Renaldo Balkman

Renaldo Balkman is officially my favorite player in the NBA. Not only does he have dreads, look like a pirate, cheer louder for his team than the Nuggets dancers but he can flat out play. Balkman is an energetic, game changing defender that can guard anyone on the floor - from PG to C. He is quick enough to play the perimeter yet, tall enough to cover bigs. He reminds me of a skinnier version of Kenyon Martin. His offensive rebounding is unmatched by ANYONE on the Nuggets. We are among the worst offensive rebounding teams in the league and Balk changes all that when he is in. The Nuggets outrebounded the Clipper 17 to 5 tonight and I'll tell you that it wasn't because of luck. I saw the Pirate out dual Camby THREE times for an offensive board and we all know Camby is one of the leagues best defensive rebounders. That's saying something. Per 36 minutes, Renaldo averages around five offense boards..... He's not a shooter by any means but for some reason he is very sneaky on offense. He constantly gets wide open lay ups due to the fact that his defender loses or forgets about him. Pirates were always known to be sneaky....

At least Balkman is (gasp!) finally logging the minutes he deserves. If it wasn't for the pig not knowing what talent is then Balkman would be a Denver Metro household name by now. George Karl has to be one of the worst personnell coaches in the league. I mean how you start Johan Petro over Balkman? Petro statistically has the worst fouls per minute ratio in the league and doesn't offer anything on offense. Balkman brings the energy and toughness that gets the team going. It's funny because Balkman is better than Najera and yet, Karl used to give Eddie Naj 25 minutes per game. Pathetic. If Karl can't find a way to log him minutes then he isn't doing his job. Here's an idea George - how about you play Jones and Kleiza less and play RB more? Wow that was hard to figure out.

It was a Balk party tonight folks! Here's Balkmans stat line: 22 pts, 11 rebs, 2 stls. It's his intangibles that allowed us to win tonight. The Clippers are the slowest team in the league and Balkman burned through the team with his speed. He made the Clippers play into our game and they struggled to keep up. With Melo and Chauncey not shooting well tonight, we could have easily lost to the Clippers without Balkmans presence.

If this team wants to go deep into the playoffs then were going to need a healthy dosage of the Pirate.