Pistons Roll Over Imploding Nuggets 95-82

The Nuggets played poorly in many respects, and the Pistons rolled over them easily, 95-82. The game was such a mismatch that the Pistons took and missed a bunch of lazy ill-advised jump shots, and didn't even bother to beat the Nuggets on the boards, though they probably could have had they thought it was necessary. The Piston's accuracy was only .427, but the Nugget's was a miserable .377, and in front of the home crowd no less. Ouch. The Nuggets piled up 19 turnovers, which included the Pistons stealing the ball away 9 times. Ouch again.

The Pistons are an extremely good road team this year. They are 19-10 on the road, and they are the only team in the Eastern Conference which has any kind of winning record on the road. Overall, only the Mavericks, the Suns, and the Spurs have a slightly better road record than the Pistons. The Nuggets are 13-14 on the road, good enough for 6th best in the Western Conference and 7th best in the League. This particular road win was probably one of the easiest of the year for the Pistons.

The Pistons starting center, Chris Webber, limited his jump shots to 4 and made 3 of them. Overall, he had 20 points on 9/11 shooting, along with 9 rebounds. With A.I. being continually double and triple teamed, and with Anthony having one of the worst shooting nights of his entire career, it didn't matter that SG Richard Hamilton was only 5/17, that PG Chauncy Billups was only 6/17, and that PF Rasheed Wallace was only 4/13. Wallace, although still up for a good argument with a ref that gets him a technical, is nonetheless one of those wise old veterans who can sense a team whose wheels have come off, and he will celebrate such a pushover by seeing how many 3-pointers he can make (he made 3/6 in this one), how many steals he can get (he got 4), and how many easy rebounds he can grab (10 in this one). Why bother going inside against Camby and Nene if you know you don't have to bother? So Wallace shot jumpers all night and finished with 17 points on 4/13 shooting. The Nuggets are becoming so bad that their opponents are starting to ramp down their games, as if it might be too rude or bad karma to rout the team that alot of people thought was going to be really good by now.

The Nugget's situation is going from bad to worse and there is now at least a 60% chance they will not make the playoffs. Diehard fans keep thinking there has to be a payoff from A.I., Melo, Camby, and everyone else learning how to maximize each other's games, but the chemistry remains off and the coaching seems to be almost delusional. I learned this neat expression from Van Miller, the former voice of the Buffalo Bills, that sums up the current Nuggets: the wheels have come off now. My game reports are starting to seem like a broken record, because the Nuggets are unwilling or incapable of dealing with what they do and don't do on the court that is taking them out of games.

Except in rare cases, it has been Nuggets other than Melo, A.I., and Camby whose shooting or defense has been so bad that it doesn't meet NBA pro standards and has taken the Nuggets out of games. So what does George Karl do? Does he call out Najera or Blake for passing on shots or Kleiza for taking too many bad shots? No. He claims publicly that Melo is not following the team concept enough and, specifically, is not passing the ball enough. Karl's reasoning is like you having 3 flat tires on your car and you demand an engine tuneup at the garage but no new tires. Even if you get the tuneup, when you drive off, you still have the three flat tires ruining your ride.

Let's think about this for a moment. You are Melo. You see Kleiza in the corner who wants to put up a 3. Kleiza is a career .315 3-point shooter, so you have visions of the ball clanging the rim rather than going in. You see Blake a few feet inside the arc loosely guarded. Blake is a .400 career field goal shooter, and his ability to drive to the hoop and get a layup without being rejected by the defense is limited. You see Najera, who will probably pass on the jumper like he usually does, and who will not even try to find a path to the hoop if any two big men of the opposite team are near it, and so he will most likely pass it to Blake or Kleiza if he gets it. Iverson is behind you because, as he has stated, and he is correct on this, Melo must be the primary scorer with him (A.I.) being a close second, if the Nuggets are to have any chance at all. What do you (Melo) do? You look for a lane to the hoop or you spot up to shoot that sweet midrange jumper that you have been living off of since you were 5 feet 6 inches tall at the pickup neighborhood court many years ago.

George Karl more and more seems to be delusional about the Nuggets, thinking recently that if only Melo and A.I. just pass it around a little more, the rest of the team will respond magically and start hitting shots they have never made before in their careers. And in case Karl has not noticed, the Nuggets are leading the NBA in turnovers, and if you start passing around more to try to generate scoring, you are going to have even more turnovers whether or not you get a little more scoring. And what ever happened to the idea that the Nuggets had to have quick possessions and as many fast breaks as they can crack?

I am going to go even farther here and suggest that George Karl, by whipsawing the playing time of players like Blake, Kleiza, Najera, Evans, Diawara, and Johnson, is making their accuracy worse than it should or would be. Now in that split second they are positioning, aiming, and powering their shot, they might in the back of their heads remember that they will have almost no playing time for a week or two if they miss most of their shots in a single game. But he who hesitates in basketball is lost; if you are worried about the consequences of missing, you will have alot more trouble making your shots. I know for a fact that every one of those six players except for Johnson, who hasn't played enough to have the choice not to shoot, has on many ocassions decided to pass on shots if he thought he might be having an off shooting night, because he does not want to get deep benched and lose his rhythm and development for the umpteenth time.

So George Karl is being way too extreme with his playing time allocations, occasionally spooking a player or two from even wanting to take shots. But ask Iverson if you don't believe me: the best way to get out of a scoring slump, and to improve your scoring in general, is to take all the shots that you are comfortable with and are reasonably open for. The worst way to try to get out of a scoring slump is to be benched for entire games by your coach.

Carmelo Anthony has been called "the ultimate team player" by a Syracuse University coach, and the first thing about any great team player is that he is supposed to have knowledge about the skills and the favorite plays of his teammates. Melo knows about Najera not taking enough shots and about Blake going cold as a winter's night some games, and about the frequently forced and almost desperate shooting of players like Kleiza, Johnson, Diawara, and even sometimes Camby. When he was at Syracuse, Melo knew which players could score and which had to be lucky to score, and he had more of the former than the latter there, while in Denver it seems more and more that there are way to many Nuggets in scoring slumps that simply go on and on and on. Meanwhile, Iverson has never concerned himself as much with such details about other players, being focused mostly on the huge effort he puts on the floor every time he plays. This was one of the reasons, or excuses if you prefer, that the Sixers front office used to give up on him.

Unless Karl backs off, the Nuggets may implode completely and lose 15 or more of their last 22 games. If Melo were to actually take Karl's advice word for word, or if his minutes were reduced, losing about 15 of the last 22 games is probably what would happen. As it stands, the best the Nuggets can hope for now is to win half of their remaining games and maybe just barely get the 8th seed in the playoffs. In order to achieve this, Melo should largely ignore what Karl has said, ride this bad season out, and live to fight another season, perhaps with a new PF who dunks and lays it up all night, perhaps with a swingman who likes to run and shoot, and/or perhaps with a new coach.

Aside from the never-ending flow of turnovers and having too many inaccurate shooters, with a very unbalanced offense as a result, the Nuggets don't have enough quality and energetic defenders. They have an all-star defender in Camby, a big man who is still learning how to defend well in Nene, a slightly above normal but seriously undersized veteran defender in Najera, and one or two young defensive projects who might be true defenders someday and might not. Melo is your standard defender, better than the awkward Blake, Kleiza, and Johnson, but not as skilled as Camby or even Najera. Iverson hustles on defense as with everything, but his best contributions on defense are always going to be his steals.

Melo has been working on defense since he returned from the suspension, and he has a few extra stops and blocks to show for it. But all of a sudden George Karl has ground the gears, because Melo is now hearing his coach complaining that he is not doing enough on offense, when in fact his offensive decisions on the court are usually very reasonable and his production of points, rebounds, and assists puts him at the very top of the list of the best small forwards in the League. Can you imagine Flip Saunders calling a sportswriter and telling him that he is going to bench Tayshaun Prince unless he starts passing the ball around more? Doesn't that sound kind of goofy?

Najera played 21 minutes and was 5/6 and 1/1 from the line for 11 points, and he had 3 rebounds, 2 steals, and an assist. Kleiza played for 24 minutes and was 4/13, 4/8 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he had 9 rebounds and an assist.

Blake played 33 minutes and was 3/10, 1/4 on 3's, and 1/3 from the line for 8 points, and he had 6 assists and a steal.

Nene played 29 minutes and was 3/4 and 1/2 from the line for 7 points, and he also had 7 rebounds, an assist, and a steal.

Marcus Camby played 30 minutes and was 3/8 for 6 points, and he also had 13 rebounds, 3 blocks, 3 assists, and a steal.

A.I. played 42 minutes and was 5/13, 1/4 on 3's, and 8/13 from the line for 19points, and he also had 4 assists, 2 steals, 2 rebounds, and a block. A.I. was double teamed alot and sometimes was triple teamed.

Melo played for 36 minutes and was 6/21, 0/2 on 3's, and 5/6 from the line for 17 points, and he had 7 rebounds, 1 block, and 2 assists. Rattled by his newborn, his fiance who just gave birth, the coach, the shortcomings of the team, and who knows what else, this was as bad as Melo ever plays. He didn't go to the hoop enough or as much as usual, missed 10 of 13 jumpers, and had 7 turnovers including 3 offensive fouls late in the game. This was kind of normal, Melo tends to get late offensive fouls when he senses that the game has gone to hell in a hand basket. Now, will George Karl become completely unglued and bench Melo as a result of this one bad game? He might, so stay tuned if you are a fan of sports disasters.

The next game will be Sunday afternoon in Sacramento to play the Kings at 1:30 pm mountain time.