Allen Iverson Shocks the Nuggets to Life and They Defeat the Mavericks 122-109

Step right up and see the circus that is the Nuggets. On one night, under the big top in Denver when everything was arranged in their favor for a win, Allen Iverson thrilled the crowd by scoring 51 points on 18/27 shooting. But Linas Kleiza, a solidly improved GF averaging 22 minutes and an ESPN rating of 17, hardly played (just 7 minutes). The very next night, Kleiza plays 30 minutes and is Iverson’s favorite right hand man as the Nuggets utterly destroy the Mavericks in the paint 64-36 and win the game in Dallas 122-109. The Nuggets feasted on the relatively soft defense of the Mavericks, and the error-prone Nuggets had only 7 turnovers, whereas the Mavericks had 19. Erick Dampier and Dirk Nowitzki won the battle of the boards for Dallas, but the turnover differential offset that and Iverson did everything but a lot of rebounding to lead the Nuggets to the win.

I guess the night before, Coach Karl must have had another one of his “damn, I forgot to put that guy in” moments when he realized that he had forgotten to insert Kleiza. You would think that a guy who always remembers not to insert players he has benched for no known good reason, most recently Yakhouba Diawara, would at least remember to insert into games players who have NOT been benched. But if you think that you are apparently wrong. Sometimes, Karl forgets stuff like putting Kleiza in. But why Adrian Dantley, Doug Moe, or another assistant doesn’t jog his memory on things like that is mysterious. Are those assistant coaches afraid to remind him of things he is overlooking, or are they just dense? In plain English, the Nuggets coaching staff obviously wasted Iverson’s 51 points game and blew the Lakers game.

In this game, both teams playing on back to back nights, but the game was in Dallas, and I and most other Nuggets fans had this one penciled in as a loss. The win in Dallas may at first glance seem like a consolation prize for the loss. But it’s not, because Iverson, Kleiza, Kenyon Martin, and Marcus Camby worked their tails off for this win, and the Mavericks are not intense enough on defense these days to be the dominant team that we have all grown to know in recent years. So the Nuggets should have won both games. This was no “consolation prize”. And, in any event, only teams that have little or no future in the playoffs settle for consolation prize wins anyway.

The Nuggets in general and Iverson in particular pick and choose which teams they are going to keep the ball moving on offense on. If the Nuggets are playing a team that is defending well, the Nuggets seem to throw in the towel with respect to keeping the ball moving and getting it to the man who is most open for the shot. They commit more turnovers than almost every other team, so I guess they figure keeping the ball moving is a hopeless task when they are playing a tough defensive team. When they are playing a tough defense, they generally become selfish and have a shoot first and look for an open man last approach. At the same time, several players’ shooting goes to hell in a hand basket. So the Nuggets doom themselves to lose from the start when they are playing a tough defensive team.

But when the defense is softer, they say to themselves “Ok, this defense is not very good, so we’ll play like a Championship team offensively in this game.” Does this way of thinking make any sense? No, of course not, it makes no sense whatsoever. But this is what you get when there isn’t enough confidence shown by the coaching staff and, at the same time, not enough guidance on how to play from that staff. You get players starting to pick and choose which teams they think they can beat with a free lance style and which teams they will bow in submission to. The actual style on offense tends to go from one extreme to another, depending on whether the inferiority complex that the Nuggets have toward good defensive teams kicks in or not. In other words, when you don’t have hardly any set plays or offensive schemes, and your players are free lancing, you are at risk of completely different playing styles appearing in different games. You reap what you sow, and if you don’t sow anything, who knows what wild weeds are going to come up? The Nuggets are wild and free, and also most likely doomed in my opinion, because too much freedom in a team sport is not going to get you anywhere in the playoffs.

So if you are confused about why the Nuggets lost to the Lakers and then beat the Mavericks, now you know, broadly speaking, why this crazy stuff happened. The Laker loss was entirely due to a court management failure, especially the fact that Kleiza hardly played. Then the Mavericks win was due to the Nuggets realizing that the Mavericks are not currently playing tough and intense defense, so they celebrated by kicking their offense into high gear. Had this game been against the Spurs or the Rockets, who play intense defense just about every game, it would have been the big, ugly loss that everyone was expecting. Folks assuming the Nuggets were going to lose big just didn’t realize that Avery Johnson doesn’t have his Mavericks playing defense intensively yet.

But I wouldn’t worry about whether Nowitzki and his solid supporting cast are going to be a major factor in the West playoffs this season. As PG Devin Harris said regarding the Dallas defense so far this season: “Hopefully these are growing pains we won't have later on. But this is fixable. It's all attitude. I'll bet money that Avery will make it better." If I were you, I wouldn’t bet against Avery Johnson getting his team to play better defense. He and his team live in fear of not being able to contain the Warriors in the playoffs, and that fear, if nothing else, will light a fire under their behinds to get their defense up to speed in time for the playoffs.

Memo to NBA coaches: if the Nuggets struggle and play stupidly against your team offensively, then you deserve a pat on the back for playing solid defense. But if the Nuggets pass the ball around and have a high shooting percentage, then your defense needs work. So if you want to know whether your team is up to speed defensively, don’t get lost in all the statistical mumbo-jumbo, just wait until you play the Nuggets and then you will know for sure how good your defense is by how good or bad the Nuggets offense is. Use the Nuggets to judge your defense, it’s almost sure to be an accurate indicator.

Iverson has finally exploded, for the first time as a Nugget, in the way that makes him a living legend. I was hoping and praying this would happen last year, but the truly amazing only happens rarely, and usually only after you have given up hoping for it. As a desperate Nuggets fan, I hope for anything that is shocking, anything to make up for the poor coaching, anything to shake my team out of self-defeating ways of thinking and playing. Melo is too young and too mellow to shock the Nuggets into being more confident and more consistent, so Iverson was always the only chance for that.

Now we will see if the Nuggets respond to Iverson’s shockingly confident, talented, and leave it all out there play. Could Iverson, the man without a true team, succeed in shocking his teammates into playing confidently and well? It’s only a theory that it could work. In the real world, I don’t think any player has ever actually by himself, with relatively poor coaching around him, carried his team defiantly into the depths of the playoffs. Except for Allen Iverson in 2001. So if there is anyone currently who might be able to pull it off in 2008, it’s most likely Iverson.

If Iverson fails to bring the forlorn Nuggets along the road to glory, he will still have an opportunity to get a ring by becoming some other team’s living legend following 2008-09 when his contract is up. If Iverson fails in his attempt to do the nearly impossible and moves on, and then Karl is finally gone, and then Camby is traded or retired, then the fate of the Denver franchise will be returned to Carmelo Anthony. For his sake, and for the sake of the Nuggets and all Nuggets fans, I hope Melo gets the coach he needs and has to have, if and when that cold and lonely day comes.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 7, 2007

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

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 from recent years and a little inconsistent 3 Points

2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 5 Points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers. Karl will normally be in the 5-13 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 9 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 7 Points. This would be up to 17 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: 0 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: 43, 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
It’s under development. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.

ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well they played at a glance. 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 8 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.
.
NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 62.9 Season 40.1
Marcus Camby: Game 35.5 Season 32.2
Linas Kleiza: Game 34.7 Season 17.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 29.7 Season 18.3
Carmelo Anthony: Game 23.8 Season 37.1
Anthony Carter: Game 16.4 Season 18.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 14.5 Season 14.5
J.R. Smith: Game 8.1 Season 16.9

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
MAVERICKS
Dirk Nowitzki: Game 55.1 Season 37.2
Jerry Stackhouse: Game 42.1 Season 15.6
Josh Howard: Game 26.2 Season 33.8
DeSagana Diop: Game 17.1 Season 15.3
Jason Terry: Game 15.1 Season 27.9
Devin Harris: Game 14.4 Seasion 24.3
Erick Dampier: Game 12.3 Season 10.9
Brandon Bass: Game 6.8 Season 17.7

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.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
It was Iverson and Nowitzki in a shoot-out at the Dallas corral, but it was a gunslinger named Linas Kleiza, who was out on the range somewhere instead of in the arena last night in Denver, who provided the surprising needed supplement to Iverson’s 35 points on 12/19 shooting. Kleiza was there to make up for another relatively poor outing for the young deputy Carmelo Anthony. Kleiza’s ESPN rating has jumped from about 12 to about 17 from last season to this. Meanwhile, the sheriffs, big men Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby, finally got some jump shots to fall. (Note, the night before in Denver, against the Lakers, Kleiza was benched by George Karl for no known good reason, he wasn’t really out on the range.)

As for the Mavericks, it seems that having both their starting guards have off nights, combined with their relatively soft defense, did them in this time against Iverson and the wild bunch.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.

Linas Kleiza: +22
Eduardo Najera: +21
Allen Iverson: +16
Marcus Camby: +9
J.R. Smith: +7
Carmelo Anthony: +3
Anthony Carter: -5
Kenyon Martin: -8

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Smith didn’t produce in this game and has now actually dropped below Kleiza for the season, but at least the Nuggets didn’t get killed while he was out there. Kleiza and Iverson complement each other well, with this game being just one of many examples. Najera is having a surprisingly good season so far, while Carmelo Anthony is stuck in dullsville, for the most part.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.

Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 2/4, 1/1, and 0/1 from the line for 5 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 23 minutes and was 3/5 and 1/3 from the line for 7 points, and he made 4 assists, 3 rebounds, and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played 15 minutes and was 1/3 and 1/2 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 3 assists, and 1 steal.

Linas Kleiza played 30 minutes and was 8/14, 3/5 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 23 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 2 steals.

Kenyon Martin played 35 minutes and was 8/12, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 18 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 1 steal.

Marcus Camby played 33 minutes and was 3/4 and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played 37 minutes and was 9/30, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/9 from the line for 23 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played 43 minutes and was 12/19, and 11/13 from the line 35 points, and he made 12 assists, 6 steals, and 1 rebound.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Saturday, December 8 in Denver to play the Kings at 7 pm mountain time. The Kings will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will not. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the extra rest advantages.