A Close Call: The Nuggets Barely Get By the Inexperienced Timberwolves 99-93

The Minnesota Timberwolves in general and especially SG Rashad McCants in particular missed enough shots (54 of 88) and made enough turnovers (21) to lose to the Nuggets 99-93, despite having lead and looked like the more deserving team for most of the game. The Wolves had 5 turnovers and 3 missed layups in the critical 4th quarter alone. But the Nuggets played without much inspiration or energy, and it was luck more than anything else that got them this win-luck regarding who they were playing, a team with no veteran superstars after it pawned off Kevin Garnett to the Celtics, who are now a threat to win it all. Thanks for nothing Minnesota General Manager Kevin McHale! The Nuggets made only 7 points off fast breaks against the lowly Wolves, less than half of their average. The team that loves to showboat didn’t get to that much by playing listlessly on defense all night. George Karl stuck to his regular time out schedule as the Nuggets fell further and further behind in the 2nd quarter.

McCants missed 3 threes, 5 long two's, and 2 midrange jumpers. Had he made just 3 of those, the Nuggets would have been pushed to the brink of blowing a home game to a team that has a record of 1-9. And had the Wolves made 18 of 24 free throws instead of just 15 of them, they could have easily won from just those two things alone. Another thing that hurt the Wolves alot was foul trouble. Minnesota had 4 players who had to sit with serious foul trouble: PG Marko Jaric, SF Ryan Gomes, PG Sebastian Telfair, and SG McCants. In all, the Wolves were called for 31 fouls. But the Wolves continued to play hard defensively the whole game, and earned some respect of the refs, so their fouls went down as the game went along

The Nuggets gradually fell further and further behind during the 1st half. The T-Wolves led 51-40 with 2:41 left in the 1st half. The fans at the Pepsi Center were as quiet as they could be as they watched Camby and Allen Iverson having the same problem as McCants, Carmelo Anthony move back out of the picture after a fantastic 1st quarter, and the offensive disappearance of Yakhouba Diawara, Bobby Jones, and Linas Kleiza. Kleiza did not play at all as a result of a sprained left ankle suffered at Los Angeles Wednesday. In other words, the fans were quiet because there wasn't much to get them excited.

George Karl, starting with the L.A. game, has cut way back on the playing time of the non-starters again, and what little playing time they get has been mostly unproductive. Offensively, the Nuggets needed a strong game from Anthony, whom the Wolves did not double cover enough, backed up with good games from Kenyon Martin and Eduardo Najera, to win this game.

The score was razor close late in the third and through most of the 4th quarter. With 3 minutes left, Gomes made a three to give Minnesota an 87-84 lead. Melo missed a three but, fortunately, Al Jefferson traveled. After Melo dished to A.I. for a layup, for 87-86 Wolves, Jaric could not drive it in, and Jefferson then fouled Kenyon Martin, who made both free throws to give Denver a 1 point lead. Then disaster really struck for the Wolves, when Jaric was called for a charge on Anthony Carter with 1:38 left in a 1 point game. Now that’s luck for you, Nuggets fans. Anthony then sunk a 19 foot jumper for 90-87 Nuggets with 1:20 left. McCants then missed again, but Martin snagged the rebound and Camby emphatically slammed it home after Melo missed a 22 footer. So now it was 92-87 Nuggets with 46 seconds left. All the Nuggets had to do now was hit some free throws off intentional fouls, which they did.

In this game, Anthony continued to improvise with good spin moves for layups and dunks at the hoop, and made half his jump shots from inside the arc several of which with Ryan Gomes draped all over him. All of Melo’s shots were taken from his preferred side of the court, the right side. Anthony started to get back into the top NBA scorer race by making 31 points on 10/22 shooting. The Nuggets are 5-0 this season when Anthony scores 30 or more.

Although Allen Iverson missed all 8 of his jumpers, he got fouled enough and made enough free throws, 9 of 11, to salvage a 13 point game. More importantly, he found the holes in the Minnesota zone defense time and again and, as usual, created the Nugget’s scoring patterns on the fly. Iverson had 10 assists. You have to be a really good player to get a double double and have it considered a poor game overall. Iverson is the next best thing to having a coaching crew who can custom design a few set plays for their team. No wonder Karl likes Iverson so much, he makes up to some extent for the lack of some of the things that Karl doesn’t provide.

Defensively, the Nuggets didn’t need much of anything to win, and didn’t do much of anything all that great. Marcus Camby, who looked kind of tired in the 2nd half, finished with 18 rebounds and 10 points, his third straight double-double. Despite the fact that K-Mart played almost 30 minutes for the first time this year, and despite Melo getting a few boards, the Nuggets were heavily in their “let Camby do all the rebounding” mode, and the Wolves took full advantage as everyone except McCants kept finding open lanes and making moves on Camby into the paint all night long. The Wolves scored 40 of their 93 points from in the paint. Forward Craig Smith, C Al Jefferson, and especially F Antoine Walker were able to take full advantage of the absence of Nene, and the inability of Najera. Diawara, and sometimes Melo to stop penetration into the paint, to get inside time and time again. Fortunately the Wolves missed a whole lot of layups. "We missed seven, seven wide-open layups in the second half," Coach Randy Wittman complained after the game.

The Wolves played a tenacious defense, both in man to man and zone, and they succeeded at shutting down what little offensive potential the Nuggets brought to this game. Aside from Gomes and C Al Jefferson, another good defender was the starting point guard, Marko Jaric, who was all over Iverson for most of the game.

So the Wolves defensively set themselves up for the upset, but the inexperienced Wolves couldn’t get enough points even though they made 13 offensive rebounds to just 6 for the Nuggets. Although the Wolves made an impressive 10/24 threes, they were just 34/88 or .386 overall, as McCants drove them down the drain.

So remember, one of the Nugget’s wins this season will have been due to Rashad McCants being unable to make even 1 jump shot out of 10. It’s hardly anything to get inspired about. And Denver can forget about beating teams like the Jazz or the Spurs if they are going to play like this. If you are going to play without schemes, you at least have to come correct to a game with intensity and emotion, or you have no basis to expect to win. The one exception to that is if you are playing the most inexperienced team in the League, which is exactly what the situation was.

So it was a victory, but it seemed like a loss, and it was a game that made all the big fans of the Nuggets cringe at how this team will be destroyed if it plays like this against quality opponents. There is going to be some real dismantling of the Nuggets unless they bring more planning, and/or more intensity to games in the future, I can tell you that.

Nuggets guard Anthony Carter, back from a right hand 3rd metacarpal fracture suffered on Oct. 6 during practice, made his season debut, coming off the bench to score nine points in almost 22 minutes of action. "The hand felt great," said Carter. "I was deflecting balls, hustling, diving on the floor, and it held up."

Last year the Nuggets lost 9 home games to non playoff teams. Thanks mostly to McCants, they narrowly avoided that result here, though they didn’t deserve to.

RESERVE WATCH
Keeping Tabs on George Karl’s Frequent Inability to Get Enough Bench Performance

Safe range for total reserve minutes: 82-94
Actual minutes for the reserves in this game (see note below): 70

Minimum points needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 33
Minimum points needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 22
Actual points scored by the reserves in this game: 19

Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 14
Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 10
Actual rebounds by the reserves in this game: 11

Karl’s Grade: D
It would have been an F, but 70 minutes is better than 60-65 which Karl has been known to do. Also, led by Najera with 7, the reserves managed to get 11 rebounds, just barely enough to help out Kenyon Martin, Melo, and Camby.

NOTE regarding reserves: J.R. Smith is considered a starter and Yakhouba Diawara is considered a reserve for this calculation. George “I have no confidence in anyone except Iverson, Melo, and Camby” Karl refuses to start Smith whether or not Smith gets more playing time than Diawara. If and only if Diawara, or any one else who is starting instead of Smith, gets more minutes than Smith, will that player be considered the real starter instead of Smith. In other words, if Smith gets substantially more playing time than the official starter, he is going to be considered the true starter at the 2-spot.

The Nugget’s reserves were outscored 39-19 by the T-Wolve's reserves.

NUGGET’S ESPN RATINGS FOR THIS GAME

The first number is the player’s rating for the game and the other number with the + or – in front of it tells you how much above or below that player’s season player rating his performance in the game was.

Carmelo Anthony 44.0 +6.0
Marcus Camby 38.1 +2.4
Kenyon Martin 28.9 +11.4
Allen Iverson 21.6 -17.5
Eduardo Najera 20.1 +5.7
Anthony Carter 18.1 +0.0
J.R. Smith 11.8 -6.3
Yakhouba Diawara 0.2 -8.5
Bobby Jones -0.8 -8.1
Linas Kleiza Did Not Play-Injury

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

Yakhouba Diawara played 15 minutes and was 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 1 rebound. Anthony Carter played 22 minutes and was 2/4 and 5/6 from the line for 9 points, and he made 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.

Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 4/7, 1/2 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 10 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 1 block. Bobby Jones played 11 minutes and was 0/4 for 0 points, and he made 1 rebound and 1 assist.

J.R. Smith played 23 minutes and was 3/9, and 2/7 on 3’s for 8 points, and he made 3 steals and 3 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 29 minutes and was 5/9 and 8/10 from the line for 18 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 block.

Allen Iverson played 40 minutes and was 2/12, 0/2 on 3’s, and 9/11 from the line for 13 points, and he made 10 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 4/11, and 2/2 from the line for 10 points, and he made 18 rebounds, 5 blocks, and 4 assists.

Carmelo Anthony played 41 minutes and was 10/22, 0/2 on 3’s, and 11/11 from the line for 31 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.

The next game will be Saturday, November 24 in Houston to play the Rockets at 6:30 pm mountain time. Both the Rockets and the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.