As promised in the prequel to this review of the only Quest Report in history to be declared to be in error after publication, we are now going to go over each of the 16 reasons given in that Report for why the Denver Nuggets were supposedly, definitely not going to win any playoff series in 2009. They did win a series, and we actually can see why if we find out that somehow Darth and the Nuggets avoided most of these sixteen things from happening.
The idea from that January 14 Report that turned out to be very wrong was that although not all of the 16 things would go wrong for the Nuggets in the playoffs, enough of them would go wrong that the Nuggets would fail to win a series. Technically, the Nuggets were not supposed to win more than two playoff games; whereas they actually won ten.
Reasons one through six were already covered in Part One. This part features reasons seven through ten, and part three will cover reasons eleven and twelve and will discuss the error one last time and will summarize all of the corrections and also will summarize what does not need to be corrected.
REASON SEVEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
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.
HOW REASON SEVEN PLAYED OUT
This simply didn’t happen. Karl knew this season was his one true coaching success story and he wasn’t going to have a big argument with one of his players to spoil it. Another thing showing that Karl was on his best behavior was that he was more generous with playing time for reserves and for younger players than in God only knows how many years. By contrast, already this year, Coach Karl he has cut back on the amount of playing time available to non-starters from the generous amount that was given last year.
In fairness to Quest, we didn’t think this was among the most likely reasons why the Nuggets would fail to win a playoff series, but we had to include it given Karl’s problematic history in this area.
REASON EIGHT WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
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.
HOW REASON EIGHT PLAYED OUT
Well this reason did play out as forecast in one sense but not in another. All three of the Nuggets’ playoff opponents kept roughly the same pace they had in the regular season, which was very slow for New Orleans, average for Dallas, and fast pace for Los Angeles. But the reason did not play out insofar as the Nuggets’ defenders hardly ever “wore out”.
In many reports between the end of the Mavericks series and now, I have revised my view by softening my criticism of the 2008-09 Nuggets defense. I have in great detail in previous reports during July-November 2009 explained my new position on the high energy, high aggressiveness, and intentionally high fouling strategy.
Actually, prior to the 2008-09 season, I didn’t have a position, because I had never seen this defensive approach before. It took a long-time veteran coach tired of the same old same old and apparently a wonk or two in the Denver front office to spring this on the unsuspecting basketball world. For a few months during 2008-09, I was naturally against it for all circumstances, but I changed my mind after the Nuggets demonstrated the effectiveness adequately.
There will be other strategies and approaches that are good enough to pick up extra regular season wins and in some cases a few extra playoff wins, but that are not good enough to get into or to win a Championship. The Nuggets had a two-for here, because their primary offensive strategy, fast pace and fast breaks, are another strategy that will give you a few extra regular season wins and possibly an extra playoff win or two, but it will never win you a Ring.
I guess it’s realistic to use these strategies if you know for a fact you can’t win a Ring regardless of using them or not. I personally would not use a strategy or approach such as this if I was in charge, and nor would the majority of coaches and managers, but it can be theoretically justified.
As a brief summary of what we recommend now, I now fully endorse this in certain circumstances: when a team knows it has no chance to win a Ring, when it is not a highly skilled defense, when it has high energy, high motivation, no backing down kind of players, and when on offense it has good fast breaking capability.
You might call this a “building for the future strategy”. The team that uses it will get extra regular season wins from doing this and perhaps, as the Nuggets showed, even some playoff wins it would not otherwise have gotten. No, a team can not win a Ring while doing this barring a once in 300 years miracle, and it’s not the best defensive approach, but it is better than I thought, and if the team is not going to win a Ring anyway, it’s not really a bad defensive scheme.
Referees are simply incapable, unwilling, or both to ramp up their foul calls to the same extent that a team operating a high fouling defense makes the fouls. So the team running this strategy makes some gains “on the margin” when it prevents a score by fouling but the foul is not called. Some additional net gain is made when free throws are missed.
REASON NINE WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
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.
HOW REASON NINE PLAYED OUT
Laugh out loud. Chris Paul, the second best player in the NBA during 2008-09, allowed little old Daunte Jones to get under his skin to the point where he was not as effective a point guard as usual. Hornets Coach Byron Scott complained in public that Jones was a dirty player and that the Nuggets were basically playing fast and loose with the rules. The perception that Scott allowed the Nuggets to get under the skin of Chris Paul and also under his own skin most likely was one of the reasons why Scott was subsequently fired by the Hornets. Scott was fired very early in the 2009-10 regular season.
In the next series, not only did the Mavericks, their coaches, their owner, and most of their fans lose their cool to one extent or another due to the Nuggets’ aggressiveness and successful gaming of the referees during the series, but the NBA became worried that the series was going to blow up in some kind of a brawl. The NBA itself lost its cool, laugh out loud. For details, see this Report , especially the last half of that Report. For more than that, simply see other Reports in that series of Reports on the Mavericks-Nuggets series; in total there are nine Reports on that series.
When in game four, under instructions from a worried NBA front office the referees started handing out technical fouls left and right, the Mavericks didn’t realize the trap set up by the Nuggets and the League (who were not in cahoots though) they were walking into, they lost their cool and ended up, ironically, getting more technical and flagrant fouls called against them than the original perpetrators, the Nuggets did. It seems that just as “it’s always the second guy who gets caught,” when players are jostling on the court, I guess its always the second team that gets caught when entire teams are getting extra aggressive toward one another.
So overall, this possible reason why the Nuggets would lose did not really play out.
REASON TEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
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.
HOW REASON TEN PLAYED OUT
Let’s check what actually happened:
MAVERICKS-NUGGETS SERIES FREE THROWS
Game One: Free throws: Mavericks 9-13, Nuggets 25-36; Fouls Mavericks 29, Nuggets 19
Game Two: Free throws: Mavericks 23-30, Nuggets 31-40; Fouls Mavericks 28, Nuggets 20
Game Three: Free throws: Mavericks 40-49, Nuggets 32-40; Fouls Mavericks 27, Nuggets 34
Game Four: Free throws: Mavericks 36-43, Nuggets 32-44, Fouls Mavericks 29, Nuggets 29
Game Five: Free throws: Mavericks 22-29, Nuggets 17-22; Fouls Mavericks 22, Nuggets 25
Grand Total: Free throws: Mavericks 130-164, Nuggets 137-182; Fouls Mavericks 135 Nuggets 127
The Mavericks made almost 80 percent of their free throws, but the referees were not calling some of the fouls in games one and two in Denver, and nor was Denver making as many fouls as they often did in the regular season.
To their credit, in the Dallas series at least the Nuggets never technically ran a raw intentional fouling defense. It was a modified one;; the Nuggets would only start fouling more or less intentionally if they felt that their energetic and athletic defending was not going to be good enough by itself, and if they felt that the referees would cut them some breaks by not calling a few of the fouls. In games one and two, the Nuggets sensed they didn’t need to foul heavily, but when they went to Dallas for games three and four, it was a different story and the Nuggets clearly intentionally ran a high fouling strategy for those particular games.
The Mavericks made their free throws, but they didn’t get as many free throws as they should have gotten; they should have gotten at least 20 more of them. What about shooting and assisting; did the Mavericks, who did have a well run offense during the regular season, have their shooting and assisting negatively affected by the Nuggets defense or not?
MAVERICKS SHOOTING AND ASSISTING
Game One: Shooting 48.8%, Assists: 17
Game Two: Shooting 47.4%, Assists 23
Game Three: Shooting 40.0%, Assists 15
Game Four: Shooting 50.6%, Assists 17
Game Five: Shooting 51.4%, Assists 23
Series Average per Game: Shooting 47.64%, Assists 19
The Dallas Mavericks’ regular season shooting percentage was 46.2%, so they shot better against Denver than they did on average, so in accordance with this reason the Nuggets way of defending was not able to actually reduce the shooting effectiveness of their opponent.
On the other hand, the Mavericks averaged only 19 assists per game, a very bad number for a playoff team that has sites on winning Rings. During the regular season, the Mavericks made 21.7 assists per game, almost three more than they made against the Nuggets. In the regular, Dallas was 8th in assists, but against Denver, they made assists at rate that would have placed them 29th in the NBA, with only one team, the lowly Memphis Grizzlies, making fewer assists than 19 per game.
What the Mavericks’ assists pattern tells you is that the Nuggets’ unique and controversial high fouling defense did not as you might expect stop a good shooting team from making their shots in playoff games (when they were allowed by the Nuggets to shoot without a foul). But on the other hand, the Mavericks reacted to the high energy, high movement, and high athleticism aspects by passing less, which was absolutely devastating to the Mavericks’ chances to win the series. Had Rick Carlisle demanded that his team not worry so much about turnovers to the Nuggets’ defense, and to pass more and get more assists, they would have been able to be fully competitive in the series, and the result may very well have been a Dallas victory.
I was partly right and partly wrong with this reason. I was right to say that a lot of aggressiveness, fouling, and energy per se will not stop the other team from scoring efficiently. And I am right when I say that that kind of defense will never win you a Ring precisely because it won't reduce scoring percentage. But I was wrong in assuming that that type of defense will not slow down passing and assisting. It may slow down assisting and passing if the team being affected gets scared and starts passing less out of fear of turnovers and fast breaks coming the other way.
There is a crucial lesson here for everyone, especially coaches: never ever fail to monitor your teams’ passing and assisting, and make sure that your team is not so afraid of making turnovers that they cut down their passing and assisting when they encounter any kind of unusually hard charging defense. That is a trap you can fall into if you are not an expert coach. Rather, pay a price of a few more turnovers than usual to maintain your passing and assisting in general. Turnovers are seldom if ever going to spike up so much that you would have been better off half shutting down your passing and assisting. You lose by playing it cautiously and conservatively the way the Mavericks did.
Essentially, the Mavericks fell into the trap that the Nuggets had set: they compromised the quality of their offense (and that quality was the only way they were going to win this series) by cutting down on passing and assisting because they were afraid of turnovers. They thought wrong and were virtually blown out of the series.
Later on, the Lakers faced the same question, and they chose correctly, presumably due to Phil Jackson.
As just described in detail, reason ten partly played out but partly did not play out. It did not play out enough to constitute a substantial reason why the Nuggets might have lost in the playoffs.
The review of the sixteen reasons the Nuggets were going to lose continues and concludes in part three.
THE DARTH VADER OF BASKETBALL
