Full Report-Jazz Predictably Beat the Denver Nuggets in Utah 98-94, Why George Karl is a Renegade, and Why the Nuggets are Doomed Without Marcus Camby

It’s going to be a long, ugly, frustrating season for both the fans and the players of the Denver Nuggets. But please don’t get grumpy with me, your friendly messenger who only wants to help you play, coach, or manage basketball.

The Nuggets lost to the Utah Jazz 98-94 in Salt Lake City in the 2008-09 regular season starting game. The seemingly inevitable Jazz win was a closer game than I expected, particularly when you consider the Jazz very rarely lose at home. It’s almost like a law: no one wins in Utah while Sheriff Sloan is around. But the Jazz were playing without one of the best point guards in the world, Deron Williams.

True, the Nuggets were playing without one of the best small forwards in the world, Carmelo Anthony, who is suspended for the first two games of the season because he was out all night relieving stress after the Nuggets squeaked into the playoffs last April and was caught half drunk lane weaving while driving down the interstate during a predawn hour. You see, Anthony is one of the best players in the world, but his team is so badly managed that it was by the slimmest of margins that it even made the playoffs at all last year. So the big discrepancy between those two facts (world class player but chump class team) created some stress for Carmelo Anthony and he had a little too much to drink and… You get the picture.

Since a point guard in general and one of the best point guards in the world in particular has a greater strategic value to a team than a small forward who plays for a team without an offensive blueprint to make sure his offensive potential is consistently maintained, it is obvious that the Jazz were at a greater disadvantage without Williams than the Nuggets were without Carmelo Anthony.

Generally and in theory, the two most important positions in basketball are center and point guard. And the Nuggets are hosed up, personnel-wise, with respect to both of those positions. In fact, thanks to George Karl and, as far as I know, no one else in the Nuggets organization, the Nuggets are probably about the only team in the NBA which does not subscribe to the theory that you need someone to “run” the offense, to at least some extent. That someone is the designated point guard, who in turn is supposed to be the best guard on the team who can run the offense, to an extent chosen by that point guard and by the coach of the team.

Notice I said “the best guard on the team who can run the offense.” I did NOT say “the best point guard”, because it is theoretically possible (and it is a reality with the Nuggets as we speak) that a guard who is considered primarily a 2-guard is the best guard on the team who is qualified to make some plays without sacrificing Kobe Bryant type potential at the 2-guard. Does anyone honestly believe that Allen Iverson at 2-guard is really comparable to Kobe Bryant or Manu Ginobili at 2-guard? Unless you are a renegade and you have rejected the point guard framework entirely, if you are the Coach of the Nuggets, you have no choice but to slide Iverson over to point guard, whether you like his style or not. You might have to call it "making the best of a bad situation", but that's what you do.

The point guard keeps the offense running by motivating his teammates to keep moving, cutting, screening, getting into well chosen scoring positions, and then making the scores. One playmaker and four movers, cutters, screeners, position establishers, and scorers is what the almost universally accepted basic framework for a basketball offense is.

But the problem is, and it is one hell of a problem, that George Karl does not accept the universal framework for an offense! He was miked up during the Lakers four games to zero dismantling of the Nuggets and he was caught red handed on national television pleading with his team to pass the ball more and to try more to get the ball to the open man. Let me repeat that: he was pleading with his whole team to do that. Whereas more sensible and realistic coaches, if they ever plead for that at all, are going to plead with the specialist responsible for that kind of thing, their point guard.

And I recently saw a video of him that was posted on the internet. In this video, he is instructing his players to do something quickly with the ball other than dribbling or holding it. This sounds good so far, but I must pause and point out that he has either never told Iverson this or else allows Iverson to defy him and everyone else on this, because everyone knows Iverson does not feel any need to quickly pass, shoot, or penetrate, as opposed to holding and especially dribbling. Iverson is dribbling and getting caught in traps and double teams and so forth as often as he always did in Philadelphia. So Mr. Karl has not insisted that Iverson follow the thou shall not dribble around and make our team easy to defend command. And if he hasn’t made sure that Iverson doesn’t do it, what’s the point of getting worked up too much if others do it? Because let’s face it: your offense is already messed up from just Iverson alone doing it.

Who would have known that by outward appearances a man who seems the ultimate establishment basketball figure, George Karl, is actually a renegade on this and certain other tenets of basketball, tenets that range from widely accepted to almost universally accepted. In this world, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing and in basketball, apparently there are basketball renegades posing as traditional, boring establishment figures.

Mr. Karl simply doesn’t think a point guard should be primarily responsible for making plays or for keeping the passing game alive. Because he thinks all players should be responsible for that. And I and most other basketball folks don’t see how his way of thinking can be the better way in most real game situations. Ever since cave man days, human society has been moving in the direction of more and more specialization. Because more specialization is almost always more efficient and is generally more effective than less specialization

Even if the minority of coaches who agree with Karl and disagree with me is a bigger group than I think, it doesn’t change the fact that they are wrong. If they think, for example, that the faster pace and the greater “surprise the defense” advantages that might come with a basically “no real point guard offense” are greater than the advantages you get with a designated, responsible point guard, I feel sorry for them. All the other team needs is a few smart and quick defenders and they will largely offset the extra speed and ability to surprise that you get from having no real point guard. And then the remaining advantage you have left will be small compared with the advantages you get with the designated point guard concept behind the offense.

A position in basketball is at the most only about 2/3 as fixed (or important if you prefer) as one is in football with respect to figuring out how to coach the team and games. But to think that you can start distributing around all five positions what a point guard alone does for most teams, or what a center does for most teams, or what any other position does, you have gone way, way too far. You are a sports and basketball renegade in fact.

So don’t forget it: George Karl may be as establishment as you can get resume wise and officially speaking. But when you look at the philosophy and the beliefs that determine his chosen strategies and tactics for his team, he is more than a little bit of a renegade and more than a little bit of a, dare I say it, 1960’s hippie. Could it be that Mr. Karl never outgrew the Beetles, the Doors, and even the Greatful Dead? Maybe not.

Aside from being wobbly with respect to using positions to structure a team and games, Mr. Karl is also more hell bent than ever now to attempt to belittle the concept and the importance of the three point shot. It’s starting to look like it has reached the point of total lunacy now. The Nuggets on three straight occasions in the final minute of the game were behind by 3 points and elected to make a two point shot and then intentionally foul, hoping for a foul shot to be missed followed by another two and overtime. Each time, the Jazz were of course concentrating on defending the three, and so were surprised each time when the Nuggets chose to slip through the perimeter defense and settle for the lay-up.

Then with 8 seconds left, on the 4th time being behind by three, Kenyon Martin, who does not have a good 3-point shot, is the one who finally took a 3-point shot. The Nuggets have only two full scale 3-point shooters: J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza. But it did not occur to anyone in charge that maybe one of those two should take a three that might allow the Nuggets to send the game into overtime. So as I say, the inability to understand the importance of attempting and making some threes has seemingly reached the point of total insanity at this point.

But of all the powerhouse teams in the West, the Jazz are the only one that is not a good or a great 3-point shooting team (which is more proof of how good a coach Jerry Sloan is, by the way). This is, besides the absence of Deron Williams, the other main reason why the game was surprisingly close at the end. The Jazz were only a very lame 2/8 from long range, whereas the Nuggets, who in the great majority of games against Western Conference powerhouses are on the short end of the stick on threes, were 4/13.

The Nuggets “We don’t really know who the point guard is and neither do we care” offense produced a soft 17 assists, which equaled the Jazz’ 17 assists without their ace point guard. Roughly but accurately speaking it was a game without point guards, which incidentally most game watchers do not enjoy as much as a game with them.

Nene fouled out. The Nuggets are almost totally dependent on Nene at center and he fouled out in the first game of the season. Some people have fiercely complained about the stylings of Marcus Camby, both offensive and defensive. They have complained that Camby is not an aggressive and totally reliable man to man defender on defense, nor a post-up or throw down specialist on offense. That’s the style they want in a center, partly, I’m sure, because traditionally the most dominant and powerful centers of all have had these traits. And even the damn Jazz television announcer piled on Camby’s style by informing the viewing audience that “the Nuggets’ brass told him that the Nuggets believe they can win 50 games again this season despite the giveaway of Marcus Camby, because Camby was not all that great at man to man defending, whereas Nene and Chris Andersen are much more so.

To which I say: “good luck if you think the sum total of Camby’s defensive traits is something that you can replace with a player or two or three who are aggressive and persistent man to man defenders. You are going to need a whole heck of a lot of science fiction if your prediction that you can replace Camby with Nene or Chris Andersen or both of them together is going to come true. Because Camby may not have been a great man to man defender, but he has some of the best hands in basketball along with some of the best quick instincts for where the play is going. Those hands and quick instincts gave him the ability to disrupt the best laid plans of countless players with intentions of driving to the rim. Marcus Camby had (and still has, for the Clippers now) the kinds of hands, instincts, and athletic coordination to avoid committing fouls time and time and time again. The man has one of the lowest personal foul rates among centers in the NBA, which validates him having one of the highest blocks per possession ratios in the history of the NBA.

Did it ever occur to those who hate Camby’s style, or to those who now confidently predict that the Nuggets defense will not be any worse without Camby than with him, that Camby simply did not have to be all that great of a lock-down type man to man defender, because he had some skills much more unusual than the more common ability to aggressively defend, and that those skills meant that Camby did not need to put all his eggs in the man to man defending basket in order to provide a very good defense for the Nuggets? No, it never occurred to them apparently.

You see, when you are struggling to win a basketball game, you are not only battling the other team. You are also in a side battle with the referees. If the refs are in a no nonsense kind of mood they will call a game tighter rather than looser. And when that happens if one of your big strategies to win the game is to have your aggressive and bruising man to man defenders do their thing with abandon, you are going to be cruising for a bruising from those referees. So your wonderful man to man defenders end up in foul trouble and, in serious cases, they foul out and your game strategy is left in ruins.

Nene fouled out. Marcus Camby almost never fouled out. No Nuggets, you can’t replace Marcus Camby with Nene and/or Chris Andersen and/or any other new player on your team and expect to still win 50 games. Camby’s hands and athleticism just don’t get replaced that easily, sorry.

And another thing on the subject of style: all truly great basketball players, including the ones who go to the Hall of Fame and win various awards, need to make sure that their style matches their skills and capabilities. Within the range of possible styles prescribed by which of the five positions you are playing, you have to choose the style that is the closest fit with your exact athletic capabilities.

Which is exactly what Marcus Camby did. Some people act as if Camby argued with himself or with his coaches about what style to choose and then chose the wrong one. No, that’s not how it works with the best players. They don’t have to think about “what style to choose,” because they know the style they have to use is dictated by their athletic and physical skills, characteristics and, yes, limitations. There is no choice for them if they want to reach their full potential. And the best athletes are going to be smart enough to instinctively know how to play in such a way that maximizes their potential.

Did you ever wonder why the Nike marketing slogan “Just do it” became popular? One big reason was because it is a reference to the reality that great athletes don’t think about and make decisions about styles to use: they know instinctively because they know their capabilities instinctively, and they know they have to match them up.

If a player thinks “Ok, I’m going to become a better player by changing my style. I’m going to start doing more of this and less of this, and then my basketball career prospects will get better." Wrong. Players get better, or stay the way they are, as the case may be, only by making sure that their playing style tightly matches their athletic and physical skills, characteristics, and limitations.

Some less experienced players may not fully be able to do this, and that’s where a good coach can be of immense help, more so at the high school and college levels of course than in pro. But a good pro coach has to on occasion steer a (usually younger) player toward the style that is the closest match for his characteristics.

So the Camby style haters can continue to think that he was “overrated on defense” but unfortunately for the Nuggets, they are in general overestimating the importance of style and they are specifically underestimating the total defensive value that Camby’s skills and style brought to the Nuggets. So do not get it twisted fans: unique style and all, Camby was crucial for the Nuggets defense, and if all you have to replace him with is tough and relentless man to man defenders, you are in for a long, tough, and frustrating season.

And that season just started with Nene fouling out.