Denver Nuggets summer links: Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Emmanuel Mudiay and the best Nuggets of all time

We’ve officially entered the dog days of the Denver Nuggets’ calendar year. It’s mid-August. It’s hot. And not much is happening with regards to the Mile High City’s lone professional basketball squad. There are, however, a small number of relevant Nuggets-related stories that have continued to percolate across the Web, which I’ll try and document on a weekly basis throughout the summer here at BSNDenver.com. Below is a codified list of those most pertinent articles from this past week…

First up, a few videos. NBA.com won’t let me embed them here so you’ll have to follow this link to see a diary of Emmanuel Mudiay leading up to the 2015 NBA Draft as well as this link to see a recap of the Nuggets’ best plays from last season. The 2014-15 campaign was certainly a frustrating one from nearly every standpoint imaginable, however the nature of the NBA allows for some incredible plays throughout the season regardless of how good or bad your team is as a whole. Even the Minnesota Timberwolves had their fair share of highlights from this past year.

Speaking of videos and Emmanuel Mudiay, HoopsHype.com recently compared No. 2 overall pick D’Angelo Russell and Mudiay based strictly on their play at Summer League this year in Las Vegas. Mudiay certainly had the more impressive showing one month ago, but was that enough for HoopsHype to rank him as the better overall prospect at this point? You’ll have to watch the video to find out.

Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo!Sports.com is revealing his top-five players from every NBA franchise and this past week covered the Denver Nuggets. Dan Issel, Alex English and David Thompson unsurprisingly made the cut, however the addition of Carmelo Anthony and omission of Lafayette Lever are likely to irk a decent faction of the old-school fanbase. Here’s what Dwyer had to say with regards to each of those players:

F: Carmelo Anthony. Nuggets fans might not enjoy being reminded of Melo’s place in the team’s history, he did angle and threaten his way into a trade to the New York Knicks after all, but it’s hard to ignore his contributions. The addition of Carmelo (alongside Andre Miller and Marcus Camby) helped put the Nuggets back in the playoffs in 2004 after a nine-year absence, and he wouldn’t miss the postseason with the team in the six seasons that followed. Anthony (at nearly 25 a game) remains the franchise’s third-leading overall scorer, and this franchise has boasted a whole heck of a lot of scorers.

The lack of a lead guard and absence of Lafayette “Fat” Lever may rankle some, but I chose Simpson’s seven years over Lever’s six (with averages of 17 points per game alongside 7.6 rebounds and 7.5 assists). Lever also did his work on teams with much faster paces, amping up said stats, but it’s an absolute coin flip decision between the two. You can’t go wrong with either.

In somewhat relevant but also not entirely trustworthy news, Eric Pincus of BasketballInsiders.com is reporting the Nuggets do plan on waiving Kostas Papanikolaou eventually:

The Nuggets have 15 guaranteed players – Papanikolaou non-guaranteed expected to be waived, also Erick Green $100k g. @BBallInsiders

— Eric Pincus (@EricPincus) August 11, 2015

We’ve heard contradictory rumors of Papanikolaou being waived and-or not waived for a while now. But as of now he’s still a Nugget and until we get absolute confirmation that he’s no longer a member of the Nuggets family I’m going to go ahead and not put too much stock into these types of tweets.

In unrelated basketball news, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment is holding a sports equipment drive on Aug. 29 at various locations across the Denver-metropolitan area. This is an excellent chance to donate all that unused junk scattered about your garage for the purpose of helping others, so if you’re even remotely close to the capital around this time be sure and donate if possible.

Finally, The Denver Post’s Christopher Dempsey wrote a pretty interesting piece on former No. 5 overall pick, the infamous Nikoloz Tskitishvili this Sunday. Here are some brief snippets from the article:

Nikoloz Tskitishvili is trying to convince his lunch guest at the Hard Rock Hotel that he should get another chance in the NBA, listing the reasons this time will be different.

“I just turned 32, but I’m better,” he said. “I’m better at this age. I got stronger. I’ve got confidence. I got smarter.”

Nikoloz Tskitishvili.

The name is synonymous with draft bust.

A Nuggets-centric website in 2014 warned: Is Jusuf Nurkic the next Nikoloz Tskitishvili?

Nurkic was not.

And, as Tskitishvili admits, he did little in his three seasons in Denver to convince anyone he belonged on an NBA court. He averaged 3.2 points and 1.9 rebounds and shot 30 percent in 143 games. He was 19 years old, a 7-footer lean and not close to being ready mentally and physically for the NBA when the Nuggets drafted him. Thirteen years later, he still carries the burden of failed expectations.

This is a must read for any Nuggets fan young or old. “Skita,” as he’s most commonly referred to across the Internet, was one of the biggest draft busts in Nuggets history and has become a paradigm for amateur basketball analysts in predicting future European busts ever since. As Dempsey mentions above, even as recently as a year ago Skita was (quite erroneously, I might add) compared to Jusuf Nurkic by a Nuggets blog leading up to the 2014 NBA Draft. I’m sure his name was also mentioned in connection with No. 4 overall pick, Kristaps Porzingis, in the months leading up to this year’s draft.

As I noted recently, the Nuggets do in fact need help at the center position, however with 17 players currently under contract for next season Denver is hardly in a position to be handing out more deals. But if they did, if the Nuggets somehow cleared up a roster spot or two, how would you view a potential signing (or rather re-signing) of Tskitishvili? Would you be willing to give the No. 5 overall pick a shot at redemption or is his consonant-laden name simply too painful a memory to rekindle? Feel free to divulge your feelings on this matter in the comments section below.