Also note that Mr. Karl, who has seen numerous playoff seasons go to hell in a hand basket in years past, says that "I am convinced that no one will be able to take away the ability to celebrate this season."
No one? Laugh out loud. As you might expect, the Quest disagrees.
The Nuggets need to in the West finals win at least three games against the Lakers, or they need to defeat the Rockets, and then go on to win at least two games against the Cavaliers in the NBA Championship, or maybe I might say at least one game if you caught me in my best possible mood, in order for me to consider this to be a successful Nuggets playoff season. Here are some of the reasons for that:
1. The Hornets were badly banged up, so that series was very close to completely irrelevant.
2. The Mavericks were slightly banged up, and they were out to lunch defensively. Moreover, that series was really a 4-2 or a 4-3 Nuggets type of series, not a 4-1 series. And another moreover: the referees were asleep at the switch in games 1 and 2.
3. The Nuggets are very, very talented on defense AND offense. They clearly can have a high octane offense if they want to, as shown in parts of both the Hornets and the Mavericks series. They are not limited to points off fast breaking from the defense only.
To go with this, the Nuggets have a high octane defense. Even though the Nuggets have recently departed from the letter of the George Karl script, especially on offense, they are still overall to a large extent reflecting the George Karl approach to basketball. Therefore, if the Nuggets, despite being about as talented as the Lakers, and more athletic and charged up than are the Lakers this playoff season, do not win at least 3 games versus the Lakers, then I will most definitely pronounce the playoff season as a failure for the Nuggets, and I will most definitely substantially blame it on Mr. Karl.
The same is true if the Nuggets, who are most definitely more talented on both offense and defense than are the Houston Rockets with no Yao Ming or Tracy McGrady, lose to the Rockets in a Rockets-Nuggets West final. That would be a complete failure on the part of the Nuggets and a complete failure of the George Karl 2009 system.
[This is a fast break type of posting, a short post needed to be pushed out the door quickly to be timely. In the great majority of cases, a fast break posting is followed up by much longer articles, that will contain a lot of proof for any points made in the fast breaks. Remember that many Quest reports have much more detail than this one; Quest for the Ring prides itself on game, team, and League breakdowns that are as long as necessary to make and prove the points.]
