Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, & Marcus Camby Carry the Nuggets Past the Wolves, 99-91

The totally new Timberwolves lineup came out with a lot of energy and determination to win their home opener, and took a 19-6 lead over the poor shooting and poor defending Nuggets, but the Nuggets did not break down or lose their cool. At one point, Melo, Iverson, and Camby were a combined 1/17, and it seemed that the world was coming to an end if you looked at the box score. But all three Nuggets superstars treated their early pounding as just another day at the office, and chipped away piece by piece at the Wolves lead, reducing it to 52-49 at the half. Is this that mental toughness that George Karl talks about? Probably not, but since I don’t know what exactly mental toughness is, I can’t rule out the possibility. I would rather just call it smart basketball and extremely hard working and talented players doing what they do. I guess I just like using terms that everyone understands.

The 3rd quarter was grinded out to a 25 a piece draw. Then, as in the Nugget’s opening game against the Sonics, the Nuggets ramped up the defense, cut way down on the turnovers, and mostly avoided unwise shots to shut down the overwhelmed Wolves in the 4th. The Wolves ended up with 28 personal fouls, whereas the more careful and veteran Nuggets had just 17 fouls called against them. You can complain all you want about all the Melo and Iverson turnovers, but keep in mind that Melo is rarely in foul trouble and Iverson is almost never in foul trouble. That’s good, because I, for one, don’t want to find out what mistakes Karl is going to make in dealing with foul trouble. The Nuggets doubled up the Wolves on free throw attempts, and made 28/38 of theirs versus 14/19 for the Wolves.

The quick Wolves had 12 steals off the Nuggets, while Iverson had 3 steals and the Nuggets as a whole had 7. The Nuggets finished with 18 turnovers, while the Wolves had just 12, but this Wolves advantage was offset by poor shooting (.398). A good chunk of that poor shooting was really outstanding blocking by Marcus Camby who, with 6 blocks in this game and 5 blocks in the opener, is off and running for another season of leading the NBA in blocks. The Nuggets had 9 blocks altogether. .

Rashad McCants, out of North Carolina, playing in his 3rd season, all of them for Minnesota, has a golden opportunity to get his career untracked on the current roster, and he came out ready to roll. He finished 9/18 and 3/7 from long range for 23 points, but he sort of ran out of steam and couldn’t hit huge shots late in the 3rd and in the 4th.. Telfair at PG, however, was only 4/13 and he had just 5 assists in 35 minutes. Telfair was 4/7 on jumpers but could not convert on 4 layups. Iverson has yet to meet a PG who can score this season. And Greg Buckner, the veteran shooting guard who played for Denver during Melo’s first two years, did not have enough in his tank to make up for Telfair.

Both Al Jefferson and Theo Ratliff played tough defense; particularly on Camby and Melo in the 1st half, but Camby made the necessary adjustments, and learned how to defend Ratliff, and especially the dangerous Jefferson, well by the time of the 4th quarter, which decided the game. And Melo showed that patience is a virtue; after he got untracked, he was near perfect in the 2nd half. Melo finished with 33 points on 13/22 shooting. Melo made 6 of 13 jumpers, and converted on 2 of 5 threes. The frisky Wolves caused 7 turnovers by Melo.

Iverson had his second genius game in a row. When the role players were scoring two nights ago against the Sonics, Iverson was the Jason Kidd or Steve Nash of the Rockies. When the role players were not scoring in this game, he shifted into his driving to the hoop mode he perfected in recent years in Philly. So although Iverson was only 2/11 on jumpers, he used his intelligence to win the game anyway; he was awarded 16 foul shots by the referees, and he made 15 of them. And to think he used to worry that he would never get calls when he was young! And it was Iverson who, having drawn fouls all night on the Wolves, put them to bed for the night by burying a 3 with 32 seconds left, giving the Nuggets a clinching 99-91 lead. The Wolves may have been frisky early, but it was past their bedtime by the time Iverson turned the lights out.

Offensively, Camby was all but shut down by Ratliff and Jefferson early, but was, like Melo, nearly perfect in the second half, and emerged with 14 points on outstanding 7/10 shooting. Bobby Jones played a little and got to the line twice, once on a flagrant foul, but then George Karl yanked him before he could get anything going.

If you were to judge from the first two games, which is very dangerous because they were played against two teams that many think are going to finish near or at the bottom of the heap this season, you would have to say that the Denver Nuggets are potentially a Championship team. Everyone knows Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, and Marcus Camby are good. But few know that these three are all playing their best basketball ever.

Melo is no longer focused mostly on scoring. He has rounded out into a multi-dimensional player, generous enough to find the open man when he is jammed rather than take a bad shot, and tough enough to bang the boards and play better defense than in years gone by.

Outside of Camby, the front court has all Nuggets fans nervous as hell. Nene, half sidelined from having put on too much weight in the off-season, and from continuing residual problems with one of his calves, is currently, at best, half the player he was just 6 months ago in the Spurs series. Reggie Evans, the rebounding beast who helped Denver from being blown out when they were turning it over like crazy last year, is gone, and neither of the players obtained for Evans, Steven Hunter and Bobby Jones, are going to get much playing time barring an injury.

Kenyon Martin is strictly limited to a maximum of 20 minutes a game, as nervous Nuggets coaches, trainers, and doctors watch carefully, with telephoto lenses trained on his knees when he comes down from a jump, in fear that one of the sports world’s all time most extensive rehabs might not also be one of the all-time greatest sports medicine successes. If the Martin rehab is a success, there are going to be a few sports medicine professionals who have the accomplishment of a lifetime under their belts. Martin is a little rusty and, understandably, not yet willing to go all out until he himself is convinced that the historic double knee rehab is a definite, irreversible success. Everyone being satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the K-Mart rehab has succeeded will be this year’s Christmas present for the Nuggets and their fans, and it’s going to be one heck of a present if it’s under the Colorado spruce on the festive morning. After the 1st of the year, look for Martin’s playing time to slowly increase, with the objective being to get it up to 30 minutes a game by the first of April.

So let’s see, who right now is totally reliable in the front court? Just Camby and Melo, who are part of the core. The rest of the front is not yet fully up to speed and ready to help the core to win a Championship. The Nuggets are close, but not quite there yet.

For now, Marcus Camby has to assure wins by playing off the charts. He has to make up for everyone else’s problems. Meanwhile, Tim Duncan has a track record of wilting if his role players are not producing. You can bet the ranch on Camby’s defense even when times are tough. Camby’s defense is certainly a better investment than the dollar these days. Camby is the ultimate basketball defender, someone you know is going to ramp it up a little bit more to make up for a Nene who partied too hardy in the off-season, for a Martin who is being brought back step by step, for an Evans who is just plain gone, and for a coach who is unable to have the courage to develop any younger player to come to Camby’s assistance.

Last year I was calling Karl the scrooge, for his refusal to distribute playing time the way most other coaches do. I think it’s time to also start referring to Karl as the cowardly lion. He is afraid of this, that, and the other thing, but he shares with lions a big temper and a rigid hierarchy system. The odd thing is, the Nuggets go better with Karl’s approach than any other team would, because the Melo-Iverson-Camby trio is seriously one the best of all time, and players such as Linas Kleiza, Yakhouba Diawara, and Eduardo Najera are more inconsistent than the comparable role players on other teams. In other words, if there ever was a team that George Karl could do less damage to with his approach, the Nuggets are it. And that means that those who have been thinking that the Nuggets can not make it to the West final because George Karl will always get his clock cleaned in the playoffs, which would include me every day, may be in for a big shock in May.

Championship teams have almost always consisted of a core of 2 or 3 players who are virtually unstoppable, and whose talent is at the maximum end of the scale, or off the scale in the case of a Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant.. For the Spurs, obviously, you have had Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. Now we have, for the Nuggets, Marcus Camby, Carmelo Anthony, and Allen Iverson. If all three continue to play, from both a performance and a basketball intelligence perspective, slightly better than they ever have before, then they would form the Championship core for the Nuggets,

However, you do have to get more than next to nothing from role players to win the West or the Championship, obviously. But Nuggets fans are, apparently, going to continue to be tortured by the likes of Najera, Kleiza, Diawara, and the ultimate inconsistent, J.R. Smith. And then there is Nene, who is threatening to join this “who knows what you’re going to get on any given night, and it could be nothing” group. Having Nene join the group would be an especially cruel torture for Nuggets fans, since Nene has the build and raw skills to do extremely well near the basket. as long as he keeps his body in shape, which is precisely what he did not do over the off-season. Not one or two, but every single one of the players named above has turned out to (or is threatening to, in the case of Nene) be much more inconsistent than what is needed, for a Championship team, to go along with the core trio. What the Nuggets have to do between now and late April is already clear: they have to work like hell to create a half decent squad that Melo, A.I., and Camby can be proud of.

My contention is that a truly great Coach (or coaching staff, if you prefer) would have been able to have Kleiza further along in his career and more consistent by now. He obviously has the raw shooting talent, but it hasn’t been molded into what you might call playoff talent. Playoff talent is where raw talent is converted into successful performance in high pressure. Najera is an aging veteran and very few coaching staffs could get him to change his ways. Yakhouba Diawara has been the one player that George Karl has gone all out to develop, but Yak keeps returning the favor with disasters such as tonight’s 0 points coupled with his getting his head handed to him by McCants.

The ultimate here today and gone tomorrow Nugget is J.R. Smith, who was part of the leading scoring tandem in the League a year ago, and is not on the court at all now. The J.R. Smith situation is such a huge fiasco that I don’t have the space to get into it here. Suffice it to say now that no one can figure out how to reestablish J.R. Smith as a contributor, least of all the cowardly lion. And that is a crime.

To sum up this game simply, Melo, Iverson, and Camby almost single handedly beat Jefferson, McCants, Ratliff, Gomes, Buckner, and Telfair. But the Nuggets clearly, and by a good margin, are going to lose to any of the top teams in the League whenever they play like they did tonight. Melo, Iverson, and Camby can not be expected to almost single handedly beat teams like Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Boston. Sorry George, it just doesn’t work that way.

Najera played for 14 minutes and was 0/3 and ½ from the line for 1 point, and he had 3 rebounds and as steal. Kleiza played for 16 minutes and was 2/7 and 0/3 on 3’s for 4 points, and he had 4 rebounds. Nene played for 23 minutes and he was 1/3 and 4/8 from the line for 6 points, and he had 6 rebounds and an assist.

Martin played 18 minutes and was 3/7 for 6 points, and he had 5 rebounds and a steal.

Mike Wilks played 30 minutes and was 4/7 and 0/2 on 3’s for 8 points, and he had 3 assists and 2 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 39 minutes and was 7/10 and 0/1 from the line for 14 points, and he had 21 rebounds, 6 blocks, 3 assists, and a steal, and that is not a misprint.

A.I. played 38 minutes and was 4/14, ¼ on 3’s, and 15/16 from the line for 24 points, and he had 8 assists, 3 steals, 3 rebounds, and a block.

Melo played 44 minutes and was 13/22, 2/5 on 3’s, and 5/7 from the line for 33 points, and he had 6 assists, 5 rebounds, a steal, and a block.

The next game will be Sunday Nov. 4 in Denver to play the Hornets at 6 pm mountain time.