The Lakers Pound the LOST Nuggets in the 4th Quarter, Win Going Away 127-99

The Los Angeles Lakers ran away with the game in the 4th quarter, outscoring the Nuggets 46-24 in the period, and defeated the drifting and Lost Nuggets 127-99. The Nuggets are Lost because they are just like the stranded passengers on that strange island on television. They are outwitted by the sometimes strange but ultimately effective strategies of their opponents, "the others," every time. The Nuggets can never become un-lost, if you will, until they can better the strategies of the others who seek to keep them lost forever.

The last 5 minutes of the game was garbage time. The Lakers made a mind-boggling 32 assists as they upstaged the Nuggets. The Lakers had 16 fast break points versus a puny 7 for the Nuggets, who supposedly are a running team which gets a lot of fast breaks. But the fast breaks only seem to be coming against the lower quality teams, so the Nuggets are not really a running and fast breaking team, if the truth were told.

Carmelo Anthony didn’t hang around for garbage time. He did a very poor imitation of a Mardy Collins neck grab on Sasha Vujacic and got thrown out of the game with a flagrant type 2 foul with about 6 minutes left. The game had taken a really nasty turn for the Nuggets in the previous 6 minutes, the first half of the fourth, as the Nuggets were smothered by Vujacic, Farmar, and company 24-12. This pounding did not at all fit with Melo’s mellow attitude toward the season so far, and he lost his composure in the left corner on one of Phil Jackson’s wonders, who the Nuggets had no answer for, of course. Melo was also undoubtedly frustrated by the 30 point swing in favor of the Lakers while he was on the court, one of the worst poundings of his NBA career.

The ejection of Melo was appropriate, but it’s a good thing that the Commissioner did not go off the deep end and order a suspension of a game or two, because the incident, while a stupid unsportsmanlike flagrant, was not even close to being malicious or a real danger to Vujacic.

The Laker's reserves outscored their Denver counterparts 63-29. The Laker’s second unit played so spectacularly in the 4th quarter that the Lakers ran away with the game without needing Kobe Bryant in it, a true dismantling and Phil Jackson gem if there ever was one. A J.R. Smith driving finger roll layup to open the 4th quarter made it merely 81-77 Lakers, but it was all steep downhill from there.

"The young fellas came in and took care of business," Bryant said after the game. "We have young players who have a lot of heart and who care. And when you have that combination, you have a lot of potential. In the past, I've always been the only guy in the gym really working hard. But now I've got guys in there with me pushing themselves every single day, and that makes a big difference." Bryant was also quoted on Vujacic: “The ball started flowing to him, he had some open looks and he was able to knock them down. We really need him out there for defense, more than anything. But when there are shots available to him, it's important that he knocks them down."

The scary thing is, I’m starting to have hunches in advance of games about which obscure 5-10 points a game reserve on the other team is going to paste the Nuggets for more than 20 points by feasting on all the open looks that the often inept Denver defense gives up. In the preview for this game, I specifically mentioned Sasha Vujacic as one of Phil Jackson’s carefully developed “out of nowhere” weapons who might torch the Nuggets. I qualified it by saying that it was more likely that PG Jordan Farmar or PF Ronny Turiaf would be the surprise. Although Vujacic was the big surprise, Farmar was a moderate surprise and it was Luke Walton instead of Turiaf who was the other surprise. Luke Walton added a career-high 14 points in 27 minutes on 6/9 shooting.

It was no surprise that Yakhouba Diawara and Bobby Jones did not appear before garbage time. These two players are now in the Coach’s doghouse, which is one of the largest doghouses the NBA has ever seen. This despite the fact that Jones is needed, at least while Nene is out and Martin is limited.

And this despite the fact that Yak is playing much better offensively this year than last. So if anyone ever wondered whether it’s really true that George Karl benches players even when they are playing well, and playing better than the year before, or better than their career average, if you prefer, the answer is a definite yes. We just caught him red handed at it.

Diawara’s FG% has exploded from .342 to .481. Even more amazing, his 3-pointer accuracy has exploded from .288 to .452. Yak has made 14/31 threes this season. Has any coach in the League made a more stupid benching decision lately than benching one of the current best 3-point shooters in the NBA? Is Greg Popovich going to bench Brent Barry anytime soon? I don’t think so. Diawara has been benched for no good reason, plain and simple. Why does it always have to be extremes with George Karl? He goes from playing Yak 20-25 minutes a game to not playing him at all. How about a happy medium of 10-15 minutes a game?

In total, Karl is back in the 8 player rut after shocking the world during the cream puff home stand with a few 9 player games, all of which were rout wins. Phil Jackson, who earlier in the day got his multi-million dollar contract extension, used 9 players effectively. It’s not just the number of reserves that Jackson deploys, but it’s the rough consistency of their minutes, and the offensive schemes that include reserves to some extent, that make Jackson’s coaching a work of art. Jackson’s reserves badly outscored Karl’s 63-37. Jackson’s reserves out rebounded Karl’s reserves 24-15. And Jackson’s reserves out-assisted Karl’s reserves 14-4.

Assists by reserves are relatively rare by the Nuggets, due to the 1-2 punch of the lack of adequate offensive planning and the lack of any consistency in the playing time of the reserves. The Denver reserves in this game, Kleiza, Najera, and J.R. Smith, were literally unprepared to contribute in a big way to the offensive flow of the game. How can you be prepared well when there are few schemes and you are playing different minutes and with different teammates almost every game?

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 30, 2007

INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 5 Points
2. Inability of Melo, Kleiza, and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside 6 Points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 5-15 Points, it varies depending on the circumstances. A conservative value of 8 is used for the alert calculation.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 11 Points. This would be up to 15 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart is lacking: 3 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 52, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins against mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team like the Nuggets has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

RESERVE WATCH
There is no Reserve Watch for the Rockets game due to extensive garbage time, where starters were pulled intentionally about half way through the 4th quarter because the game was decided.


GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 He’s running for the exits.

ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME

Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 6 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

Carmelo Anthony: Game 37.1 Season 37.0
Allen Iverson: Game 31.6 Season 37.4
Marcus Camby: Game 26.9 Season 32.7
Linas Kleiza: Game 23.6 Season 17.3
J.R. Smith: Game 12.0 Season 18.7
Anthony Carter: Game 11.5 Season 20.4
Bobby Jones: Game 10.2 Season 13.8
Kenyon Martin: Game 9.6 Season 16.2
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.0 Season 13.6
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

LAKERS

Kobe Bryant: Game 43.2 Season 43.5
Sasha Vujacic: Game 31.3 Season 9.2
Luke Walton: Game 29.1 Season 16.1
Andrew Bynum: Game 25.6 Season 26.2
Derek Fisher: Game 25.0 Season 19.5
Jordan Farmar: Game 24.6 Season 18.8
Ronny Turiaf: Game 17.6 Season 15.5
Lamar Odom: Game 14.6 Season 21.8
Vladimir Radmanovic: Game 14.1 Season 14.4

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.

COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Notice how the Nuggets had 4 players come in with poorer performances than the lowest Laker, Radmanovic. J.R. Smith, Anthony Carter, Kenyon Martin, and Eduardo Najera all produced substantially less than the least productive of the 9 Lakers. Now that is dismal fact for you if you are a Nuggets fan.

To have 9 players with ratings of 14.1 and up is heavy duty evidence of the extreme quality of Phil Jackson’s coaching. You have to wonder how many fewer rings Michael Jordan would have won had he not enjoyed Phil Jackson as his coach. It would have been fewer, that’s for sure.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court.

Camby: -4
Kleiza: -8
Jones: -9
Najera: -12
Smith: -12
Iverson: -14
Martin: -16
Carter: -25
Anthony: -30

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 0/4, 0/3 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 1 point, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 assist.

Linas Kleiza played 20 minutes and was 6/12, 1/3 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 15 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 2/6 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 4 assists and 3 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 22 minutes and was 1/5 for 2 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 steal, and 1 assist.

J.R. Smith played 24 minutes and was 4/12, 1/2 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 4/10 and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.

Allen Iverson played 37 minutes and was 8/18, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/10 from the line for 21 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, and 4 rebounds.

Carmelo Anthony played 35 minutes and was 11/15, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 23 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.

NEXT UP

The next game will be Friday, November 30 in Denver to play the Clippers at 8:30 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, but the Clippers will not be. But the Nugget's home court advantage should roughly offset the no rest disadvantage.