The Quest for the Ring Express Version

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008, Part 3

It shows that this team lacks a singularity, focus, vision, leadership. It's just so ovbious. That comes from a coach, always. All great players who win championships play within a a concept. Yeah, we def. need a pg to get that across.

But you see in spurts tonight when we play together how good we can be.

There are just so many directions and confusion. A bad coach let's that go on a good coach finds a way to bring it together.

He about said it all, so I said: "100% true and on point."

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have enough time for the detailed and extensive reports I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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LATE APRIL 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

In the economy there are banks that are "too big to fail". No matter how bankrupt a huge bank might secretly be, it has to be bailed out or the entire financial system/economy would be in some jeopardy.

Similarly, Karl may be too big to be fired. In other words, his resume is so long and his roots in the upper echelons of the basketball world are so deep, that he is among the coaches who are "too big to be fired." If so, the Nuggets are going to pay a monumental price for that stupid tradition.

What gets me is that had the Sonics not been such a deep and great team while Mr. Karl was coaching them, Karl never would have been hired by the Nuggets in the first place.
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The Nuggets were at least +4 games in the lucky win vs unlucky loss sweepstakes, so they were really a 46-36 team. Remember, for example, Kleiza's shot at the buzzer in Sacramento around Christmas? Remember the Wolves game where the Wolves outplayed the Nuggets by far but were cheated by bad calls late?

The Nuggets won the great majority of the games when they had a sane PG situation, which could either be AC playing well against a poor or at most a medium team, or else AI taking over the PG position despite being assigned to the other guard spot.

But when the Nuggets were playing against a good defense, and when AI decided he had to be a scorer first and a distributor second, this combo left the Nuggets with no point guards for all practical purposes, which resulted in virtually automatic losses.
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They quit, so the question is why did they quit? How about the fact that GK has monthly win quotas, and is always quick with reasons why the Nuggets can not beat this or that team in this or that situation? Sorry, but no coach should ever be planting the seeds of doubt by being anything other than totally confident and believing that the team will win. If you are a coach and you think your team is going to lose, keep it to your damn self, because if you plant the seeds of doubt, they grow up to be the weeds of quitting.
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The rumors are that they will side with Karl, so if you thought this year was bad, wait til next season, when the Nuggets will probably be more disfunctional still and will not be able to make the playoffs.

I think there are two unwritten rules that usually apply in a situation like this:

1. The owner/front office will rarely if ever listen to any player other than whoever is considered to be the most important player.
2. The owner/front office may or may not choose to listen to whoever is considered to be the most important player on the team with respect to who coaches the team.

So the next question for this situation is, who is officially the most important player on the Nuggets right now? Allen Iverson is. One clever way you can tell who is considered the most important player on a team that is in the playoffs is by going to videos at nba.com and seeing whose press conferences are uploaded and whose are not. Iverson's press conference is there but Melo's is not, so someone really important in the Nuggets franchise decided that Iverson is more important than Anthony and that Anthony's press conference does not count for much.

Quite frankly, if it's not posted at nba.com, what someone says at a press conference doesn't mean much. What someone says in the locker room to a reporter means even less.

Furthermore, it is very easy to see who Karl thinks is the most important player. Karl has allowed Iverson to decide how to play without interference or direction, and specifically has allowed Iverson to decide in each game how to divide his efforts between scoring and distributing. On the other hand, he has continued, as in years prior, to try to change Anthony's root style of play, with mixed results:

1. Karl has insisted that Anthony take fewer shot attempts and score fewer points.
2. Karl has insisted that Anthony attempt more layups and fewer jump shots.
3. Karl has insisted that Anthony make more rebounds.
4. Karl has insisted that Anthony work harder on defense.
5. Karl has insisted that Anthony pass out of double teams and single but tough coverage down low situations more than his inclination to do that would be.

Melo being Melo, he has tried to follow all of these instructions. He failed at some of these adjustments, succeeded at others but, most importantly, both him and his team ended up with nothing to show for this "Remold Melo into a More Well Rounded Player" project. If the objective was to make the Nuggets competitive in the playoffs, the project was doomed to be a failure from the get go, because a basketball team is not a collection of independent personalities and basketball styles the way Karl conceives it to be, but it is a product on the court where the sum total is supposed to be greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, for example, how well the Spurs or the Lakers play is greater than the sum total of how "good" their players are, because they coordinate their players with various strategies and tactics.

So Melo followed instructions and the Nuggets came up empty, the opposite of what he was told would happen if he followed them.

As lame as the Melo situation is, the overall situation is even worse than that. Since Iverson and not Melo is considered the most important player on the Nuggets right now, he and he alone can try to persuade the Nuggets to get Karl to retire. But Iverson has been treated as if he was Jesus by Karl, and has been given total carte blanche to play any way he wants. Needless to say, AI never had as much respect with no strings attached and as much freedom to play as he wishes as he has received since coming to the Nuggets. So what are the odds that Iverson is going to try to persuade the Nuggets franchise to replace Karl, who is undoubtadly Iverson's favorite coach of all time? It obviously would be a huge surprise if that were to happen.

The final question to ask in this situation is what role, if any, did Karl play in bringing about this horrible situation? Karl, despite never achieving complete mastery over how basketball teams win games, has one of the longest pro and semi-pro coaching resumes in existence and as a result is considered to be one of the more prominent coaches from an overall stature perspective. If you had to bet, you would bet that Karl has been around the block so many times that he knew a long, long time ago that he could protect himself from being fired by (a)making sure that Iverson rather than Anthony was considered to be the most important player on the Nuggets, thereby reducing to the bare minimum any chance that he could be fired even if Melo went ballistic after Melo discovered that he had nothing to show for his "remolding," and (b)allowing Iverson to play any way he chose, thus reducing to about zero the chance that Iverson would ever call for a new coach in Denver.

Carmelo Anthony was too mellow to be aware of how Karl gave the Nuggets over to Iverson lock, stock, and barrel and how that would leave him out in the cold when it became time to debate whether new coaches should come in.

In other words, and in short, Carmelo Anthony has been jerked around and checkmated by George Karl, who has apparently become a master at avoiding being fired while failing at his job. Iverson may not know it, but he is also checkmated because obviously, he will never win a Championship in Denver while wasting away his final years there, whereas there must be at least 6 teams that would take him and where he would have a real chance of winning a Championship. The franchise is of course also checkmated, doomed to not only suffer as many more futile seasons as Karl has left in his contract, but also most likely doomed to become a losing team again in the very near future.

How soon the Nuggets will become a losing team, and how bad they will become, and how many seasons they will be a losing team, will be largely determined by whether or not they make a bad situation worse by over blaming key players for the mess and then trading them away on the cheap. The Nuggets like all teams need to make trades, but they don't need to make stupid trades that are motivated by blaming players for not being able to correct the coaching mistakes. It can be very tempting to make a bad situation worse by casting around the blame much farther than the blame really goes.

Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, the rest of the players, and the Denver franchise are checkmated and trapped. In one word, they are:

L O S T
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Yeah, isn't it interesting how Carmelo Anthony in the off season while playing for different coaches is considered one of the best basketball players in the world, while during the NBA season he is considered a borderline all-star player and more or less a playoff failure? Something just isn't quite right about that, but most of us here know the cause of that little mystery.
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Why isn't there an award for being the most underachieving??? It's not easy to be the most underachieving. You have to have a team loaded with talent but way short on other stuff. I'm serious. Well, half serious, anyway.
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If Karl returns and there are no new assistant coaches, it's time to expand your horizons if you are a basketball maniac and a Nuggets fan. For example, it may be time to become a fan of one of the Eastern teams while remaining a fan of the Nuggets for the future. How about the Hawks, who are a fantastic young team and are right now evening up their series with the Celtics 2 games a piece?
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EXTREMELY IMPORTANT COMMENT MADE BY ANOTHER FORUM PERSON:

But we have never assembled a team with players this good. Everyone involved in this organization willl regret these years someday. An oppurtunity this organization may not have for a very,very long time- bieng wasted. It's sad.

My comment was simply: "Agreed 100%."
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At least fire the old codger Doug Moe.

Seriously though, the front office is pathetic if they truly think GK knows how to win basketball games against the top 1/4 (8 teams) of the NBA.
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Almost everything in this post is wrong; see my previous posts for many detailed reasons.

The Nuggets have almost no system, very few strategies, very few tactics, and no set plays to speak of, so about all they have is selfish individual play. Wangju, you are arguing that the players should coach themselves and create a system for themselves that would be reasonable. That is asinine. Coaches may not be paid as much as players are, but they are played more than enough money to PREVENT what the Nuggets became.

I ask you Wangju, what are the coaches responsible for, if anything, in your world?

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of April 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have enough time for the detailed and extensive reports I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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MIDDLE OF APRIL 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

Agreed.

There is a huge difference between DWI and DUI and we don't even know that it was DUI, let alone that it was DWI. And even DWI, at the low end of it, means you are only slightly "drunk," and does not mean that you would automatically have a car crash if you were driving at that level of intoxication.

Also, the time of this was still too early for there to have been any substantial traffic, and the drifing between lanes may have been due simply to him talking on a cell phone or putting a CD in the player or something.
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I was once dog tired, 100% sober, and out driving at about 4 am, and was pulled over for driving about 53 in a 45 zone. It was a divided highway, so I thought it was a speed limit 55 zone. When the cop saw how tired I was, he HAD to give me a breathalyzer, because when you are dog tired you appear to be inebriated, because you talk more slowly than usual for example.

And actually, there is less difference between those two states with respect to the odds that you are going to cause a car crash than most people think. But driving while dog tired is not against the law.
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The latest news is that Carmelo Anthony "failed a series of sobriety tests". So if you had to bet, it was probably DUI, but it is still not certain. You can actually fail a few "sobriety tests" if you are dog tired, because I almost or actually did fail one or two of them when I was pulled over while dog tired, but the breathalyzer cleared me.
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As of today the situation is:

1. There was a traffic stop, which is a special type of arrest but is technically not a full scale arrest due to the light penalties associated with most traffic stops. It became more of a full scale arrest when Carmelo Anthony was booked. But it was "booked on suspicion" and there are as yet no formal charges and there may never be any charges.
2. This stop was on Interstate 25 in Denver. The time was about 5:23 am, so there was little traffic and relatively little risk of a car crash on the Interstate at the time, whether it was DWI, DUI, DWD (driving while distracted), or DWE (driving while exhausted).
3. Melo's car was drifting between lanes, but that drifting did not create a risk of an accident at the time, due to the light traffic, and because there is no report that there was a near crash of any kind. The drifting could have been caused by cell phone or CD player usage, or simply due to the driver being extremely tired. It is not a crime to be driving while extremely tired. It is a crime in New York State to drive while holding and talking on a cell phone, but that is not a crime in Colorado.
4. Melo cooperated completely including consenting to a blood test. Results are not expected for about two weeks.
5. According to a major news source, Anthony "failed a series of sobriety tests." However, failing of sobriety tests can be caused by someone being extremely tired alone, or by a combination of someone being extremely tired and very slightly inebriated, but below DWI and DUI levels.
6. There was no breathalyzer, which can instantly clear someone, but which is not trusted by and may not be offerred by some jurisdictions. Someone on NT says that Colorado has the breathalyzer, and that if someone refuses the breathalyzer, they then have to have a blood test or face automatic conviction. In this case, we don't know whether the breathalyzer was offerred, but we know there was a blood test, which of course everyone would think of as reliable.
7. There is still today a huge legal difference between DUI and DWI, because DUI is considered to be only mildly dangerous, while DWI is just plain dangerous. If this turns out to be DUI, it would be something that until about 20 years ago was considered a minor offense, but is now more serious as a result of the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Crime." Even today though, DUI is a much less serious offense than is DWI.
8. Further developments to come, and questions surrounding them:

blood test results in two weeks: DWI, DUI, or Sober?
--What delay will there be, if any, between the results and any charges?
--The NBA can not suspend with just blood test results and no charges (yet) can they?
--If DUI, can the charges be bargained away?
--If charges are bargained away, could the NBA suspend for a game or two anyway? I highly doubt it.

If DUI and the charges are filed Immediately
--Does the NBA have the right to suspend before there is a conviction or can they suspend just for charges?
--Will the NBA suspend at all, even on a conviction, for the relatively minor DUI offense?
--If the NBA suspends for a DUI conviction, but not on mere charges, it will be for games next season, because there is no way a conviction will happen so quickly that the Nuggets are still in the playoffs when it happens.

If DWI and the charges are filed Immediately
--Does the NBA have the right to suspend before there is a conviction or can they suspend just for the charges?
--I am assumming a DWI conviction would generate a suspension. Anyone have any idea about how many games it would be?
--If the NBA suspends for a DWI conviction, but not on mere charges, it will be for games next season, because there is no way a conviction will happen so quickly that the Nuggets are still in the playoffs when it happens.

Anyone who knows reliable answers to any of the questions above regarding how the NBA would react to the various possiblities, please clue us in. Anyone know of any other recent DUI or DWI situations and how the League reacted?

I don't trust the NBA on something like this. I wonder why? They do have a track record of being fair and evenhanded in their Nuggets punishments, don't they?
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Damn all the Irish for originally starting the getting drunk to escape stress s@@t. I think the English learned it from them and then they spread it throughout the world with their damn empire.

Drink socially but never, ever drink for stress relief.
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No, there was apparently no breathalyzer. I had one when I was on a business trip in Missouri once and when I passed I was instantly cleared.

But in this case, either where he was pulled over, which apparently was the City of Denver, does not use the breathalyzer, or they offered it and Melo declined it, which meant he had to do the blood test or be almost automatically convicted. Some jurisdictions do not offer the breathalyzer because it is not quite as reliable as the blood test.

Anyone know whether City of Denver has a breathalyzer option for those pulled over and are suspected of DUI/DWI?
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Thanks for the info.

Let's see, last year for the Garden fight Anthony and Smitty got about 4 times as many games as the traditional penalty would have been, so as a rough estimate:

DUI: 1-2 games suspension for most, 4-8 games suspension for Melo.
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The Coach clearly seems to think everything important is decided in advance. His lame excuses and his monthly win quotas are just about like something from a comedy movie. According to Karl, the Nuggets could not end up in the top 4 of the West despite being in the top 4 in talent. Why? It was inevitable, because the great tide of history dictated that little old Denver would not be able to reach the top 4.

Who knows how many specific reasons in total have been spinning around in his head, but here are some of them we know about:

--Melo's game is not well rounded enough, and Melo's personality is not quite mature enough.
--Iverson was changed from PG to SG many years ago for mysterious but valid reasons that must have something to do with Iverson's personality, and it would be futile to try to fight the tide of history to officially recognize AI as the PG for Denver this year. So AI can play PG but it can not be admitted in public that he does so, and he can not be designated as the PG, because you can't mess with history and tradition and personality like that.
--J.R. Smith is unqualified to start or to be a full scale NBA shooting guard by virtue of a deficient personality/character.
--Yakhouba Diawara somehow proved to have a personality too weak to avoid a more or less permanent benching.
--The Nuggets as a whole have a soft or wobbly "personality". When your team has that, you are automatically doomed.

To Karl, there are massive forces, such as tradition, history, destiny, "team personalities," and personalities of individual players, that determine results, and neither players nor a coaching staff can overcome those forces, so why should he or the assistant coaches get all worked up about trying to win each and every game?

Since he decided in advance that the Nuggets were not worthy of reaching the top 4, and since there is no telling how many reasons he has piled up for that, he does not believe he is responsible for the results. Nor would he feel responsible for making lineup, rotation, and other game management mistakes, assuming it could be proven to him that he made mistakes that cost the Nuggets. He would respond, like he always does when challenged, by saying the Nuggets would have ended up in almost exactly the same final result even if those decisions were made differently.

In other words, Mr. Karl has built himself a fortress to protect himself from ever accepting even the slightest responsibility for the Nuggets not reaching their true potential, which is final 4 in the West minimum. If he is ever fired he will not accept even a small shred of responsibility. Rather, he will look at his long career and say that he had to be a worthy basketball man simply because of how long his career lasted.

The trouble for him is, his reasons are neither logically sound nor truly explanatory in the real world. I'm sorry, but personalities do not decide who among the most talented teams actually reach the very top. And I'm sorry, but nothing is determined in advance unless you say it is. If you think you can't win, then you almost certainly will not win. If you are a coach who thinks that way, and you can't keep that a secret and coach as if you don't believe that, then you have failed as a coach. End of story.

It really doesn't matter much whether the Nuggets have become slackers or not, or to what extent Karl's strange beliefs have rubbed off on them. Because first and foremost they did not get what they needed.

The Nuggets came to the table with all the raw talent needed to be truly outstanding but with no basketball system and with little real confidence they could actually get to the top. They needed roles defined rationally, they needed a coherent offensive plan, they needed a few specific plays. Individual players needed protection from arbitrary and rhythm killing benchings. A few players just needed a little playing time. They didn't get any of those things.

Most of all they needed real confidence. The Nuggets are mostly players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, more so than on other teams. I used to think that most NBA teams are loaded with players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. In the last few years I found out that this is simply not true. But it is true in the case of the Nuggets, many of them come from straight from the ghetto. You run short on real confidence your whole life when you grow up that way.

How someone thinks is a crucial part of personality. For a man who thinks personality is so important, Mr. Karl seems strangely ignorant of the power of positive thinking, or real confidence in other words. True, real confidence without the real potential to get the results is lame, but not having real confidence when you do have the real potential to get the results is both lame and idiotic.

Why is Melo out all night after the Nuggets squeak into the playoffs, only to be pulled over and suspected of DUI? Because he is so lacking in real confidence that he was worried the Nuggets would miss the playoffs, and it would be partly blamed on him, so when at least the Nuggets made the playoffs, he had to be out all night celebrating that the stress was over. The bigger the gap between where you are and where you are supposed to be, the more you irrationally over celebrate getting to that lower level.

The last 24 hours have been another wild ride on the Nuggets roller coaster, happy and sad at the same time.
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There have been three routs/near routs so far. If there is a fourth, then I believe I am correct in claiming that the average NBA owner/front office combination would relieve GK of his duties, allowing him to coach another team next year based on his marathon resume, or get him to retire, whichever he prefers.

If the Nuggets lose big again in game 4, and GK comes back for yet another year of miseries, it would prove that the Nuggets are not yet a full scale, totally serious NBA franchise.

What else can you say? He has got to go now, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it yet. Either the Nuggets win the next two games, GK goes, or else the whole franchise is to blame for the mess that will continue on next year.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008, Part 3

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008, Part 2

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of April 2008, Part 2

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of April 2008, Part 1

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