Denver Nuggets won the Ty Lawson trade with Houston Rockets this season

Things can change in a hurry in the NBA, and they have for former Denver Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson. The speedy guard is putting the pedal to the metal on his way to NBA irrelevancy and it’s tough to watch.

During Lawson’s 416 career regular season games for Denver, he started nearly 70 percent of the time. He came off the bench just three times in 271 games after becoming the team’s full-time starter ahead of the 2011-12 season. He was the engine that drove the Nuggets offense under head coaches George Karl and Brian Shaw. And then Lawson helped run himself out of town with an assortment of personal and legal issues.

When the Nuggets finally traded Lawson to the Houston Rockets on July 20, 2015 for a lottery protected first-round pick and a handful of end of the bench players – they were heavily criticized and rightfully so. The only player that remains from that trade in Denver is Kostas Papanikolaou, who was waived before training camp and then brought back out of necessity for wing depth. Dealing Lawson was supposed to help accelerate the Nuggets rebuild, but the trade was mostly a dud. And while the draft pick may come in handy – it only conveys if Houston makes the playoffs.

On the other side, Lawson was supposed to be the piece that shored up Houston’s point guard position for run at the championship. He was supposed to provide James Harden and Dwight Howard with some relief. Instead, like the deal was for Denver, Lawson has mostly been a dud. Former head coach Kevin McHale benched Lawson after Houston’s miserable start – and then McHale was fired on Nov. 18th. Interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff followed McHale’s lead and has kept Lawson in his role off the bench, but Lawson has yet to run with that role.

Before the season, Lawson joked on Twitter that he’d score 1,000,000 points against the Nuggets this season, and in the same pictured post called out Nuggets Team President Josh Kroenke and General Manager Tim Connelly for being “bad owners and gm’s [sic].”

But for some reason, it has been the Rockets that have brought out the absolute best in the Nuggets. Denver won the season series against Houston in 3-0 fashion. No small feat for a Nuggets team that has been dealt with a rash of injuries on their way to a 10-14 record.

Meanwhile, the Rockets can thank the Nuggets for three of their 13 losses as they sit just 12-13 on the season, but in seventh place in the Western Conference.

While the Nuggets have struggled on the offensive end this season, 0-11 when they don’t score over 100 points, everything seemed to work when going against the Rockets’ porous defense.

In the three match ups, Denver exceeded their season total of 97.5 points per game by averaging 108.6 points per game vs. Houston.

On the defensive side, the Nuggets give up 102.7 points per game on the season, but surrendered an average of just 97.0 against a Rockets offense that averages 104.4 points per game on the season.

That’s where Lawson was supposed to be a help, on the offensive end. But he’s averaging just 6.4 points in 26.2 minutes per game to go along with just 4.3 assists. In addition to his low scoring totals, Lawson can’t shoot straight as he’s mired in a shooting slump to the tune of 33.8 percent on the season – a career low and way off his career mark of 46.2 percent. Lawson also isn’t drawing fouls at the same rate, he’s going to the line just 2.1 times per game and shooting, a career low, 68.6 percent from the free throw line.

And how did Lawson do against the Nuggets? In three games he shot 4-22 from the field, including 3-10 in Houston on opening night, 0-7 in his first return to Pepsi Center and 1-5 last night. He averaged 28 minutes in the three games vs. Denver and shot just 18.2 percent from the field and 25 percent from 3-point land.

Lawson scored just 14 points against the Nuggets this season, coming short of his goal of 1 million by 999,986 points. The Nuggets won the Lawson trade, but really there are no winners here as Lawson needs to resurrect his career and the Nuggets don’t have much to show for his departure – unless you consider the addition by subtraction.