The Nuggets organization has been on a roundabout, long-term mission to become a "tougher team" ever since they understandably developed an inferiority complex about not being able to compete with the powerhouses of the West: the three Texas teams, the Lakers, the Jazz, and the Suns too for that matter. When they in 2004 acquired Kenyon Martin for huge compensation, it was under the theory that they could perhaps tough their way to being a competitive franchise. At the very least, they could avoid 20-62 type seasons and become respectable.
But the making of the Nuggets into tough guys would require many more steps, and the overcoming of many more roadblocks. To go nicely with Kenyon Martin, they needed a new tough minded Coach. They needed to get rid of their failed all fast breaks, all the time offense only coaches and bring in a Coach who believed in defense and toughness.
George Karl was available. He had a reputation as being a defensive coach, if only because he doesn't understand or doesn't believe in offensive strategy in basketball. So although Karl was persona non grata everywhere else, he was hired by the Nuggets in January 2005.
But on to another problem for the Nuggets to become tough guys. Carmelo Anthony, picked number three in the 2004 draft by the Nuggets, is an offensive powerhouse by nature, not a defensive powerhouse. And he is not really a thug by nature, he's not called Melo for nothing. He only seems to be a thug when he gets goofy, like during and after parties, like anyone can including possibly even me.
But George Karl,on a mission to make the Nuggets tough, and convinced that power scorers are weak and not well rounded players (Michael Jordan, you were weak according to Karl, laugh out loud) was bound and determined to make Carmelo Anthony less of a scorer and more of a tough guy.
But George Karl was unable to change Anthony quickly; it took him years to convince Anthony that he should not try to be like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, that he should become a more "well rounded player," whatever that is. He finally succeeded late in the 2007-08 season and continuing into this season, 2008-09. This year Carmelo Anthony was no longer a power scorer; both his scoring and his scoring accuracy dropped off in 2008-09.
Yet another roadblock in the way of the Nuggets becoming the Thuggets was when owner Stan Kroenke miscalculated badly that Allen Iverson would lead to huge surges in ticket and merchandise sales in Colorado. Iverson was acquired from the Philadelphia 76'ers in December 2006 in a trade, mainly for point guard Andre Miller.
But Colorado has more than it's share of Iverson haters, and the big surge in sales that was expected never materialized. Quest for the Ring has shown that the Nuggets were never serious about trying to win a Championship with Allen Iverson; they made no reasonable basketball effort to do so. The whole Iverson thing was nothing more than a failed marketing ploy.
Becoming the Thuggets was still quite out of reach while Allen Iverson was on the team from December 2006 until November 2008, although as has been reported at Quest extensively George Karl during this period achieved his long term objective: he downsized Carmelo Anthony from power scorer to some sort of "all around player," whatever that is.
But once the failed marketing campaign was ended, once in other words Allen Iverson was off the team, traded for expert and highly experienced point guard Chauncey Billups in November 2008, and once the highly defensively skilled but very unthuggish Marcus Camby was given away for nothing, the Nuggets could now finally become the Thuggets without the constraints of catering to highly skilled superstars who don't believe in thuggish or even rough and tough basketball.
In the backcourt the Nuggets are mostly tough without being clearly thuggish. Chauncey Billups is an excellent, tough basketball player, not at all a thug. Anthony Carter is not one either, like Billups he too is very tough mentally, and gives 110%. At least that much.
JR Smith has been treated by George Karl as if he is a thug, but Smith's main problem is that he is immature and impulsive, though less so now than before. Smith is sort of like Carmelo Anthony as far as the thug quotient goes: he's a part time thug.
But the Nuggets acquired a bona fide guard thug for almost no money in the summer of 2008: Dahntay Jones (yes, I spelled it right). Jones' big thing is trying to get under the skin of the players he is defending, especially good point guards, by constantly roughing them up and trash talking to them.
Chris Paul was hounded mercilessly by Dahntay Jones during the Nuggets win over the walking wounded Hornets in the injured teams are washed out round of the 2009 playoffs.
Jones played the role of guard attack dog for the Nuggets this season, with attacks up to and including the stealing of a game against Phoenix when he tripped Grant Hill with seconds left as Hill was driving in for the winning score with Phoenix down by a single point. Yet Grant Hill was not given the free throws that would have won the game for Phoenix! Dahntay Jones' trip actually succeeded at winning a game for the Nuggets that really was a Phoenix win.
Which by the way, means that Denver is not really the second seed in this year's playoffs at all. They are really the fourth seed, at best.
So Denver had a lot of tough guys, and some part time thugs. But aside from Martin and Jones, they had no other bona fide, full time thugs. They needed a third one.
The final piece Denver needed to be tough and thuggish was a another thuggish forward to go along with Kenyon Martin and the now at least slightly thuggish Carmelo Anthony up front, since starting Center Nene, although not a skills only guy, is not a thug either.
When they acquired power forward Chris Andersen for almost no money in the summer of 2008, the Denver Nuggets definitely had their quota of thug power achieved.
Andersen has been on a mission to redeem himself from being kicked out of the League for abuse of an illegal substance. Although I will be the first to admit he is skilled defensively and can jump practically to the moon (and you need at least one player who can jump higher than almost everyone else to have any chance of all of winning a Championship) Andersen is not exactly someone who really cares about whether he fouls or not when trying to stop a score: he is out to stop it any way possible, and he takes as much pride in committing fouls that are not called against him as he does in clean blocks that he makes. Andersen simply doesn't care about the nuances of what is a foul and what is not a foul. Marcus Camby he definitely is not.
Nor does he care about the fact that he can not be part of a team-oriented strategic offense, because he has no jump shot to speak of, relatively poor ability to drive and draw fouls, and little ability to pass well for that matter.
Yet Denver, by basing their entire offense on their defense, has been remarkably and extremely successfull in being able to use Andersen, Dahntay Jones, and also Renaldo Balkman, yet another defensive specialist, and a more highly skilled one than either Andersen or Jones, as offensive weapons. All of these defensive specialists have been able to over and over easily score off an amazingly large number of fast breaks generated by uncalled fouls, long rebounds often followed by long outlet passes, by blocks, by steals, and by a few rugby scrums to boot.
Andersen has also been an outstanding offensive rebounder. Correction, he is not so much an offensive rebounder as your worst nightmare if you are not an energetic defensive rebounder. Numerous defensive rebounders have had their would be rebounds snatched by Andersen in mid-air for aborted defensive rebounds turned in to yet more easy Denver scores.
Whether or not Andersen is literally a thug in conjunction with substance abuse, he is a thug in the basketball sense, since he is a defense only player who does not care how many fouls or goal tends he commits. The same and worse is true with Dahntay Jones.
Now Kenyon Martin is a real thug through and through, and everyone knows it. Very early in game one of this year's Denver-Dallas series, he virtually threw Dirk Nowitzki to the floor head or shoulders first, but the referees were asleep at the switch in that game, so no technical or flagrant was called. Unlike in game 4, the referees were not under marching orders from the NBA to keep the game "under control".
After the game, the NBA corrected the referees mistake and upgraded the foul to a flagrant one. The NBA fined Kenyon Martin $25,000 for the obvious attempt to, if not injure Dirk Nowitzki, to at least intimidate him in in a grossly unsportsmanlike way.
But Dirk Nowitzki is hardly someone you can intimidate into submission, and he has been absolutely brilliant in the series.
In case you doubt whether Kenyon Martin is a bona fide thug, at least when pressured by fiery and Quest for the Ring-like Dallas owner Marc Cuban, here is Kenyon Martin himself speaking at tonight's Mavericks-Nuggets game, won by the Mavericks with a masterfull offensive performance, 119-117.
From J.E. Skeetts at Yahoo Sports and the Ball Don't Lie basketball site:
I either fell asleep for two minutes or TNT didn't air this, but Art Garcia of the NBA.com Playoff Blog reports Martin came to the defense of his mother, Lydia, who is sitting about six rows up near the Denver end, while officials were reviewing a play in the second quarter. Apparently, K-Mart unleashed hell at the Dallas fans sitting around her:
"You [expletive] better cut the [expletive]," he shouted, as team personnel tried to pull him back to the huddle. "You’re going to get [expletive] up."
Martin then said to his mother: "Somebody do something to you, you better tell me. I’m going to [expletive] somebody up."
Security came to the area to speak with Martin's mom, but she remained in her seat. Yikes.
Can some group of people stop the Thuggets before they start to attract monkey see, monkey do copy cat teams. Like the referees, or the Lakers, or even the Rockets. Will someone step up here and please put an end to this?
Otherwise, we will be buried in fouls, free throws, technical fouls, flagrant fouls, injuries from fouls, and at least a few brawls next season.
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