See the additional editorial notes at the end for more details about late postings and how they are not going to be a problem any longer.
FROM APRIL 29 2009 DURING THE DAY, BEFORE THE NUGGETS WON GAME FIVE 107-86 AND WON THE SERIES FOUR GAMES TO ONE
Last year, the Nuggets totally quit on George Karl during the Lakers series in which the Nuggets were blown out 4 games to none. Now this year they are playing like crazy for the guy. So keep in mind that "quitting on a coach" is a temporary thing and can be completely turned around.
STOP HERE if you don't want to read an article on the Nuggets and how they surprised the Hornets in the playoffs this year. Don't complain later about the length; stop here now if you are here just for the usual short little posts.
I did quite a lot of thinking (more than the usual big amount, laugh out loud) about how George Karl and the Nuggets became one of the most surprising teams of recent NBA history this year, both in the regular season and now even so far in the playoffs.
I'll be rewriting this later, but I'll give you a sneak preview rough draft:
The Nuggets decided to see what would happen if their offense was almost completely based on (derived from) their defense. They decided to see how far they could get with no planned plays other than a few out of time-outs. Chauncey Billups handling the ball is the organization of the 2009 Denver offense, period. There are no offensive schemes in the way, for example, the Lakers have them.
So the Nuggets decided to simply play as aggressively and intensely as possible on defense, and to let the chips fall where they might on offense.
Due to sheer effort by and the defensive skills of players such as Kenyon Martin, Renaldo Balkman, and Dahntay Jones, and due to the fact that no one knew what a good defender Chris Andersen could be, so that he was unemployed at precisely the time the Nuggets were looking to get someone on the cheap to help make up for giving away Marcus Camby, and due to a total team commitment to defending, the ingredients for Denver to turn into a defensive powerhouse were provided. And so then the Nuggets did in fact completely make up for the loss of Camby.
However, contrary to what most of the public thinks, the Nuggets' 2009 defense is not actually better than the 2008 defense, but only as good, as measured by points allowed per possession. The style and schemes are all different, but the net result is almost exactly the same.
But the new defensive style did actually jump start what would otherwise have been a dud offense. The way the Nuggets played on defense did in fact result in pressuring teams to make a lot of turnovers, to commit a lot of fouls, and to take too many longer range and contested jump shots. All of which result in easier scoring at the other end. For example, when longer jumpers fail to go in, it is common for the defending team to get a "long rebound" and to have a fast break or at least an "in transition" easy score opportunity that they don't get otherwise.
So to the extent the Nuggets had any planned offense at all, it was based on fast break scores, quick transition scores, and relentless driving for fouls. The result of the Nuggets' defending intensity and effort made the Nuggets' fast break strategy on offense far more viable than it would have been otherwise. To put it another way, if the best you can come up with for an offense is one based on fast breaking, the Nuggets' 2009 defending style and effort is exactly what you need to have for your defending.
A few months ago I was thinking that basketball is a sport that rewards offense more than it turns out it does. So way back in January I predicted that the Nuggets would lose their first round playoff series.
Now I have to recalibrate, because George Karl and the Nuggets have taught us that you can win a playoff series where everything you do is based on energetic and aggressive defending. The fact that you do not have an offensive superstar, and the fact that you have no real offensive system, can be largely irrelevant, at least so long as you are playing a banged up team with a good but not a great offense.
But the question still remains: just exactly what is the balance of power between defense and offense in basketball? Exactly how far can you get with your focus only or at least mostly on defending, while letting the chips fall where they may on offense?
Despite the 2009 Nuggets, I think it is still clear that there are bigger rewards available for good defending in football than there are in basketball. In football the whole idea is to bring the offensive guy down to the ground, at which time he can't do anything more. Whereas in basketball, the truly great offensive players can make shots even when they are well defended. No matter how well you defend, you are not allowed under the rules to completely prevent a basketball player on offense from making a shot.
Most NBA Championship teams have had quality defenses AND quality offenses, with their offenses a separate thing and NOT almost totally dependent on their defenses.
It appears now that the Nuggets have won a playoff series. But they have so far only won a round one series, and round one when half the League makes the playoffs is really only a qualifying round for the real playoffs. Round one is where the teams that have injuries, such as San Antonio and New Orleans, are washed out so that the fully manned teams can battle it out.
As measured by efficiency (the rate of scoring per 100 possessions) New Orleans came into this series almost exactly as good as Denver. New Orleans was the 9th best defensive team in terms of efficiency (107.0 points allowed per 100 possessions) while Denver was the 8th (106.8 points allowed per 100 possessions). Offensively, Denver was 7th (110.4 points scored per 100 possessions) while New Orleans was 12th (108.7 points scored per 100 possessions).
With this set-up in mind, what I think happened in this series is that the combination of the health issues and the fact that New Orleans was not a great offensive team even before any injuries allowed the Nuggets to steamroll the Hornets. New Orleans simply did not have enough great offense to prevent what offense they had from being badly disrupted by the relentless Denver defense. Even Chris Paul was turning the ball over at a surprising clip.
Another surprise for me in this series was that I honestly thought that the Nuggets were going to be committing more fouls than they did, and I also thought that the referees were going to call more actual Nuggets fouls than they did.
Generally speaking, the Nuggets lost games in two ways during the 2008-09 regular season. They lost if the referees threw the book at them and called a lot of fouls against them, and they lost if they played a truly outstanding offensive team, such as the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Since this is not football we are talking about, but basketball, shouldn't it be possible for a great offense to overcome this amazing defense? Of course it is possible, and if all else fails, we can expect that the Lakers will be the ones who prevent the obsessed with defense and neglecting the offense Nuggets from getting into the record books as this year's West Conference Champion and NBA Championship contender.
But before they get a rematch with the Lakers, the Nuggets have to get past the Mavericks. Which may be a lot easier said than done. The Mavericks were this year the 17th best defending team in terms of defensive efficiency (108.4 points allowed per 100 possessions) but they were the 5th best in terms of offensive efficiency (110.5 points scored per 100 possessions).
In other words Dallas was a substantially better offensive team than was New Orleans. Also, the Mavericks are much healthier in this year's playoffs than are the Hornets. And the Mavericks will play the Nuggets with a lot of forward momentum after winning most of their last dozen regular season games, as well as taking care of their nemesis the Spurs in round one, in short order.
The key to defeating the Nuggets is to have a good enough offense that you can prevent yourself from being intimidated and disrupted by the Nuggets style of defending. We saw in the Hornets series that a banged up team with the 12th best offense was not able to function well against the Nuggets' defense. Now the question for a Mavericks-Nuggets series is whether a healthy 5th best offensive team will be enough to keep the Nuggets' defense from taking over everything.
It could very well be enough, in which case Marc Cuban will be one happy guy, especially since the Nuggets actually won all 4 games against the Mavericks in the regular season, with however all but one of those games being very, very close games.
The fact that Dallas does not have a great defense may will not matter all that much against a team that does not put much direct effort into their offense.
With the Nuggets the success of both the defense and the offense ride on whether the defense is successful. If the Mavericks (or the Lakers, if all else fails) have a good enough offense to avoid being intimidated and disrupted very much, then they won't be shut down the way the Hornets were. And at the same time, the Nuggets' offense will be deprived of needed fast breaks.
In other words, with the Nuggets, it's all or nothing. All the eggs are in one basket, the defensive basket, whereas with Championship teams you would think this would never be true. And indeed, I hate to break it to Nuggets fans, but almost all Championship teams have had even more efficient defensive teams than the Nuggets have this year, while having offenses not totally dependent on their defenses, and at least as good and usually better than this year's Nuggets' offense.
But there was one NBA Championship team which had a similar effiiciency profile as the Nuggets. I'll take a close look at that team in a future report.
========== Editorial Notes ==========
--The above was written in late April, 2009.
--As promised, we are finally posting material written and posted on forums in the spring. Obviously, if you have your own site, you should be posting at least simultaneously on your own site when you for whatever reason post elsewhere. But there has been a bad habit of not doing so, a bad habit that is being beaten down due to new content sharing regulations that have teeth.
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