The Celtics Run the Nuggets Out of Town 119-93

The Boston Celtics, playing with 2 nights rest, routed the Denver Nuggets, who were playing on back to back nights, 119-83. By bringing up the rest factor, I’m not trying to excuse the horrible defensive effort and the lack of offensive strategy of the Nuggets. I’m just being informative as always. The Nuggets were run right out of the arena right in the first quarter. After a 9-0 run to start the 2nd quarter, it was 47-22 Celtics and the game was clearly decided at that point. The Nuggets were dead in the water, and the only questions from that point on were what good game records were the Celtics going to set and what bad game records were the Nuggets going to set. Allen Iverson said to a referee at one point, when Najera was hit with a technical, “We’re 25 behind, isn’t that enough?” Someone has to publish an Allen Iverson quotation book someday after he is retired.

The Nuggets committed a staggering 24 turnovers, though the Celtics had 20. The Celtics had 20 steals off the worn out and system-less Nuggets, while the Nuggets had 11 steals off the Celtics. Allen Iverson had 3 steals, but J.R. Smith had none. If J.R. Smith doesn’t get steals, his negatives might become greater than his positives. Carmelo Anthony played one of his worse games ever, 3/11 on jumpers and only two shots at the hoop, both of them missed layups. He had only 2 rebounds, but 6 assists. This is Melo’s 5th season, and now it is his worst start ever. He is now in an early hole with respect to competing for the scoring title. J.R. Smith was still buried in bench rust, and couldn’t get much going either in the regular session or in the garbage time.

The garbage time was, at a minimum, the 4th quarter, when almost every starter on both squads was benched. But garbage time really was the entire second half. Although an average team can be expected to be routed like this 6-7 times or so in an 82 game season, this was what you might call a super rout. Because it is rare that an entire second half can be considered garbage time, as in this game. When you have a super rout, you have the rare phenomenon of starters playing for an entire quarter or more in garbage time, where they all know who has won and so they are no longer playing to actually win the game but are just playing for pride as they say. And in fact the Nuggets did play pretty well in the 3rd quarter, outscoring the Celtics 28-26 in that quarter. So don’t ever believe Karl if he starts saying again that some of the Nuggets don’t respect the traditions of the game. If your starters can come out of the locker room and outscore a monster team like the Celtics after being blown out 77-38 in the first half, they respect the game, trust me. For all I care, Mr. Karl can keep muttering that certain Nuggets “don’t respect the traditions of the game” on his way out the door; it won’t matter to me as long as he is exiting.

G Von Wafer and GF Bobby Jones both played well enough in the garbage 4th quarter to raise the question as to whether they should be getting some or all of the playing time that Yakhouba Diawara, Linas Kleiza, and Eduardo Najera are getting. I know for a fact that, had Bobby Jones played at least a dozen minutes in the Hornets game, the Nuggets would be 3-2 right now instead of 2-3. And the fact that Von Wafer has not played at all with 3 point guards injured is bizarre.

This was the first game where at least one of the two teams is playing on back to back nights. A couple of days ago, I scoped out the schedule and marked all of the no rest games the Nuggets will play this year, both games where they will have no rest and games where their opponent will have no rest. There are 82 games in a regular season, and there are a total of 39 games, almost half, where at least one of the teams is playing on back to back nights. This Celtics game was the first of 14 back to back games that the Nuggets will play where the opponent is not playing back to back. So slightly more than 1/6 of games are going to be played with that disadvantage. There are 6 games where both the Nuggets and their opponent will be playing with no rest, including this Saturday’s Nuggets-Pacers game. Of the other 5 double back to backs, 4 will be against the big 5 teams of the West: Mavericks, Rockets, Jazz, and Suns. Then there are 19 games where the Nugget’s opponent will be playing on back to back nights but the Nuggets are rested. So the Nuggets have a +5 game advantage with respect to back to back games.

If you key in on games that the Nuggets play against the big 5 teams of the West, there are only two games that the Nuggets have the back to back disadvantage: Jan. 7 vs. the Suns, and Apr. 13 vs. Houston. Meantime, there are 4 games against the big 5 where the opponent is playing back to back but the Nuggets are playing rested. There are not one but two Spurs games where the Spurs but not the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, Friday, March 7 in Denver and Monday, March 10 in San Antonio. In between, the Nuggets play the Jazz on March 8, and both the Nuggets and the Jazz will be playing back to back in that one. The other two key big 5 games where the Nuggets have the advantage are December 20 against Houston and March 5 against Phoenix. So the Nuggets get an advantage from this flaw in the NBA schedule. both in general and in matchups with the best teams in the West.

The main reason I did the research was to check to see whether the League evens out back to backs, so that every team plays the same number of them. I thought the answer would be yes, but it’s no, as the Nugget’s advantage shows. That will teach me for ever supposing that the League would go out of it’s way to be fair. I have never done a check, but I am pretty sure that the Nuggets were on the short end of the stick with respect to back to backs last year.

The final thing to note about back to backs is that a road back to back is much worse than a home back to back. I think of a back to back as giving the team not playing back to back an advantage roughly equivalent to home court advantage. So if you are playing a back to back at home, it is rougly equivalent to playing the game on a neutral court. But if you are playing a road back to back, it is roughly equivalent to your opponent having a double home court advantage. Which brings us back to tonight’s game. The Celtics had the equivalent of a double home court advantage. And the Celtics were playing with a roster that was transformed overnight from too inexperienced to too dangerous for any other team’s comfort level. Celtics Genera Manager Danny Ainge pulled off a two trade title chasing blockbuster off season by getting Kevin Garnett from the Timberwolves and Ray Allen from the Sonics in two separate trades where much of the Celtic’s 2006-07 lineup was sent packing for Minnesota and Seattle. I am now predicting that Boston will in fact be the Eastern Conference winner this year and will meet the Western Conference winner for the NBA title. Here are my current odds, but please, do not make any bets based on this, it’s just educated guessing, and an injury or two will change everything:

EAST
Boston 70% chance
Detroit 15% chance
Someone Else 15% chance

WEST
Houston 25% chance
San Antonio 25% chance
Phoenix 25% chance
Dallas 15% chance
Someone Else 10% chance

I don’t see anyone stopping the Celtics from going to the Championship this year, it’s that simple. I’m still scratching my head over how Kevin Garnett ended up on the same team with Ray Allen, let alone on the one with Paul Pierce on it. All three of them are the kind of players who are smart enough and experienced enough to create their own system to win with, so they would have a good chance to go all the way even if they didn’t have strategies and specific plays provided to them by their coaching staff.

The Nugget’s big three, Melo-A.I.-Camby, have about as much talent as Garnett-Allen-Pierce, but can not on their own create a system that makes winning a lot easier. Melo, in particular, is a young player who doesn’t know everything about the nature of basketball yet. He knows that he doesn't know everything, so he doesn’t even try to coach himself or anyone else with respect to either offensive or defensive schemes. In his young player world, players play and coaches coach, and that’s it. It will probably be a few years before Melo starts to help coach his team the way Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen already do for the Celtics.

Iverson is his own scheme; he’s seldom if ever played with anyone who could play on his level, so the idea that he would come up with offensive schemes or an entire system has always been foreign to him. What would be the use of coming up with a system if your teammates are not quite good enough to run it correctly? But the Nuggets need a system, they need more set plays, and they can only go so far without them. So I, for one, vote to trade George Karl and his assistants and a second round draft pick to the Celtics for Doc Rivers and his assistants.

The Nuggets right now are down to about a 1% chance of winning the West. They started the season with about a 10% chance of winning the West, so they have already been severely exposed with these three straight losses to the Hornets, Knicks, and Celtics. It’s not the losses themselves, or even the scores, including the Celtics rout, but it's the lame way the Nuggets have played that has me heading for the exit on the Nuggets chances.

I honestly did not think it was possible for the Nuggets to under perform worse this year than last, but they have now started down that road this year. Here they are, as shown in my recent reports, thinking they are a running team and not having the players anymore with which to run. And here the Nugget’s coaches are, having with great fanfare announced to the World that the Nuggets were not going to be the defensive patsies of last season this year. No sir, “we’re not going to be defensive chumps this year.” But they are in fact chumps, as illustrated by the total interior meltdown in the Knicks game and the inability to put up any fight at all in this Celtics game.

I decided to report all that back to back stuff in this report because there isn’t a whole lot to say about this rout, and one thing that caused it was the back to back factor. But the Nuggets have 19 games coming where only the opponent will be playing on back to back nights, and only 13 games coming where only the Nuggets are playing on back to back nights. Who knows, this advantage might allow the Nuggets to squeak into the playoffs whereas without the advantage they would miss the playoffs. But come to think of it, that might tick me off, because whether the Nuggets make the playoffs or not is probably the trigger that determines whether George Karl will be coming back for the 2008-09 season and, as everyone who reads me knows, I definitely do not want him back unless and until he provides a system and real motivation. In fact, I think it would be better for the Nuggets if Karl were to retire or be fired by the all-star break, even though it is conventional wisdom that a mid-season coaching change is very destructive to a team in general and to it’s playoff chances in particular. My view is that yes, there would be some damage from a mid-season coaching change to cohesiveness and chemistry, but less total damage than Karl would cause if he remains the coach for the duration of the season. But the amount of damage in each case would be close, and there is a lot of room for argument on this point. You could argue that winning some extra games after the all-star break this season with a new coach is not worth the huge disruption of a mid-season change if the Nuggets can’t get out of the first round anyway. Whatever, all I know is that for me, the sooner Karl goes the better.

Life is miserable these days if you are a Nuggets fan. The high expectations balloon has burst. Certain media people including the new Yahoo guy Kenny Smith were apparently way off in saying the Nuggets could compete for the NBA title. For now, Nuggets fans will have to console themselves with the fact that it appears that,in all likelihood, the hated divisional rival Jazz team is not going to win the West this year. So you can wipe that smug expression off your face, Jerry Sloan, right now. The Nuggets may be in a world of hurt, but your team isn't gonna make it either. Now excuse me while I go back to following the Avalanche. Heck of a skating team this year, but I still think the goalies look funny dressed up like Jason from the horror movies. And maybe I don’t make such a good hockey fan, because I keep thinking that, sooner or later, one of those Jasons is going to try to slash someone’s head off with a stick.

Von Wafer played 16 minutes and was 3/4 for 6 points, and he had 2 rebounds, 2 assists, and a steal. Nene played 11 minutes and was 0/1 and 2/2 from the line for 2 points, and he had 1 rebound and 1 assist. Linas Kleiza played 22 minutes and was 0/2 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he had 1 assist. Najera played 23 minutes and was 3/5 and 1/2 on 3’s for 7 points, and he had 3 assists, 3 steals, and 2 rebounds.

Bobby Jones played 12 minutes and was 3/4, 3/3 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 10 points, and he had 2 rebounds and a steal.

J.R. Smith played 23 minutes and was 2/8 and 0/2 on 3’s for 4 points, and he had 5 assists and 3 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 26 minutes and was 6/13 for 12 points, and he had 5 rebounds and 2 steals.

Marcus Camby played 29 minutes and was 7/11 and 3/5 from the line for 17 points, and he had 8 rebounds, a block, and an assist.

Melo played 30 minutes and was 3/13, 1/4 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 11 points, and he had 6 assists, 2 rebounds, and a steal.

A.I. played 33 minutes and was 6/11, 2/6 on 3’s, and 8/11 from the line for 22 points, and he had 4 assists and 3 steals.

The next game will be Friday, November 9 in Washington to play the Wizards at 6 pm mountain time. The Wizards will be playing on back to back nights and the Nuggets will be playing after a night off.