Fast, Balanced & Efficient Nuggets Defeat Cavaliers 105-93

After stupidly allowing themselves to be beat on a buzzer beater in Chicago Thursday night due to blown coverage of Tyrus Thomas, and after getting blown out in short order in Toronto Friday night, the Nuggets rested up and played one of their best games of the season in Cleveland in this one, with offensive balance and very smart shot selection probably the most remarkable features of the win. The Nuggets shot with an extremely impressive .597 percentage and played enough defense to hold the Cavaliers to .451 as they earned a road win over LeBron James and the Cavaliers 105-93.

The Nuggets may learn and change for the better more slowly and less smoothly than fans would like in this high speed world we live in, but they are overall moving in the right direction. As recently as a month ago, they could not have played this well and in this efficient way. They played with alot less shooting of themselves in the foot and with alot fewer shots taken by players who have no business taking them. They played with very good ball movement, yet with few turnovers, a style that Nuggets fans have been begging for but had largely given up hoping for. Despite hustling on defense and denying the slower Cavaliers alot of open looks, the Nuggets were called for only 10 fouls, less than half what is typical in an NBA game. Even more impressive was the 32 fast break points, the most in many moons.

The Nuggets led by just 55-53 at the half. Melo started out in the 1st quarter doing his duty to get the Nuggets on back on track following the disaster at Toronto. He had 13 of the 23 Denver points in the opening quarter. In the second quarter, it was time for Linas Kleiza fireworks; he had two threes, a regular jumper, and two layups for 12 points in the quarter. Not only did Kleiza rescue the Nuggets in the quarter from Iverson, Melo, and Camby simultaneously being pretty cold, he also showed a great mix of offense that shows that he is not just a streaky or lucky 3-point shooter who can't do anything else. In basketball hell, the Nuggets do not make the playoffs this year despite all their skills. Kleiza a few weeks ago rescued the Nuggets from basketball hell, and in this game he played a major role in preventing them from going back to hell.

In the third, Nene came out keen on stuffing it in over and over up close, which is exactly what the Nuggets need to offset Camby's expensive jump shooting habit. The Nuggets played the quarter virtually error free, which was as refreshing as ice water on a hot day. After an offensive foul was called on Melo, the refs soon called one on LeBron James as well. I kept thinking James was going to explode, but he too finished the night without resembling Kobe Bryant at all: he had just 18 points on 8/19 shooting, and he had only 3 rebounds. He did have, though, 8 assists.

The 4th quarter was J.R. Smith time, who was getting only 10 minutes a game until his great game Friday during garbage time in Toronto got him sprung from the George Karl doghouse, so that in this game he buried 2 threes, had 10 points, and almost by himself shut down the Cavaliers with an amazing 3 steals in one quarter, the 4th. Smith insured the win and completed an improbable but impressive full team effort which shut down any hope for a LeBron explosion and a Cavalier comeback.

Allen Iverson played almost the entire game and was clearly the brains behind this operation; he had 12 of the Nuggets 29 assists and had 18 points on 7/13 shooting. George Karl has recently praised A.I.'s leadership of the Nuggets. Neither nature nor basketball teams like a vacuum, and the Nuggets were drifting with inadequate leadership in January and early February, so A.I., with both his basketball skill and his basketball intelligence, filled in the big leadership hole left by George Karl himself, and to a lessor extent by Melo.

I think George Karl, who has made positive statements about his team to the press as all coaches must, is actually very worried about the ultimate fate of this experiment otherwise known as the Nuggets. But in the last few weeks, Kleiza has shown that he can hit shots and play some defense, and Nene has come back almost all the way from his knee surgery and has shown a healthy appetite for lighting up the scoreboard. So now we know that the talent level of the Nuggets is without a doubt high, but getting all the pieces to work together is kind of complicated and not at all a certain thing this season or even next season. So I think Karl believes that the experiment could go horribly wrong and make the Nuggets into a big loser rather than a big winner, not because Melo and A.I. can not get along, which was forecast by too many observers, but because the rest of the team never learns how to play with the Melo-A.I. combination. So, being worried as heck, Karl has resorted to being very scrooge-like in his minute allocations, and generally has been playing not to lose rather than taking on enough risk to see if the team can beat the top teams of the West by tapping the full potential of the roster as a whole. As a result, the Nuggets have been beating almost all of the losing teams but losing to almost all of the winning teams.

Although the recent win over the Suns and this win over the Cavaliers proves that Karl's very conservative approach can occasionally produce a win against a winning team, I still don't see how it could possibly work in a playoff series against a very good team.

Melo, apparently, leads only generally, with his dependable but not explosive playing, and he has not yet figured out a way to come out sounding all-knowing and impressive in the newspapers and on television. When he is interviewed, he sounds like he is still in College, and, come to think of it, he still plays mostly like he is still in his carefree Syracuse University days, except that his teammates and opponents are older and alot more complex than his teammates at Syracuse were. Meanwhile, since A.I. actually is practically all-knowing about basketball and the Nuggets, he doesn't have to pose as knowing things when he is interviewed, and he knows how to deflect the obnoxious questions of interviewers, whereas Melo falls into interviewer traps and frequently sounds clumsy answering questions.

The now famous press interview where A.I. used the word practice over and over again when he was responding to Larry Brown's public criticisms of his practice habits, is pointed to, by those who doubt A.I., as an example of his being foolish, but, like a good novel where things change over time, that interview over time has more and more actually seemed to show how smart A.I. is, not how dumb he is. Larry Brown was criticizing his best player about practice, but someone as good as A.I., by definition, does not need as much practice as most players do in order to play extremely well.

Melo, unlike A.I., has not yet shown much ability to directly motivate teammates either in practice or during games. And he definitely has not learned how to become the right hand man of the Coach, which the other players see as one of the most important positions a player can obtain if he wants to be able to lead them. A.I., following his years dealing with one of the toughest to deal with coaches of our era, Larry Brown, has found dealing with George "Scrooge" Karl a piece of cake by comparison, so he has quickly settled himself in as the right hand man of George Karl. Iverson will be the guy the other Nuggets look to for leadership, if they want to look for it, for the rest of this season, because A.I. can sometimes explode and almost by himself dictate the outcome of a game, because he is the Nugget's effective representative to the outside world, with all it's threatening and half-crazy sports writers out to get them, and because he has become the player the Coach most trusts. Melo wants whatever is best for the Nuggets as a whole, so he will be happy with A.I. leading because that is clearly what is best for the team this season.

I am hoping that A.I. can speak up some for players who are rotting on the bench, in the doghouse. For example, if J.R. Smith ends up in the doghouse again, I hope and expect that A.I. will help get him out. Close games tend to be won by explosive players, and J.R. is clearly the second explosive player the Nuggets have to go along with Iverson. Kleiza is developing into a possible third explosive player for the Nuggets. With explosive players, you almost always have to put up with turnovers that more cautious but less productive players will not get, but it can be very worth it when you are playing a winning team on the road and you need someone to play explosively rather than just carefully to have a chance to win.

The last time I checked, the Nuggets in the playoffs are going to have to win games on the road against big-time winning teams, so you need both A.I. and J.R. in there late in those games, just as they were in this one. You keep your fingers crossed that they explode on the scoreboard and get a few steals and assists to offset their turnovers. If it works, you have a chance, as Iverson likes saying, "to prove everyone wrong". If it doesn't work, you lose by more than if you don't try it, but who cares? A loss is a loss. If you play it safe by having J.R. on the bench in those games, you have fewer turnovers, but almost no chance of winning those road playoff games, until and unless Melo gets a good 3-point shot or until and unless he learns how to explode in games. The way things are going, you might be waiting a long time for those Melo things.

Melo returned to recent form after his bad game in Toronto; he was dependable without being remotely explosive. At the opposite extreme, Kobe Bryant defines explosiveness. With his 4 straight games of 50 points or more, he has left Melo well behind in the race for top scorer and, more importantly, has left Nuggets fans wondering if their all-star is only a second-class all-star, unable to explode to make absolutely sure his team will win a game. Then again, Melo is only 22 years old and seems to be still living in his golden NCAA Championship year, when he had a bunch of high energy and skilled teammates, and an extremely good coach, that made winning the March Madness National Championship almost easy. And it sure as heck was alot more fun than the Nuggets season this year has been.

Steve Blake played 31 minutes and was 3/6, 0/2 on 3's, and 1/2 from the line for 7 points, and he had 4 assists and 3 rebounds.

Nene played 31 minutes and was 9/12 and 3/7 from the line for 21 points, and he had 9 rebounds, 2 steals, and a block.

Kleiza played 26 minutes and was 6/10 and 2/4 on 3's for 14 points, and he had an assist and a rebound.

J.R. Smith played 23 minutes and was 5/9 and 3/6 on 3's for 13 points, and he had 3 steals, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists. Smith played extremely well and succeeded at proving that the coach should not think of benching him or mostly benching him for the foreseeable future. I think at this point the idea that J.R. Smith should be benched just because he has a few turnovers or a few off balance shots in a game is plain goofy. If he has a bad game, tell him not to be more careful next game and then see if he does or doesn't offset his mistakes with his scores, steals, assists, and rebounds.

Camby returned from back spasms and played for 34 minutes. He was 1/3 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he had 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, and a steal.

Melo played for 39 minutes and was 12/19 and 3/6 from the line for 27 points, and he also had 5 rebounds, and 2 assists.

A.I. played virtually the whole game and was 7/13, 0/2 on 3's, and 4/6 from the line for 18 points, and he had 12 assists and 4 rebounds.

The next game will be tomorrow, March 26, in Detroit to play the Pistons at 5:30 pm mountain time.