Shocking but True: the Denver Nuggets are Better than the Lakers but can they beat the Lakers in the 2010 Playoffs?

I have been totally buried with work other than basketball last week and this week but I had to put a freeze on all of that to write this very important Report on the remarkable situation that has developed over the last several weeks. I mean, this is practically an emergency if you are dedicated to who wins the NBA Championship and why. It’s like if I was a physician, I have just been called into emergency duty in the middle of the night due to some calamity that has caused a lot of injuries. This is a totally unscheduled Report, so you know something big is up.

Even a month ago the 2010 NBA plot was getting unusually thick and now it’s extremely thick. You have as the most likely final four the extremely well managed and coached Los Angeles Lakers, the diabolical, incredibly lucky, and incredibly talented Denver Nuggets, the extremely talented but questionably coached and possibly too dependent on LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers, and the 2008 Quest winner Boston Celtics, who have been slowed down by one injury after another and in particular by Kevin Garnett taking far longer to fully recover from injury than anyone in Boston wanted. But of the four teams Boston has the best point guard by a good margin in Rajon Rondo (superstar, one ring). Point guard and center are the two most important positions for winning the Quest.

Chauncey Billups may be just as good a player as Rajon Rondo if not slightly better but strictly speaking Rajon Rondo is now a substantially better point guard, mostly because Rondo is more dedicated to the position whereas Chauncey Billups’ coach is less dedicated to the position to say the least so Billups has “less material to work with” from his coach than does Rondo.

The Celtics had in theory the upper hand over the Cavaliers until about the beginning of the year but now they look to be in trouble versus the Cavaliers even if they get completely healthy for the playoffs because:

--The Cavaliers are coming together big time; for one thing, they seem to have finally correctly integrated Shaquille O’Neil into their sets and defensively.

--The Cavaliers made a key trade just before the trading deadline, headlined by Antawn Jamison in and Zydrunas Ilgauskas out, which is a big net gain. There were, however, not a few who were disappointed that Cleveland did not pick up instead Amare Stoudemire from the unstable Phoenix Suns, who was the best player in the NBA according to the 2007-08 Quest for the Ring Real Player Ratings which, however, did not include the defensive adjustment and Stoudemire is not all that great defensively.

Yes, Stoudemire would have been the ultimate prize for Cleveland, which is defensively solid enough to take on Stoudemire’s defending and live to tell about it. And yes, Antawn Jamison is kind of old (34 in June) whereas Stoudemire is 27 and change. But Jamison is a big upgrade over Ilgauskas who practically fell off a cliff this year and the already high odds they will win the Ring this year have gone up after this trade so it is mission accomplished. Stoudemire would have been perfect and would have taken much more load off of LeBron James than Jamison does, but the main point remains mission accomplished for Cleveland. They now have a front court competitive with that of the Lakers and probably better than that of the Celtics unless Garnett returns to 100%.

--Cleveland’s front depth is about to get still deeper with the return of one of the most underrated power forwards in basketball from summer knee surgery: Leon Powe.

The very thick 2010 plot also features a wild card Dallas Mavericks team that has practically fallen apart just after they seemed poised to overtake the Nuggets. That seems like such a long, long time ago now even though it was only about six weeks ago; what the hell happened to your team, Rick Carlisle?

The other, far stronger wild card possibility is the Magic, who will most likely just like last year beat the Celtics if the Celtics can not shake the injury bug before the playoffs, but like Denver most likely do not have enough to contend with the more monstrous than ever Cavaliers.

So as of now it looks like LeBron James will get his ring after all (which is where we started the year with but it’s been a wild ride back to the starting point) and it also looks like it will be Cleveland that gets it’s first ring and not Denver, even if Denver is actually in the Championship playing Cleveland, which is believe it or not a real Championship possibility.

And you and for sure I thought last year was as interesting as things ever get, laugh out loud. Now I know for sure that anyone who thinks I’m silly for doing basketball instead of politics and economics all the time is wrong.

Ten years from now we will probably look back on 2009 and especially on 2010 and say something like “Those were years that make basketball playoffs worth watching and worth writing about. And those were years that gave Quest for the Ring a huge shot in the arm.” To say that these two years provide exactly the kind of subject matter Quest for the Ring needs to learn and report on the high level secrets of who wins Championships and why is an understatement. Thick plots and unique characters (I’m looking at you, George Karl, laugh out loud) allow you to dig out the secrets a lot faster than otherwise.

Even in my dreams I never imagined there would be so much going on in one year. We’ll be breaking 2010 down extensively for a year and from time to time for years to come so as to efficiently discover previously unknown things about how playoff games and Championships are won and lost. In a word, Quest struck gold both in 2009 and especially now in 2010. Had I wrote what is actually happening as a fiction book no one would believe the plot.

The Nuggets are now clearly and definitely better than the Lakers and they are supposed to defeat the Lakers in this year’s West final. Yes, you heard that right, in theory the Denver Nuggets should defeat the Los Angeles Lakers this year. They have everything they need to win and they have moved substantially ahead of the Lakers in Real Team Rating which is designed to reveal who the real best teams are. We have the Cavaliers as the best and the Nuggets as not far behind.

In a Report in the near future, I will go into more detail about exactly how the Nuggets pulled rabbits out of hats talent wise for the second year in a row.

Alright, now everyone pause, take a few deep breaths, and maybe take a short walk. Get calm somehow.

Ok, I’m back from walking around the block (damn that dog who likes George Karl which almost bit my leg off; I’ve got ice on the wound).

But hold the phones! There are a couple of major things that Real Team Ratings leave out (besides injuries, which of course are almost totally unpredictable so we hardly ever even discuss those). You have home court advantage and coaching. What we seem to be seeing this year is that those two things sometimes are essentially the same thing.

There are two main reasons why the Lakers are ahead of the Nuggets right now by four games in the loss column. It just changed this evening from five to four, so there goes the plot getting thicker again. The Lakers probably still have enough of a lead to ensure they will squeak into the playoffs with home court locked up in the West over the Nuggets (but it will be very tight and the Lakers could possibly lose home court to the Nuggets by the end of the regular). First, Kobe Bryant has hit at least three (is it actually four? I’m not sure.) buzzer beaters to change Lakers losses into wins. Second, meanwhile, George Karl has been losing games to bad teams mostly because he has reverted to his traditional short, often inadequate 8-man rotation and also because he has reverted to his more or less traditional over reliance on guards and under reliance on forwards. Last year he was like a new man (and it was quite amazing and I was left sort of speechless, which is very rare laugh out loud) but now this year he is back to those two really bad habits.

The Nuggets have lost a number of games simply because they were badly beaten in the paint by bad and mediocre at best teams because Karl ran an extremely unbalanced lineup with way too many guard minutes and way too few forward minutes. As you review the following, keep in mind that in a regular season game against an inferior opponent good paint defense is less than 40 points given up in the paint and great point defense is less than 35 points given up in the paint. Anytime a team gives up 40 or more points in the paint to a poor team, this is not good. A tried and tested and relatively easy way to make sure you don’t lose to a bad team is to make sure the paint is defended well, simply because bad teams usually don’t have enough players who can make enough outside shots to beat you.

If you can’t defend the paint well despite being a much better team, you are leaving the door open for that inferior team to upset you, which is exactly what George Karl did in these games by refusing to play proven solid paint defender and rebounder Renaldo Balkman. So stubborn was Karl that he refused to play Balkman regardless of injures (including to Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin). When Anthony and Martin were out, the Nuggets were even more overweight guards than they were before, due to Karl still refusing to play Balkman even in those games.

GAMES THE NUGGETS COULD HAVE WON TO ENSURE HOME COURT OVER THE LAKERS
1. November 11: Bucks 108 Nuggets 102 in Milwaukee; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint

2. November 20: Clippers 106 Nuggets 99 in Los Angeles; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.

3. November 29: Timberwolves 106 Nuggets 100 in Denver; Nuggets give up 44 points in the paint.

4. December 8: Bobcats 107 Nuggets 95 in Charlotte; Nuggets give up 42 points in the paint.

5. December 10: Pistons 101 Nuggets 99 in Detroit; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.

6. December 28: Kings 106 Nuggets 101 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.

7. January 9: Kings 102 Nuggets 100 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.

So there you have it: seven losses to mostly bad teams with one or two mediocre teams included in the mix. In not one of these games did the Nuggets give up fewer than 40 points in the paint. The Nuggets should have won rock bottom minimum four of those games and had they done so they would be exactly even with the Lakers in the loss column right now. Or, if Kobe missed a couple of those buzzer beaters and the Nuggets had won a measly three of the seven games above, the Nuggets would right now be ahead of the Lakers in the race for home court advantage. And there are other possible combinations, but you get the point: the Nuggets are still behind the Lakers in the standings and they definitely should not be.

Are the Nuggets really that lacking in the front court that they had to lose those games that way? Hardly so. Last year power forward Renaldo Balkman played 780 minutes for the Nuggets and this year he is playing during garbage time only. Balkman last year was at least as good as Kenyon Martin, he was not really all that far behind miracle pick-up for next to nothing Chris Andersen, and with very good paint defending and very good defensive rebounding helped the Nuggets to be the defensive powerhouse that they were. Instead of being rewarded he was benched this year by the always confounding George Karl.

So now the Nuggets are fairly light touches defensively in the paint. There are only about ten teams in the NBA who are worse in paint defense than the Nuggets at the moment. The situation is actually getting worse as it becomes common knowledge that the Nuggets big weakness is paint defending.

Certainly the Lakers are licking their chops at the thought of throwing Gasol, Bynum and Odom at Nene, Martin, and Andersen. The latter was not even in the League not so long ago yet was indisputably better than Martin both last year and this year. Yet due to Karl’s intransigence about players “of lesser stature” and / or of “lesser personalities,” Chris Andersen has not started a single solitary game (he is the J.R. Smith of the front court, laugh out loud) and he is playing only about 22 minutes a game! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! No one disputes that Andersen is an outstanding player in the paint defensively and is not bad offensively either, and yet even Andersen is being shortchanged on playing time by Karl. If Andersen is that shortchanged, is it really such a surprise that Balkman does not play at all?

You almost wish that if Balkman never plays the Nuggets at least try the “hail Mary strategy” of a very high fouling rate. The Nuggets are currently 6th in fouls committed per game which is normally bad for a Championship team (you ideally want to be in the middle) but they could commit even more fouls and possibly partly make up for the absence of Balkman. They got some traction from doing that last year, after all; they seem to know how to maneuver in that particular territory. If the other team can’t hit free throws and / or if the referees are asleep at the switch, you have a chance to make up for not having enough to defend the paint in certain games if you foul early and often so to speak.

He probably doesn’t realize it, but when Carmelo Anthony wishes for a curtain call for last year’s Nuggets defense as he has several times in the last month, he is in effect really asking, just as Quest for the Ring is asking, for the return of Renaldo Blackman, because without Balkman the Nuggets simply don’t have enough manpower up front to prevent often embarrassing defensive lapses in the paint and weak rebounding.

Meanwhile, the Lakers, who I repeat for emphasis can in theory be defeated by the Nuggets (I honestly never thought I would be saying this by the way) view the business of winning playoff games and Championships quite a bit differently than Coach Karl, who has lost many more playoff games than he has won and who has never won a Championship, whereas Lakers Coach Phil Jackson has ten rings and has the best playoff coaching record of all time. The Lakers like to overweight forward minutes a little and would not be caught dead seriously underweighting forward /center playing time. Phil Jackson is one of the last coaches who would ever possibly make the mistake of playing too many guards for too many minutes and not enough forwards for not enough minutes.

Quest for the Ring is investigating to find out anything specifically explaining why Balkman is not playing at all. But when all is said and done, the reason is probably the same old combination of bad habits and false beliefs of George Karl. But if we find anything more to this, we will definitely report it.

Assuming Karl stubbornly continues to refuse to play Balkman (which is quite likely) the Nuggets will probably not defeat the Lakers in a seven game series. If you had to say right now, you would look for a seven game West final this year where the seventh game is in Los Angeles and the Nuggets lose that game.

So one of the thickest aspects of the very thick 2010 plot is the likelihood that George Karl is going to quite literally cost the Nuggets winning the West this year. Coaching is way more important than most NBA fans think it is, but it is relatively unusual for coaching to directly and clearly cost an extremely talented team a Championship appearance. But exactly how unusual it is we don’t yet know.

So the Lakers still retain a huge coaching advantage. The fascinating question now is whether the Nuggets have pulled so far ahead of the Lakers talent wise that they can beat the Lakers even with inferior coaching. While we do most definitely know as it stands now that the Nuggets are better than the Lakers, we do not yet know whether the huge coaching advantage the Lakers have over the Nuggets will offset that so that the Lakers can once again represent the West in the NBA finals. It seems to be razor close now, tight as a tick on a pig on a hot summer day, as Dan Rather used to say.

In summary, if and only if Balkman plays and he is at least almost as good as last year (which was on the border between solid starter and star) the Nuggets can theoretically defeat the Lakers. Had the Nuggets picked up a solid new forward or center before the trading deadline they could have had another option. Or obviously if George Karl had not vetoed the Ron Artest for Linas Kleiza trade almost two years ago, the Nuggets would be solid enough up front to definitely defeat the Lakers. But alas, Artest is on the Lakers and not on the Nuggets as he really should be (how ironic is that?). And there was also the Marcus Camby giveaway, something the Lakers would never do in a million years. Marcus Camby added to the existing Nuggets crew would definitely put them over the top versus the Lakers.

Given all of those missed opportunities, if and when the Nuggets blow it this year, no one will be able to say that they didn’t have a fair opportunity to win the Quest. Hell, I think they could possibly have won the Quest in 2008 as well; this team has had talent coming out of the woodwork for at least the last three years. No one put a gun to their heads as the Nuggets made decision after decision that weakened their paint defense and rebounding. No, the Nuggets are mismanaging real opportunities to win a Ring.

There is no Artest, no Camby, and no trade deadline pickup for the Nuggets. So what we are down to is this: Balkman plays and Andersen plays more and the Nuggets have a real chance to beat the Lakers in the 2010 playoffs. If not, the Lakers remain solid favorites to defeat the Nuggets even though we have mounting evidence that the Nuggets are actually the better team this year.