The Nuggets are the big surprise of the NBA so far this year in terms of number of wins. Up and coming sportscasters at ESPN and so forth all forecast that the Nuggets would win a lot fewer than 50 games this year after the Marcus Camby giveaway and the failure to figure out Allen Iverson. They were all wrong, as was yours truly. The Nuggets are on track to win 48-55 regular season games.
While defeating the Nuggets may not be quite as easy this year as it has been in the most recent five years, it should not be all that difficult either. I would say that, at the most, it will be a moderately difficult thing to in 4-6 games defeat the Nuggets in the playoffs this year, which, however, for any quality coach or experienced playoff team translates into easy. While coaches such as Rick Adelman (Rockets), Byron Scott (Hornets), Greg Popovich (Spurs), and Jerry Sloan (Jazz) will most likely have no difficulty at all defeating George Karl and the Nuggets this year, it is plausible that Nate McMillan (Trailblazers) or Terry Porter (Suns) will have a more difficult task in front of them.
Unlike a regular season game where defensive aggressiveness, enthusiasm, and just plain luck can win you some games, you can not, perhaps unfortunately, win a best of seven series with those elements, particularly when there is a large mismatch in the skill levels between the coaches and/or a large mismatch in the playoff experience levels of the players involved. The Nuggets may be playoff bound, but they are that with the worst playoff coaches and with very playoff-inexperienced players.
The team that defeats them will use some combination of the following methods, techniques, and approaches to sending the Nuggets home for the 2009 off season.
SPECIFICALLY HOW THE NUGGETS WILL BE DEFEATED QUICKLY IN THE PLAYOFFS
1. The Nuggets’ opponent will finally realize that this is not really Carmelo Anthony’s team anymore, if it ever was, and that Carmelo Anthony is not the player who can or will beat you in more than one or two games in a 4-6 games playoff series. Carmelo Anthony has rebounding duties now and, although in a surprise development he has a three point shot for a change, his garden variety jump shooting is nothing much to worry about anymore as a result of his agreeing to being downsized in the offense.
Yes it's true, George Karl and the Nuggets have shot themselves in the foot by telling Carmelo Anthony to "not worry about scoring" anymore. They decided that they can do without having available to them a player who can dominate scoring to one extent to another. Karl believes in what you might call the Indirect Scoring Theory of basketball, which states that a good offense in general and good scoring in particular emerges indirectly from other factors, which are thought of in this theory as more fundamental, things such as, you guessed it, aggressive man to man defending and hustling for loose balls. However, unfortunately, there isn't in real life an automatic connection between those kinds of things and the number of points scored, at least not to the extent needed to win playoff games against quality offensive teams.
The opponent will realize that Chauncey Billups and to a lesser extent Nene are the only players on the Nuggets who can possibly endanger their winning the playoff series. With the downsizing of Carmelo Anthony having made the shortage worse, the Nuggets do not have any where near enough experienced playoff warriors to pose a real threat to win a playoff series against any reasonably well managed or reasonably playoff-experienced team.
2. Billups, for all practical purposes, is the offensive Coach of the Nuggets, and arguably the Coach of the team as a whole. As such, he deserves to get a whole lot of defensive extra attention. All other Nuggets are afraid of the wrath of George Karl were they to show any real initiative with respect to being a playmaker. So once again, the opponent must and will double and hassle Billups all game every game.
3. With Nene you want to get him into foul trouble, pure and simple. What you do is simple: go at him early and often offensively. Don’t try to foul him as much as you try to get him to foul you. The Nuggets are still a high turnover team, and that includes Nene. Do not be overly concerned that Nene has such a high field goal percentage. He hardly tries any midrange jumpers, and he will turn it over often enough to keep the damage from all his point blank layups and dunks within reason.
4. The four best offensive players on the Nuggets are all relatively high turnover rate players: Carmelo Anthony, Nene, and J.R. Smith. A good opponent will make sure it goes after these players and forces as many turnovers by them as possible. Offensive fouls are a particular kind of turnover, and all three of these Nuggets have “style problems” with the refs and are therefore vulnerable to being called for offensive fouls at a higher than typical rate. In recent years, Carmelo Anthony has been hammered in the playoffs with a large number of offensive foul calls against him.
5. Generally, the coaches of the Nuggets’ opponent will most of the time correctly choose the defensive matchups that are best for them, and make the correct decision between zone and man to man defending. Meanwhile, the Nuggets’ coaching staff will be over relying on man to man defending. The Nuggets in at least two or three playoff games will have to reduce the minutes of two or more of their aggressive man to man defenders as a result of foul trouble, particularly if the Nuggets play teams such as the Spurs and the Jazz who are highly trained at drawing fouls and who are experts at “playing the referees” in general, whereas the Nuggets, being newcomers to the game of milking the referees, are mere amateurs.
6. J.R. Smith is extremely dangerous, but much more in theory than in reality, and only in the regular season most likely. In practice the Nuggets have made Smith much less dangerous than he could be. But the Nuggets’ opponent will, at the first sign that J.R. Smith may go on a tear of hitting a bunch of threes and of impressive drives to the hoop, do whatever is necessary to force him to lose his confidence, including hard fouling, double covering, going for steals and getting a couple of them off of him, and running a much larger number of offensive plays than otherwise through whoever he is covering. Good coaches know that to cool down a streaky offensive player, you can make him work harder and attempt to break down his overall confidence by beating him when he is on defense.
Good playoff coaches will be aware that as a result of Smith being considered the “black sheep” by the Nuggets personality police, that he is vulnerable to losing his confidence, and is also vulnerable to having his minutes cut way back in the playoffs by Personality Police Chief George Karl. Smith’s personality problem is not that he has a bad personality as the Nuggets falsely believe, but that he has an immature personality. But George Karl and those who blindly support him have created the impression in J.R.’s mind that there is something wrong with his personality, that he is lacking something mentally that other players have, that he should and must have.
So Mr. Karl has made the impact of Smith’s immature personality as bad as possible for the Nuggets, by refusing to start him regardless of how well he plays, by recklessly and publicly criticizing him for minor things, by leaving him in toss up games late in the 4th quarter, which is the one context that J.R.’s immature personality can harm your team, and by, amazingly, refusing to even talk off court to the young shooting guard were he to want to discuss something.
As a result of being immature to begin with, and as a result of George Karl recklessly and severely making J.R. much more vulnerable to losing his confidence in high pressure games than he already was, J.R. Smith has been largely or completely a non-factor so far in almost all playoff games. Smith’s turnover rate has continued to be high even as his offensive and defensive game has become more mature and polished overall. There is no reason to believe that Smith’s big confidence vulnerability will not continue for most playoff games this year. However, if somehow Smith is showing signs that he might break out of the box that the Nuggets have put him in, it should be easy to put him back in that box by aggressively defending, fouling, and running plays at the extremely talented but immature shooting guard.
7. More broadly, Karl is well known for having a total breakdown of communication and relations with at least one of his players, usually tactlessly and publicly, during every playoff series he has ever been in. If the player who Karl has the falling out with is not Smith, it will be someone else. So the opponent will be doing everything possible to make any developing rift between Karl and one of the Nuggets worse, so as to literally and perhaps completely remove that Nugget from the playoffs.
8. The Nuggets’ opponent will have patience on offense and will not try to run into a brick wall by trying to pick up the pace against a team that relies heavily on very aggressive and energetic defending in general, and especially on aggressive and energetic man to man defending in the paint in particular. The opponent will keep the pace measured and use plenty of the 24 second clock. This will wear out the Nuggets extremely energetic defenders as the game wears on. Stunts and shortcuts on offense will not work well against a team that uses stunts on defense.
9. Stay calm, cool, and collected; do not allow the Nuggets, anyone on the Nuggets, or the referees to get under your skin. Tune them and their crowd out completely and don’t worry about them and their rose colored glasses. Go about your business with laser like focus. Certain teams have lost a game to the Nuggets in the regular season so far due simply to losing their cool.
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10. The opponent will make sure that their best and hottest jump shooters have plenty of playing time and that, unlike J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza, they have plenty of confidence. The one automatic, easy way to beat the Nuggets is to simply make your jump shots, or make the free throws if the Nuggets insist on fouling you as they often do now days. The Nuggets are saying to you: "Ok, we are going to run around all over and try to confuse your offense, we are going to run at you all night, we are going to goal tend from time to time, we are going to foul over and over and over, and we are especially going to man to man defend you aggressively and well." To which your response is simply: "Fine, have fun; we'll make our passes, our assists, and our shots, and all of your extra effort and aggressiveness will not amount to a whole lot of benefit for you." I repeat for emphasis that you must not forget to make your free throws, because the Nuggets have actually won at least a couple of regular season games simply because their opponent could not make enough free throws.
11. The opponent will overweight three point shooting even more so than is ordinarily the case in the playoffs. Do not expect you can beat the Nuggets without bothering with a three point game anymore. You can’t do that anymore both because the Nuggets are more aggressively defending the paint than in recent years and because the Nuggets themselves now have a three point game for the first time in many years, although it is too early to say whether they will still have a good three point game in the playoffs.
12. The opponent will pass, pass, and pass some more, and get as many assists as they possibly can. The opponent will maintain its playmaking identity, meaning that the top two playmaking guards will be responsible for making at least 11-12 assists per game. Beating the Nuggets’ style of defending with effective playmaking is the easiest and most sure way of defeating them. The Nuggets amazing defensive enthusiasm and aggressiveness will melt in proportion to how well you beat them with effective passing and assisting.
13. The opponent will try like heck to pass especially to anyone who can slip in behind the defense baseline and get the easy layup or dunk. This will cause the Nuggets to lose some of their aggressiveness even more quickly than will passing in general. Make sure your fastest, most elusive offensive players get plenty of playing time. The Nuggets can not foul or aggressively defend who they can not keep up with.
14. The opponent will not allow the Nuggets to rack up a huge advantage in free throw shooting. The Nuggets have been winning regular season games in part by becoming one of the best teams in the League at drawing fouls. Players on the opponent will be told to defend as well as possible, but to be careful about fouling, especially in the 1st half. The only exceptions to the try to go light on the fouling rule will be Chauncey Billups, Nene, and perhaps J.R. Smith, as previously discussed. Otherwise, see if previously unknown players such as Chris Andersen and Dahntay Jones can actually put the ball in the bucket instead of being bailed out by the refs all the time.
15. The opponent will not make the mistake of losing track of players that no one ever heard of before such as Chris Andersen and Renaldo Balkman, who have been far, far better than anyone would have expected in the regular season so far. Players such as these can not defeat you as long as you don’t ignore them and lose track of them half the time. Just respect them, put decent defenders on them, and go at them offensively repeatedly, and they will be generally out of the way as a potential playoff series problem.
16. The opponent will win one or more playoff games due to good offensive rebounding. Following the loss of Marcus Camby, the Nuggets have become vulnerable to extra aggressive offensive rebounding.
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