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, FOLLOWING GAME 5, WHICH WAS WON BY THE NUGGETS 107-86, AND AT THIS POINT THE NUGGETS HAD WON THE SERIES 4-1
And don't ever make a prediction of whether the Hornets will win a playoff series in January, when you don't know who the opponent will be and you don't know what the injury situation will be.
Most writers and most fans do predict during the regular season what their teams will do when the playoffs come, but its really silly to predict this when you don't know the opponent and when you don't know the injury situation. Only if you are lucky will both teams be at full strength.
I'll sign off by hoping that the Hornets get the Center position squared away so that they then have the two most important positions taken care of. Then they can go for a ring sometime in the next few years.
Why do I care? Because this year, CP3 was, according to my calculations, the 2nd best player in the NBA, behind only LeBron James. The Nuggets have no one in the top 15 or so. For this and other reasons, I came here thinking the Hornets could beat the Nuggets.
But I didn't know Tyson Chandler was not really up to speed and, apparently, neither did the Hornets' trainers or Tyson Chandler himself know either. Had Tyson Chandler been 100%, it would have been a very different series. At a minimum, I would think the Hornets would have won three games had they not been banged up.
I'll go to the Mavericks board now to point out all the Nuggets' problems, laugh out loud.
FROM APRIL 29, FOLLOWING GAME 5, WHICH WAS WON BY THE NUGGETS 107-86, AND AT THIS POINT THE NUGGETS HAD WON THE SERIES 4-1
As for using the Phil Jackson/Kobe analogy, Phil wrote a book about Kobe's selfishness.
I checked this out. Phil Jackson has written several books, one of which, called "Last Season: a Team in Search of its Soul" was critical of Kobe Bryant.
I have not read the book, but have now read numerous summaries and reviews. Next time I go to the library I'll look for it; the reviews are indicating it's not worth buying. (But you can buy it for little more than shipping charges, apparently.)
Many reviewers report that the supposed criticism of Kobe Bryant is over-hyped. Moreover, this book is about the year Bryant went on trial for rape! Yes, I would hope there is at least a little criticism of Bryant in there.
So this book is about the 2003-04 season, which ended up with the Pistons beating the Lakers in the Championship. Phil Jackson in this book states that he much preferred to coach Shaquille O'Neal to Kobe Bryant. OK, we all have our preferences.
Does Phil Jackson use the word "selfish" to describe Bryant? No, never. He does more or less say that Bryant is a narcissistic type, that he is almost impossible to coach, and that he has a mind of his own when it comes to how the team should be run. But for the record he never uses that "selfish" word, which is a negative word associated with being narcissistic.
It is possible to be narcissistic without being selfish. And everyone is narcissistic to one extent or another. Don't you like yourself? So let's be careful with the word throwing.
I mean Lord Jehovah, Chris Andersen has an illegal drug taking personality and yet he's now one of the best defenders in the NBA. He probably would be in jail right now were it not for the fact that he can afford very powerful attorneys. So much for the idea that a bad personality means you can't be a great player. The Nuggets have become practically chock loaded with players who supposedly have bad personalities but are really good basketball players.
Boo hoo, Phil, poor you having to deal with Kobe Bryant! Hand me a kleenex! I'm not too sympathetic, given how much money you make and given how you went back on your pledge to quit the Lakers and came back to coach Bryant. Coaches need to quit wasting so much time criticising the personalities of their players.
Let Marc Cuban do it, laugh out loud.
But in fairness to NBA coaches, not counting George Karl, the problem of coaches criticising personalities is not a big one. Unlike Phil Jackson, Karl has a long track record of criticising player personalities, and for that matter benching players due to supposed shortcomings with their personalities.
For the record, although I wish Jackson was not so sensitive about Bryant, his faults are nothing compared to George Karl's. Jackson never demanded that Kobe Bryant reduce his scoring and shooting the way George Karl demanded that Carmelo Anthony do so.
Because Jackson is not a lame brain. You can ask a basketball player to do more of something without having to warn him to do less of (a good thing) that he is currently doing.
And these days, Phil Jackson is as happy as a cat curled up near the fireplace that power scorer Kobe Bryant, big ego and all, can make winning basketball games so easy.
FROM APRIL 29, FOLLOWING GAME 5, WHICH WAS WON BY THE NUGGETS 107-86, AND AT THIS POINT THE NUGGETS HAD WON THE SERIES 4-1
It had to happen after I joined most of the Nuggets bloggers in predicting during the season that the Nuggets would lose in round 1 again.
No seriously, we have all been wasting our (and CP3's) time by thinking the Hornets had a chance to win this series.
Quest for the Ring now quotes verbatim an article which in no uncertain terms reports to you that the Hornets were the walking wounded during the series. The Hornets were banged up at the start of the series, and they only got more banged up as the series went along.
The New Orleans Hornets didn't have their big man for their big game.
Tyson Chandler was sidelined for Game 5 against Denver on Wednesday night with a swollen left ankle.
The center has been hampered by the injury all series, averaging just 3.8 points and 5.3 rebounds.
Hornets coach Byron Scott said the ankle wasn't 100 percent heading into the playoffs and that with each game it's only gotten worse.
Chandler missed 15 straight games in the regular season because of the ankle and returned for the season finale.
After discussing the situation with Chandler on Wednesday morning at the team's shootaround, Scott decided to hold him out.
"Just for his health," Scott said.
New Orleans started Hilton Armstrong in his place as the Hornets, down 3-1 in the best-of-seven series, tried to stave off elimination.
Scott didn't rule out Chandler's return should the series be extended.
"If we can get back to New Orleans and get back here, if there is a Game 7, it would probably be a different story," Scott said. "He would actually have some time to rest and heal it a little bit more."
Scott also said All-Star Chris Paul wasn't playing at full strength, either. The dynamic point guard has been bumped around all series, absorbing one collision after another.
Still, Paul is averaging 17.8 points and 10.5 assists in the series.
"He's going to play as hard as he can for as long as he can," Scott said. "We've got a team that out of the five starters now, one is not playing at all and we have one starter that's healthy and that's Rasual Butler. Everybody else is just banged up there."
It's been a tumultuous season for Chandler, who was dealt to Oklahoma City in February, only to have the trade rescinded when he failed a physical.
His production in the playoffs has steadily dwindled as his minutes decreased. He scored seven points in 36 minutes in Game 2, but was held scoreless in 13 minutes in Game 4.
That ultimately led to Scott's decision to rest Chandler.
"Obviously it hurts us, but I thought that each game he got a little worse," Scott said. "We knew that before the series started."
No team can win a playoff series with this quantity of injury problems. Once you get up to three, four, and more injuries, it's not the same team anymore. True, all of the Hornets' injuries were relatively minor. But it was the sheer number of them that did it: the Hornets were nickled and dimed to death.
Given the sheer quantity of minor injuries, it's kind of pointless to complain very much about Byron Scott not taking Chandler out much earlier in the series. This would have been nice, but would have earned the Hornets one more win at the most, and maybe not even that.
And the Nuggets, because they have been so wretched in the playoffs for years and years, were taking no chances, so they poured it on game after game.
Meanwhile, other than an insignificant Carmelo Anthony elbow problem, the Nuggets had no injury problems. This lopsided injury advantage, combined with the way the Nuggets chose to play the game this year, created this rare blowout.
I believe the Mavericks are healthy. And although their defense has been inferior to both the Hornets and the Nuggets, their offense is ahead of that of both the Hornets and Nuggets. So the Mavs will be a good and fair test for the Nuggets' continuing efforts to intimidate and disrupt.
But for the record, in theory the Nuggets should be playing the Rockets or Blazers in round two, rather than the Mavs. This would be the case were the playoffs done strictly based on seeding, instead of based on a combination of seeding and brackets. This is yet another in a long list of lucky breaks for the Nuggets this year. About the only lucky break they have not gotten yet is for Pau Gasol or Kobe Bryant to be injured.
I for one am still not very impressed with the Nuggets. OK, so you can disrupt and beat up on a banged up team. So what?
Yes, you do have some dead wood on your team, but don't be thinking that you have to get rid of every player on your team based on this fluke of a series.
========== 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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