The Nuggets are Regular Season Beasts, But Can They Win in the Playoffs Doing What They are Doing?

The Spurs dominated from start to finish and defeated the Nuggets in Denver 108-91 on December 4. It was a relatively rare loss for the team that has thus far fooled literally everyone as far as number of wins. The Nuggets have been eating alive every non-contending team that is forced to play them. And they have been winning some games against the longstanding powerhouses as well, something which has most basketball analysts scratching their heads (and mostly trying to ignore the spectacle and hoping it goes away if the truth were told).

But the Spurs game was like a temporary throw-back to the old universe, the one where the Nuggets are not on a par with teams like the Spurs. Tim Duncan had a massive game, Manu Ginobili was huge, and Tony Parker, a point guard who is regarded as one of the best in the NBA yet gets no more assists than does Allen Iverson, was big. So the Spurs won with the pure, classic Spurs formula, the one that you would have to pay a lot of money for if it was bottled up and for sale at the store.

But these days, in the new universe, which may be only temporary of course, if you check the standings, the Nuggets are on a par with not only the Spurs, but with every other top team of the West too except for the Lakers, which no one and nothing other than a huge injury problem for them is going to stop from going to the Championship next Spring.

So for all those who can not stand the Nuggets, due to their ridiculous allegiance to George Karl, due to their gross inconsistencies from last year to this, due to their kicking to the curb of Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson, due to their winning after everyone predicted they would be losing, and due to other things too numerous to mention, you can at the very least console yourself with the reality that the Lakers have done so many of the very important things needed in the Quest for the Ring, and that they have done them so well, and that they have done them so much better than any other team has, that it really doesn’t matter a whole heap how many games anybody wins in either the regular season or in the playoffs. The Lakers this year, for all practical purposes, are invincible in the West. Whether they will win the Championship is really the only thing left to be decided that will be historically important, as far as the West Conference is concerned.

THE REGULAR SEASON IS CHECKERS AND THE PLAYOFFS ARE CHESS
In the NBA, the regular season is just the prelude to what really matters, the playoffs. The number one objective in the regular season is not to win as many games as possible; that is the number two objective. The number one objective is to get as prepared as possible to do battle in the playoffs, when all teams ramp up their defensive effort and intensity, when most coaches bring out their best strategies and tactics, the ones that they tested out thoroughly during the regular, and when real contenders cut back on the offensive free lancing and rely more on the tried and true.

Arguably, there has never in history been a coach who puts as much emphasis on the regular season and as little emphasis on the playoffs as the Head Coach of the Nuggets, George Karl. Karl openly admitted in his post April/May 2008 Lakers series press conference that he and the Nuggets as a whole have to “discover” how to win in the playoffs. It is also common knowledge that his 2007-08 point guard policy, although good enough to scrounge up 50 regular season wins, was hopelessly inadequate for the playoffs. Historically, he is one of just two coaches to have while coaching a top seeded team out of 8 conference playoff contenders to have lost the playoff series against the 8th seed. And while coaching the packed to the rafters powerful Sonics roster he was completely outclassed by Phil Jackson of the Chicago Bulls in his only finals appearance, although arguably Karl gets off the hook for this (as he seems to so often get off the hook for everything) because the Bulls had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman and capable role players that year to go up against Karl’s Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf, Sam Perkins, and numerous good role players.

Indisputably Karl is able to think up and implement what would best be called Mid-Level strategies and tactics, but unfortunately he is unable and/or unwilling to direct any high level strategies and tactics. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is true even though, and I am being perhaps foolishly honest here, I do not yet know all of the mid level and high level strategies and tactics that exist in professional basketball. But I do know many of them, and I can tell the difference between them. Here is a partial list:

Examples of Some Mid-Level Strategies and Tactics
These are good enough to win many games in the regular season if they are operated very proficiently, but not sufficient to insure success in the playoffs. In other words, these strategies and tactics are less powerful and less rewarding in real NBA playoff games than are the High Level strategies and tactics.
1. The Defensive Fast Break Offense: trying to generate and execute correctly as many fast breaks as possible, especially off defensive stops and turnovers. The fast break offense can work in one of two ways. It can work if a team has natural fast break players, which of course would be fast, quick players who can pass, catch, and race dribble down the floor well. Or it can work if a team is getting a lot of defensive stops and often catches the opposing team looking for the offensive rebound instead of immediately getting back on defense. The former should be called the “Offensive Fast Break Offense” while the latter should be called the “Defensive Fast Break Offense.” The Nuggets were sort of running the Offensive Fast Break Offense last year while this year they are obviously and aggressively running the Defensive Fast Break Offense.
2. Allowing a quality, veteran point guard to decide what to do (what play to run) on virtually every possession, with virtually no direction from the coaches.
3. Overweighting the importance of driving to the hoop and depending on the lower defensive intensity in the regular season and on the referees (to call fouls) to make this profitable.
4. On offense, using players, whose skills are mostly defensive, to often position themselves near the hoop so as to get as many offensive rebounds as possible off missed shots, including layups and dunks that were missed due to uncalled fouls.
5. On defense, not worrying much about individual players who get into foul trouble. Instead, have a roster overloaded with players who are basically defensive only and rotate them in and out as necessary if there is foul trouble.

Examples of Some High Level Strategies and Tactics
1. Plays that are run a few times every game that allow top offensive players to get the shots they are most skilled at making. By position, centers and power forwards are maximized the most if your team does this. But if you have a great small forward such as Carmelo Anthony, you can put more emphasis on the small forward getting a few set plays every game than you would otherwise.
2. The three point shot: Making sure that a minimum number of such shots are taken every game and, of course, making sure that the roster and the game rotations have enough good three point shooters to make sure the team gets enough three point scores. The one and only totally sure way to partly or even completely counter the increased defensive intensity in the playoffs is to be able to reliably hit a certain minimum number of three point shots. Neither the referees nor even a quality, intense defense can stop a team determined to succeed from beyond the arc from getting the relative goldmine of three point scoring.
3. Making sure the roster is loaded with players who are factors on both offense and defense; avoiding having more than one or at the very most two players who are mostly all offense or all defense. Most players who are balanced between offense and defense are more expensive than players who are not balanced, so your franchise must be able to successfully manage basketball economics to achieve this high quality roster.
4. Establishing and maintaining a “Playmaking Identity.” This is done by making sure that the point guards are and know that they are more responsible than other players for getting assists. The two top assisting guards should get at least half of the assists in as many games as possible. When the assists are spread out amongst all the players, the offense is amateur and easier to defend than when there is a playmaking identity. When there is no identity, forwards and centers with huge in the paint offensive potential can be left making way too many passes and not enough scoring attempts.
5. The Offensive Fast Break Offense: a description was previously given.
6. Knowing when to zone and when to man up on defense.
7. Knowing who to double cover and when in the game, under what scoreboard circumstances, and under what lineups on the floor to do so. For example, the best teams of the West should right now be calculating under what circumstances they will be double covering Chauncey Billups in the event that they have to play the Nuggets in the playoffs next April. Since Billups alone is essentially running the Nuggets offense these days, Denver is totally vulnerable when teams finally get around to doubling Billups at the appropriate times.

When I did the list of examples of Mid-Level Strategies and Tactics, all I had to do was list many of the things the Nuggets are doing this season. The Nuggets are doing all five of those examples, and they are doing every one of them either very well, extremely well, or incredibly well. So by all means, give them all the credit you want for that, because few teams ever do as many strategies and tactics as well as the Nuggets are simultaneously. And these five fit together so well, and the Nuggets are running them so well, that a case could be made that there is a remote chance that the Nuggets could win a playoff series 4 games to 3 with these humble but aggressive ways of playing basketball.

The Nuggets have spent most of their practice time on defense and they have produced an almost unbelievably strong and scrappy defense that has actually totally shut down almost all non-contenders, and has even hamstrung the likes of the Mavericks in Dallas and the Celtics in Boston! It is even possible that no team in about the last 5-10 years has done so well defensively with mostly players who were not wanted by most other teams. To say that the Nuggets have made the best of a bad situation, the one they were in after basically giving away Camby and Najera and after striking out on Iverson, is probably an understatement at this point. They have pulled several rabbits out of several hats and they have pulled off a little miracle here.

If I were a naïve and uncritical person, I would still be a traditional Nuggets fan and I would be very happy right now. But the Nuggets in general and George Karl in particular have ticked me off and fooled me and many, many others way too many times for me to be a fan of what has proven to be a cheap, inept organization or, at the very least, an organization that does not live by the mantra: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Because when the going got tough on the Nuggets, they threw the babies out with the bathwater, pretended that they did nothing wrong, lied to the public about some things, and then amazingly were lucky enough to start winning a lot of games with ultimately limited but very aggressively run strategies. In my next report, I will have the top ten reasons why you should not be fooled and why you should not be a fan of the Denver Nuggets.

But the Nuggets miracle is only a little miracle because that is all that is possible with what they are doing. They have gone to town with the Mid-Level Strategies and Tactics but the team is nowhere to be found at the High Level. Think of the regular season as checkers and the playoffs as chess. It is relatively easy to become very good at checkers quickly, but becoming good at chess can take an annoyingly long time. Becoming good at chess requires you to be smarter about how you go about your business than becoming good at checkers does. High Level strategies are not at all like instant rice whereas Mid Level strategies can be not far from instant if everyone is enthusiastic about getting them implemented and everyone works hard to keep executing them game after game.

The Nuggets are very enthusiastic these days and they are working very hard, but they are only playing checkers: they are only doing things which can be profitable in the regular season but they are sorely lacking when it comes to things which can be profitable in the playoffs. This is the same old George Karl type situation, though admittedly it's like a Karl situation on steroids.

The Pistons are playing chess while the Nuggets are playing checkers. Regardless of how many games the Nuggets win during the regular season and regardless of how many games the Pistons do not win in the regular season (as long as they win enough for hopefully at least 5th seed in the East) the Pistons will have better playoff prospects than will the Nuggets, as long as, of course, the Pistons make headway in learning how to play chess (playoff basketball).

This year General Manager Joe Dumars of the Pistons realized that his team, which won the 2004 Quest for the Ring, was never going to in 2009 get by Boston, and might not get by Cleveland or Orlando for that matter, by continuing the same old overweighting of the importance of defense and the same old “Chauncey Billups and the Shooting Gallery Simple Offense” to get it done. It was obvious it was not going to be enough. A wild card factor was needed. An extra spark was needed. A more complicated, unpredictable offense was needed.

But this is a Nuggets report, so I will stop right there and invite you to my next Pistons Full Report, which quite honestly will be my first.