There is something exotic about this situation though; teams that have been partially and awkwardly dismantled seldom if ever come out of the gate as if they were just put together shiny, sleek, and new out of the box. So there is something a little quixotic and mysterious about this team and about how it is motivated to perform at the extreme high end of the possible range it could be in. I thought it was about time to suggest some explanations for how the Nuggets are winning without the tools, techniques, and leadership that is usually used to get those wins. In other words, let's see if we can find out what is behind this magic show.
Who is leading the Nuggets to all these extra wins? No one and nothing would appear to be the answer at first. But we had better go on an expedition to see if there are some things that are at first hidden from view.
A Coach who doesn’t have and can’t fake a lot of confidence can not lead a team to extra victories and this team does in fact have a Coach whose lack of confidence lies just beyond view of the public, but certainly within sight of the most perceptive and long-term players on the Nuggets. And since this Coach leads in only the most roundabout and indirect ways you could imagine, this team is certainly not led in the way that many NBA teams are led by head coaches. Furthermore, the Nuggets’ assistant coaches all heavily defer to Head Coach George Karl and are all relatively soft spoken to boot. In summary, there clearly is very little real leadership to be found among the assistants or the Head Coach.
Nor are the Nuggets led by any of the players in any visible, obvious, or ordinary way. Which Nuggets player motivationally leads the other players to wins the Nuggets would not otherwise get? You can’t answer that, because there isn’t any answer. In fact, the Nuggets don’t even have clear statistical performance leaders, as you will see at the end of this report. Carmelo Anthony was instructed to tone his game down and it this point he has. The truth is that none of the Nuggets is a natural leader and none of them want the job of leading in the traditional American sense of the term.
So just what is making these mysterious Nuggets tick? We can start with the observation that the background of the players is different from that of most other teams. This is not your everyday African American team. Nor is it a team with a heavy European influence such as the Raptors. Nor is it a team with a core of well known Caucasian white guys.
This team has a unique ethnic mix on it; there is no other team with a makeup like this one. This is a team with a blended Latino-African and African-American identity. Two of the best three players on the team this year, Nene and Carmelo Anthony, are Brazilian (Portuguese-African to be more precise) and Latino-African (part Puerto Rican to be more precise) respectively. Renaldo Balkman, another big Latino influence, has been another one of the many surprisingly good players this season for the Nuggets. In short, looking at players making the most impact, the Nuggets are the most Latino NBA team as 2009 begins, something which has of course gone unrecognized by Big Media, but may have something to do with how this team has pulled so many rabbits out of so many hats in just the first two months of this season.
Speaking quite generally but accurately, it seems that Latinos commonly can do well without the kind of clearly defined and often heavy handed leadership that other types seem to have (and need?) more often. Although there used to be many dictators in South America, many South American countries today are at least as democratic and almost as multicultural as the USA is. And Spain itself is today a very advanced and sophisticated democracy. My point is that Latinos are at least as good at running things well with shared leadership as is any other ethnic background.
Aside from sharing the leadership nice and equally, all for one and one for all style, it appears that the Nuggets are being largely run by some kind of exotic Latino soul or spirit, the same one that allowed Nene to so quickly and so completely recover from at least two major injuries in recent years, from a major cancer scare last year, and from the conflict between two nationalities that every international player must solve sooner or later.
Nene recently solved his Brazil/USA conflict by announcing that he will become an American citizen. Somehow I don’t think he would be leading the NBA in field goal percentage, ahead of Carmelo Anthony and second only to Billups among Nuggets in Real Player Rating, were he still stuck with any of those health issues or even with just the nationality conflict. No, just as Nene has nicely survived all of those trials and tribulations, the Nuggets somehow and so far have nicely survived their economic meltdown and their kicking to the curb of Marcus Camby, Eduardo Najera, Allen Iverson, Antonio McDyess, and a few others over the years.
Which only goes to show you, even the badly and unwisely behaved can succeed for awhile if the soul and the spirit are correct and powerfully positive. It is always possible to break the rules and succeed. It is always possible to find a strange way of doing things that can work for awhile.
Aside from the heavy Latino influence, you have on the Nuggets the usual African American type players such as Kenyon Martin and Chauncey Billups. But none of these are heavy duty leaders that many of the other teams have, in the mold of, for example, Keven Garnett or Amare Stoudemire. Kenyon Martin used to be truly ferocious, but following microfracture surgery on two devastated knees, he is too aware that he is lucky to be playing at all to be as ferocious as he used to be.
But Billups is the perfect player to make up for a coach who is unable to direct, design, or operate a pro NBA offense. In fact, he would make the perfect player coach. If Nuggets Owner Stanley Kroenke were to fire the entire coaching staff and designate Billups as the Head Coach, the Nuggets would win almost as many games, and the money saved would go a long way to soothing the frazzled nerves of the billionaire Mr. Kroenke.. Then again, the other owners would be laughing at Mr. Kroenke behind his back at parties if he ever actually fired all the coaches and installed Chauncey Billups as the Head Coach.
Although Billups structurally directs and coaches the offense, his personality is literally too nice for him to be able to lead the Nuggets, motivationally, particularly in high stress situations such as the playoffs. As seemingly everyone in the Land of Rose Colored Glasses, Colorado, is fond of pointing out, Chauncey Billups is a nice man with a nice personality, which is precisely the reason why he is not someone who might lead his team to victory in a ferocious game seven.
There is also on the Nuggets the black sheep of the family, offensive star and defensive wild card J.R. Smith, the one whose immature personality is considered to be completely out of place by many Coloradans and especially by “The Decider” when it comes to the quality and performance potential of personalities: George Karl. Smith is in fact psychologically younger than his years which are just 23, and his personality is too undeveloped for him to be any kind of a leader. Unless you need to be led to a really good video game, in which case you might want to consult with J.R..
Proceeding further on the Nuggets’ strange roster, you have Chris Andersen who you make fun of at your own risk. The biggest upside surprise of all statistically for these Nuggets, and responsible for at least a couple of the surprise Nuggets wins by himself, Andersen, to cynical observers, has seemingly failed at everything. But cynical observers need to update their information. Andersen has definitely not failed at everything anymore, because he has been a big reason why the Nuggets have been a very big upside surprise so far this year.
Andersen was born where the weather is usually perfect: Long Beach, but he ended up flunking out of the steamy hot University of Houston, and then playing at a college that no one has ever heard of: Blinn College. There was no way anyone was ever going to get drafted out of Blinn College.
But at 6 feet 10 and with versatile and excellent athletic leaping ability for someone so tall, in 2001 he earned a spot on the then very lowly Denver Nuggets and he remained on the team for three years, when he went to the New Orleans Hornets and was better coached to a much more substantial outcome there.
But Andersen’s personality can be completely out of line by Colorado and George Karl standards and, in January 2006 he was caught having ingested a truly illegal substance and was banned from the League for two years. With assistance, of course, from the Player’s Union, he was reinstated to the NBA and to the Hornets in March 2008 but didn’t play much at all for the Hornets during the last part of that regular season, or during the lengthy Hornets 2008 playoff run.
Meanwhile, the economic emergency was inducing the Nuggets’ management to throw more and more expensive players, ones they didn’t know how to coach anyway, overboard into the drink, which made it however the perfect situation for Andersen to gain an opening. So despite his banishment, and a detour to Chinese basketball, he was practically a preseason star this past fall in Denver, and so it was only natural that he would return to where he started, Denver, for the 2008-09 season. And at a cost to the Nuggets for this season of next to nothing, perfect for an economic emergency.
Now then wouldn’t you know that the Nuggets would be lucky beyond belief with respect to Mr. Andersen. With a Real Player Rating so far of just over .700, which puts him in the category of “Star: High Quality Starter,” and also puts him right up there with Carmelo Anthony, you are an idiot if you think Chris Andersen is a failure these days.
Ultimately, there is something incredibly exotic about the Nuggets when you look for common denominators and think everything through in long form. This is a team filled with players who are all very lucky to be here. There are few if any inevitable or automatic players on the Nuggets. There are hardly any fancy prep school players; there are no European prep players. All of them except for Chauncey Billups could have easily been out of basketball by now if they had not luckily gotten enough good luck to offset all the serious bad luck they had over the years.
Having grown up in one of America’s highest crime, most dangerous neighborhoods, Carmelo Anthony could just as easily be in jail or even dead right now. Similarly, J.R. Smith grew up in a high danger zone, and could have been ruined by that, or else could have washed out of the NBA already due to hostility from coaches including George Karl. Kenyon Martin comes from Saginaw, Michigan, one heck of a depressed town.
Anthony Carter was elevated from total oblivion by Karl, who overrates every relatively short but good personality guard he ever sees. Anthony Carter would probably be about nowhere were he not on the Nuggets right now.
So every time you see the Nuggets you are seeing, unlike with other teams, players who could just as easily not be there. They could easily be in jail, or dead, or working at Wal-Mart. The Nuggets are almost a science fiction team. So therefore, almost all of these Nuggets are players who are really glad to be playing in the big time NBA, in the Mile High City, and to be making a lot of money in the process. I mean, they are really, really glad, as in practically joyful. As in it might bring a tear to your eye that all of them have survived all of the big threats that they have survived, threats at levels that most other players don’t have to ever worry about. Most have been to hell and back, to now strangely end up in the same place and at the same time, all for one and one for all, as if it was all intended to be such.
Iverson fit into this pattern very well, but he wanted out because he wants to win the Quest for the Ring at all costs and he knew the Nuggets were not going to really be about the Quest in the next few years, which are his last in the NBA. The Nuggets are about being a zone for those who have been through a lot more than normal to be in the game.
Iverson is correct: this team can not possibly win a playoff series if the truth were told. Even so, this team is and very plausibly will remain a very happy team, and to be happy is just as important as to win. If you win you will be happy. But you can, in certain circumstances, if you have a very strong mojo, a strong faith, be happy without winning anything important, and the Nuggets can pull that off this year the way they are going.
And so as a fan, don’t be fooled into thinking that they can compete with the top teams, but at the same time don’t be fooled into thinking that the Nuggets will not be happy even though they can’t.
They are very happy to be in the game, all for one and one for all.
SCALE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS FOR A REGULAR SEASON
Historic Super Star 1.000 and more
Super Star 0.825 to 0.999
A Star: A Very Good Starter 0.700 to 0.824
Good, Solid Starter 0.620 to 0.699
Major Role Player 0.550 to 0.619
Role Player 0.500 to 0.549
Minor Role Player 0.450 to 0.499
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.400 to 0.449
Poor Player or Extremely Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Very Poor Player Regardless of Defending 0.300 to 0.349
Extremely Poor Player / Disaster of a Season / Injury Problems etc. Less to 0.299
NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2008-09 Season, as of Jan. 4, 2009
Chauncey Billups 0.795
Nene Hilario 0.740
Carmelo Anthony 0.714
Chris Andersen 0.702
Kenyon Martin 0.647
J.R. Smith 0.637
Renaldo Balkman 0.633
Allen Iverson 0.589
Anthony Carter 0.562
Linas Kleiza 0.506
Chucky Atkins 0.447
Dahntay Jones 0.343
NUGGETS REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
2008-09 Season, as of Jan. 4, 2009
Chauncey Billups 846.25
Nene Hilario 816.45
Carmelo Anthony 706.85
Kenyon Martin 643.15
J.R. Smith 541.40
Anthony Carter 443.15
Linas Kleiza 382.30
Chris Andersen 298.35
Dahntay Jones 211.55
Renaldo Balkman 200.00
Allen Iverson 72.40
Chucky Atkins 50.95
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