Karl's Tight Ship Sails Past Blazers 107-99

They say every dog has it's day, meaning even the wrong strategy works on occasion. Captain George "Scrooge" Karl has been running a tighter and tighter ship over the past few weeks, as the turnovers and losses to winning teams have piled up and the Nuggets have looked more and more hopeless while losing almost all their games against the good teams. He now usually plays just 7 or 8 players in a game, with everyone Karl thinks might do more harm than good gathering rust on the bench. Although such a strategy will and has generally failed against the top teams of the West, who can simply ramp up the pressure with their great shooters and their defensive skills, and wear out the overworked small group of Nuggets carrying the load for the team, in a home game against a young and rebuilding team such as the Trailblazers, such a conservative, limited strategy might work.

In this particular game, the strategy did work, as the Nuggets lead the whole way and played to not lose more than to win against a team where such a basic and limited approach was possible. The Nuggets hustled on defense a little and controlled the extremely poor shooting Blazers in the first half, and had a commanding 55-37 lead at the half. After the Blazers regrouped at the intermission and came out ready to hit some shots, they went to work to try to get themselves back in the game. Zach Randolph, a 25 year old PF who plays like a SF and who has a decent jump shot, came alive after a miserable first half, and he was assisted by a large number of other Blazers. When SF Ime Udoka buried a 3 with 15 seconds left in the 3rd quarter, the Nuggets large half time lead had been reduced to 4, and fans and George Karl himself wondered if the playing to not blow it strategy might itself result in a loss.

However, as in the win over the Kings on Sunday, and as in other recent wins against losing teams, the Nuggets bent in the second half but they did not break. A.I. drove to the hoop and drew a foul with 1 second left in the 3rd. After he made the first free throw, he missed the second, but Nene grabbed the ball and instantly hoisted a turnaround jumper that went in. The officials had to check whether the shot had left Nene's hands in time before time ran out, and luckily it had by a fraction of a second. So it was 78-71 Nuggets after 3 quarters.

Iverson's jumper to start the 4th quarter made it 80-71 Nuggets, and the playing not to lose strategy was back in business. Iverson took command of preserving the win, which he understood to be a must win given the Nugget's tough schedule the rest of the way. The shrewd veteran Iverson has correctly concluded that he can handle making sure wins against losing teams are preserved if he hustles, but he is still waiting for something big to break, such as Melo to explode for 40 or more points, or George Karl finally having enough courage to put in, and enough coaching skill to motivate, players who are now rusting on the bench, when the Nuggets play a really good team and have to have more bodies. The Suns are coming to town this Saturday, so maybe something big will break then. One can always hope.

With Iverson, who had 10 assists, running things, Randolph and the Blazers were unable to get any closer than 6 points behind in the 4th, and the Nuggets won the game 107-99 and evened their win-loss record at 31-31 with 20 games left in the season. The Nuggets held their turnovers to 15, which is not bad for them, and they had just 17 personal fouls while the Blazers had 24. Each team had 12 steals.

Now Denver can become a winning team again, barely, if they can defeat the injury battered Lakers on Thursday. If they do, both the Nuggets and the Lakers will be one game over .500.

PF LaMarcus Aldridge had a career high 17 rebounds for the Blazers, as well as 24 points on 11/17 shooting. Aldridge also had 4 of the 8 blocks that Portland had. Zach Randolph finished with 26 points on 10/27 shooting.

Marcus Camby had 7 blocks and has now made rebounding look almost as fun as scoring to the other Nuggets. Every Nugget who played had at least 4 rebounds; Camby led with 10 and Melo had 8.

The Nuggets, apparently, have been down that rough "lose your poise and the game slips away" road so many times, that they knew enough to get off that road this time before they actually lost. A.I. is an expert on this subject, since he has played his whole career on teams with no depth and questionable coaching, which are teams that don't have enough fuel to play four solid quarters and are always in danger of losing even when leading in the second half. A.I.'s aggressive drives to the hoop, his ability to draw fouls and make all his free throws, and recently his key rebounding during those times when the other team is chipping and chipping away at the lead, have not only preserved wins for the Nuggets, but have taught other Nuggets including Melo how you preserve a lead, or at least how to preserve a game if you lose most of your lead. Iverson is showing that can bend without breaking; you don't have to lose when you run low on gas. A.I. is now George Karl's unofficial coaching assistant; he picks up where the limitations of the coaching staff leave off.

In this game there was no Reggie Evans around to turn the ball over several times to various Blazers, leading to fast break Blazer scores. There was no Diawara to miss a bunch of 3-point shots, and perhaps also to get too many shooting fouls. And there was no desperate DerMarr Johnson to hoist up a jumper at every opportunity, to try to earn more playing time. Tonight, the Nuggets didn't need the offensive rebounding of Evans, the defense of Diawara, or the potential 3-point shooting of Johnson, so they didn't need to risk their mistakes, either. Johnson was not needed in this one because the Blazers, like the Nuggets, are not a good 3-point shooting team, and they made only 4/10 of them.

The Blazers squad, a work in progress, was unable to put enough pressure on the overworked Nuggets, at either end of the court, to either wear them out completely or to force them to lose their poise and concentration. If a team can wear out or apply alot of pressure in a 4th quarter on the Nuggets, the Nuggets have a tendency to go into a free fall, where the turnovers pile up quickly, the top scorers are out of gas or unable to shake double coverage, and so the worst shooters on the team end up taking and missing way too many of the shots. You might think of these free falls as "everything falls apart time". This is one way the Nuggets have been losing their games against winning teams. Earlier in the season, these everything falls apart times were how they lost more than 10 games, most of them in Denver, despite 4th quarter leads.

So Coach George "Scrooge" Karl has become more and more defensive and conservative in how he manages these hard to manage Nuggets, which makes it very unlikely that the Nuggets will lose to a losing team, such as the Trailblazers, but also very unlikely that they will beat a winning team that has what it takes to wear out and disrupt the Nugget's players who are are playing too many minutes. I guess you can't be completely negative about such a strategy, because I myself realized a few days ago that the Nugget's turnovers and unbalanced offense were getting so bad that the team might completely collapse and start losing to the losing teams as well as to the winning teams.

With Karl's current strategy, you have a kind of triage for a wounded team. At least we can say that the blood is no longer gushing out and the patient is stabilised. So now Nuggets fans are waiting to find out if Karl and the other coaches can come up with a way, when the Nuggets are playing a winning team, and especially one of the top teams in the West, to make full use of and get top performance out of players such as J.R. Smith, who returned a little quicker than expected from the knee injury and the surgery, rebounding specialist Reggie Evans, and potential open shot makers DerMarr Johnson and Yakhouba Diawara. We are wondering whether Mr. Karl, who deserves some sympathy given how complicated all the suspensions, trades, injuries, and player inconsistencies have made managing the Nuggets this season, will be able to come out of his defensive crouch, and finally pull a strategy out of his sleeve that has at least one chance in hell of producing some wins against teams like the Jazz, the Spurs, the Suns, and the Mavericks. Because a duck and cover strategy will take you only so far.

Despite his career game two days ago, Kleiza had his minutes cut back to 16, and was 2/3 and 0/1 on 3's for 4 points, and he had 6 rebounds. Najera played 27 minutes and was 3/4 and 0/1 on 3's for 6 points, and he had 4 rebounds, 3 steals, and an assist.

Steve Blake played 29 minutes and was 3/7, 0/2 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he had 5 assists and 5 rebounds.

J.R. Smith returned from a knee injury and surgery and played for 14 minutes. He was 1/6 and 1/3 on 3's for 3 points, and he had a rebound and a steal.

Nene played 30 minutes and was 5/10 and 2/3 from the line for 12 points, and he had 6 rebounds, a block, and a steal. Among his shots, Nene hit 2 out of 4 jumpers.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 6/12 and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he added 10 rebounds, 7 blocks, 2 assists, and a steal. Camby hit 3 of 8 attempted jump shots.

Melo played for 39 minutes and was 10/22 and 9/12 from the line for 29 points, and he also had 8 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal. In this game Melo went to the hoop often, and took only 6 midrange jumpers. He missed 5 of those.

A.I. played virtually the whole game and was 8/20, 1/1 on 3's, and 14/16 from the line for 31 points, and he also had 10 assists, 5 steals, 6 rebounds, and a block.

The next game will be Thursday, March 15 in Denver to play the Lakers at 8:30 pm mountain time. This is a late start cable television game.