Nuggets Without Melo Are Beaten By Balanced Warriors 110-96

One of the only positives from this dismal loss in Oakland is that George Karl now knows what happens if Carmelo Anthony is benched and J.R. Smith is out due to an injury: the Nuggets become one of the very worst teams in the League and are not competitive with an ordinary losing team, in this case, the Golden State Warriors. Five Warriors had a dozen or more points, the Warriors picked apart what little defense the Nuggets had with 31 assists, and they also buried the Nuggets 16-8 on 3-point shots as they scored an easy win over the Nuggets 110-96. Thank goodness that Melo's wife having a baby is a rare event because, apparently, it means an automatic loss for Denver.

The game was more evidence that the Nuggets who do not usually start are both defensively and offensively challenged. Nene, Blake, Diawara, and Kleiza combined had 33 points on 11/34 shooting. Overall, the Nuggets shot .384 while the Warriors shot .441. Generally, a team can not possibly win an NBA game if it's accuracy is less than .400. The Warriors actually were slightly more accurate from long range than from short range. They were 16/34 or .471 from long range, whereas the Nuggets avoided a total rout by coming up with 8/23 from long range, which is a percentage of .348. DerMarr Johnson was 3/8 and Yakhouba Diawara was 2/4 from beyond the arc.

So it was Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, and players who have not been consistent offensively or defensively since at least the first of 2007 versus the explosive Warriors, whose style and level of play is similar to the Nuggets, but who have a much more balanced scoring attack. In this game, A.I. was far ahead of anyone on the court with 35 points on 12/25 shooting, whereas the Warriors had every one of the next highest 4 scorers.

PG Baron Davis, who just returned to action this past Monday after recovering from knee surgery and missing 13 games, has picked up where he left off as an efficient and three dimensional scoring threat. In his 8th year, Davis is having his most accurate shooting season ever and the second most ppg ever, with 20.5. He is also averaging an outstanding 8.6 assists per game. Although his 3-point shot is not as good as it was 5 years ago, it is still a decent .280. In this game Davis led the Warriors with 22 points on 7/15shooting and he also had 9 assists. By comparison, there were slim pickings for scoring on the Denver lineup, and A.I. had just 3 assists.

PF Al Harrington, who came to the Warriors in the January multi-player trade with the Pacers, is the kind of dependable, scoring PF that Nuggets fans would love to see on their team. In tonight's game Harrington had 20 points on 7/19 shooting, and he added 9 rebounds. The Nugget's sort of starting forward, and I say "sort of" because George Karl changes the lineup so much that the Nuggets don't even really have a true starting PF, was mysteriously absent from this game. Eduardo Najera played only 5 minutes off the bench and I have not seen anything yet to explain why he didn't play.

On the other hand, it is getting so these mysterious absences are not so mysterious anymore. It seems like every game now at least one Nugget is being severly shortchanged on playing time by George Karl. Had Najera played and done as well as he did recently in Indiana and in Milwaukee, this might have been a competitive game.

Rounding out the plentiful scoring attack that Denver fans can only dream of having was SF Stephen Jackson, who was 4/9 from downtown and who had 18 points, and SG Jason Richardson, who was 4/8 from downtown and who had 16 points overall. Center Andris Biedrins, who is from Latvia, had 15 rebounds and scored 12 points on efficent 6/8 shooting. All of his shots were layups. He does the layup and does it well. Unlike Camby, he didn't worry at all about whether he can shoot a bunch of jumpers in this game. If the Nuggets are forced to "blow up" their team to try their luck at getting a better crew, they would be lucky to end up with the type of players that the Warriors have, because they would fit in with the kind of fast offense that the Nuggets theoretically (or used to?) want to run.

And some kind of blow up in the off season is more and more looking like the only reasonable strategy for the Nuggets. The Nuggets need to keep Melo and A.I. and shuffle the rest of the lineup as much as possible, because time has almost run out on this experimental roster and it has not worked. The Nuggets are still not competitive with the top teams of the West. Denver needs to go back to the trading block to give A.I. something more than a warmed over Sixers caliber roster, and to give Melo some teammates who can take more advantage than the current ones of his increasing passing and rebounding. The type of mega trade that Indiana and Golden State were involved in is what I have in mind. Or, if you think the Nuggets are underperforming mostly because of the dizzying rotation and minutes played inconsistencies from George Karl, then the off-season objective will be to fire George Karl and make a smaller trade or two.

The Nuggets are now 28-29 and right on the verge of dropping out of the playoff lineup. If you factor in the estimated net 3 games they lost due to the 15 game Melo suspension and the 10 game J.R. Smith suspension, they would be 31-26, which would put them ahead of Kobe "Why can't you keep your elbow to yourself?" Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers, who have 4 forwards sitting out with injuries, were blown out by the lowly Bucks in Milwaukee tonight so at least we can say that the Nuggets are not the only team that is doing substantially worse than expected.

Reggie Evans dusted off the cobwebs and played 19 minutes. He was 1/2 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he had 11 rebounds and a block. Kleiza played 20 minutes and was 2/11, 1/5 on 3's, and 3/4 from the line for 8 points, and he had 10 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist. Diawara played 21 minutes and was 3/7 and 2/4 on 3's for 8 points, and he added a steal and a rebound.

Steve Blake played for 30 minutes and was 4/10 and 1/4 on 3's for 9 points, and he had 6 assists and 2 steals.

DerMarr Johnson, who most Nuggets fans thought would get more playing time during the J.R. Smith surgery recovery but instead was totally benched by Coach Scrooge, had to play in this one due to the shortage of bodies and had a truly decent showing. He played 29 minutes and was 6/16 and 3/8 from long range for 15 points, and he added 3 blocks, 2 rebounds, and an assist. Thank you very much Mrs. Anthony for having the baby, thus forcing Karl to play Johnson. This Johnson sitting on the bench constantly was really driving me up the wall. At least the rest of the NBA is reminded again that Johnson has some potential, so that now Denver might be able to include him in a big off-season trade.

Nene played 34 minutes and was 2/6 and 4/4 from the line for 8 points, and he had 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, and a block. The Nuggets overall had 11 steals, but the Warriors had 10.

Marcus Camby played for 30 minutes and was 3/8 and 3/5 from the line for 9 points, and he also had 14 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 assists, and 2 steals.

A.I. played virtually the entire game and was 12/25, 1/2 on 3's, and 10/14 from the line for 35 points, and he also had 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

The next game will be Friday, March 9 in Denver against the Pistons at 7 pm mountain time.