational than some of the players who come in and pout when they aren't handed everything on a silver plate the moment they enter the league.

A chiseled high school junior is attempting to inbound the ball underneath his own basket. He's trying not to panic, but this is the Colorado state championship game, and no one's open. The referee is signaling one, two, three … and the kid can't stand the thought of a five-second call. The house is packed because of him, because he's Denver's greatest schoolboy player ever, so an embarrassing turnover is unacceptable. Just being disorganized is unacceptable. He hates disorganized.

Suddenly, he notices the defender guarding the inbounds pass has turned his back to him. So 18-year-old Chauncey throws the ball off the defender's rear end, catches it, drop-steps and dunks with two hands. Chauncey has himself a bucket and an assist.

Karl calls a meeting to introduce Chauncey, who tells his new teammates, "Look, I'm here to win. I ain't here to do a lot of talking. I'll walk the walk, and hopefully y'all be the same way, and we'll be on the same page."

Next, they go over all of the team's plays. Chauncey nods, but, inside, he has a sick feeling. For instance, the Nuggets don't have an underneath-the-basket out-of-bounds play. This isn't high school. He can't throw the ball off someone's back and dunk it. What's going on here?

Except for the dunk part.

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I thought about that too when it happened.

Found another great articles about why the next stop for Billups should be the hall of fame.

Billups never averaged 20 and 10 -- not even for a month. He didn't play with the Mount Vernon slickness of Gus, doesn't have four rings like DJ, never put up triple-doubles like Fat; there was no signature move like Hardaway's crossover and he wasn't the unstoppable scorer like KJ -- but Billups' exceptional career puts him in a different strata than those dudes. It's obviously not his stats. There's a slew of guards that ended their careers with Billups' modest 15 and 6. Billups, though, has been a transformational player, a Real Franchise Player. With Chauncey, the Pistons were a staid Eastern Conference powerhouse. From 2003-2008, we entered every season mentioning the Pistons among a handful of contenders. When Detroit slung that rock between Goliath's eyes and knocked off the Hall Of Fame Lakers, Chauncey was most responsible. Every year after that, he was (or, at least, should have been) in the MVP discussion. The Pistons weren't the Pistons because of Sheed, Tay, Rip or Ben. They were the Pistons because of Billups. That's not to disparage what that squad meant to the sports notion of collective synergy -- it's meant to identify what was actually at work in Motown.

Then Joe Dumars decided to ship Billups to Denver. What happened? Detroit crumbled and Denver is now a contender. That's what's exceptional about Billups -- he only plays for contenders. Chauncey doesn't do run-of-the-mill, primarily because he is not run of the mill and Billups' teams take on his identity. That's what Real Franchise Players do. A Real Franchise Player can come to Denver and father a team with a known "lunatic fringe" two wins away from the organization's first appearance in an NBA Finals.

http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/v ... index.html