Vincent Yarbrough and Junior Harrington

[YourFriendGannon]

I remember tuning in to a Nuggets game as a fan of the other team 20 years ago, seeing these 2 in the starting lineup and saying to myself, “Who the hell are these guys? I mean, I know Tsikitshvili quite well...” This was no fluke either. It turns out Vincent Yarbrough and Junior Harrington combined to start 90 games that season. They weren’t nominal starters who happened to be bit players for a tank. 42% of their starts they played more than 30 minutes with Harrington proving to be a big upgrade over Kenny Satterfield.

Yarbrough and Harrington each played 35 minutes the game I watched. Unsurprisingly the Nuggets failed to reach 80 points, while Juwan Howard may have present day anger management issues stemming from spending part of his prime on this squad. If you are a Nuggets fan in your mid-30s or older, you probably recall this was not the worst team in franchise history. But it did feature the most obscure starting duo any non-expansion team has ever featured over half a season.

 

[YourFriendGannon]

Later that year the Nuggets drafted Carmelo and later traded him for Jamal Murray, leading them to a title.

 

[HurricaneDij39]

Goddamn I got to get my Nuggets writeup completed in the next week.

 

[trojanfan12]

Goddamn I got to get my Nuggets writeup completed in the next week.

Yeah, you've got like 11 people waiting with bated breath.

 

[tlance]

Later that year the Nuggets drafted Carmelo and later traded him for Jamal Murray, leading them to a title.

Murray was one of the picks they got from the Melo trade?

I did not realize that.

 

[YourFriendGannon]

Murray was one of the picks they got from the Melo trade?

I did not realize that.

It was a pick swap. So Ujiri got the rights to move up, what ended up being from 9th to 7th. Then when he got the Toronto job he traded Bargnani for the Knicks’ pick of that draft. If not for the swap, Murray could conceivably have been picked by his home province’s team or more realistically by the guard needy Kings at 8.