The Quest for the Ring Express Version

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of July, 2008

A future second rounder is thrown around like dirty toliet paper.

I had to respond:

If it were me, I would have insisted on clean toilet paper for Camby.
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Camby gone + JR 18-20 mpg and very few starts + Nene sick or injured again =30-52 season, at best, a 20 win drop in 1 year. Add about 6 wins if Nene plays all year, and about 6 more wins if JR gets at least 28 mpg.

Then in 2009-2010, the way it appears right now, the Nuggets might complete a sudden, ugly, and self-destructive transformation from one extreme to another: from older and very expensive to too young and not very expensive. If so, the Nuggets are looking at a 20-30 win season in 2009-10, if Anthony is still around, worse if he is not.

Nuggets FO: you are supposed to balance these things, and to develop younger players as you play the older, expensive veterans. You are not supposed to go from one extreme to another like this, if you want to be a serious NBA franchise.

If you overspent, you need to reverse that gradually, not instantly. It's like driving a car; you don't make sudden turns and changes of speed, unless you want to be a road hazard, or road kill.

If I am wrong about the Nuggets lurching from one extreme to the other, and If the Nuggets are actually trying to stay balanced between young and old, and between expensive and cheap, then it clearly appears that they don't know what the hell they are doing.

Either way, we the fans, and the players too actually, are up the creek without a paddle.
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Agreed, and how many 2nd round 7 footers are there??

And to add even more insult to injury, Camby proved the critics wrong over the last two years by remaining mostly healthy most all of the time.

This franchise is even more LOST than ever, let's face it.
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But when you rush to start all over, you are by definition not doing it carefully. Only the poorly managed franchises have to start all over in the way you are thinking. The well managed franchises are always trying to at the same time maximize their present, and build for the future (by developing young players).

And just because you "start all over" doesn't mean you are certain to get to even just where Golden State is, assuming its true that they are stuck in the middle. By suddenly starting all over, you are risking being a major losing team for years and years. All that has to happen for that is a solid majority of your younger players not coming through. Hell, any team that starts from scratch is at risk of being a new Grizzlies type franchise, for half a decade or even more.

I say its better to fight for the top from the middle than from the bottom. I argue all the time for younger players to get more time and to be respected, but even I would not want to bet the franchise on a "starting over" group with a fairly large number of younger, not yet totally proven players.
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The smartest basketball minds knew that it was curtains for the Nuggets after the Camby giveaway, so a kind of gallows humor happened. Someone posted this:

Wow... just when I thought that the FO couldn't get any dumber... THEY DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS! Hahaha another huge joke made by the Denver Comedians. 2nd rounder my ass you stupid piece of s**t FO!

On a side note, who else thinks that STUBBORN Karl still won't play Steven Hunter?

My response:

Don't try to be funny. You know full well the Carterminator is now the center.
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Laugh out loud, just before I read your post, I read about all of the centers who went in the draft, noticing that Clippers pick, and I said to myself the same thing. It was the Clippers who drafted a Center and it was the Clippers who got Camby for nothing. It was the Nuggets who got nothing. What can you do with nothing?
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Someday in an interview Camby will have to explain why he was not offended by being traded for almost nothing. Whatever he says will most likely be a lie, since he won't want to offend the Nuggets franchise in public.
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1. With Karl and his assistants having little if any playoff basketball credibility left among close basketball watchers, the FO/Mr. Kroenke do nothing to revamp the coaching. Buying out Mr. Karl was financially out of the question.
2. The FO/Mr. Kroenke can do nothing as Najera walks, despite having one of the worst defenses in the League.
3. The FO/Mr. Kroenke decide they can't afford to draft a single player, and trade the pick away for what is likely to be a worse pick.
4. The FO/Mr. Kroenke, who refused to insist that the Nuggets have a good player at the crucial PG position, and a decent backcourt overall, by insisting that Iverson play that position instead of playing the shortest backcourt in the League, and the worst guard defending in the League, make little or no effort to change that for 2008-09. They resign Carter for a small amount of money, so that they will be able to perpetuate an inferior lineup on the cheap. (Does it get any worse in managing a basketball team than perpetuating an inferior lineup on the cheap?)
5. As if trying to one up themselves in being cheap, they trade Marcus Camby away for next to nothing. Now the entire national basketball media and the entire NBA community is whispering that the Nuggets are cheap and/or incompetent.

This is already one of the worst off seasons ever, and if JR Smith were to go to another team now, this would be a serious candidate for being the worst off season ever for any team.

What happened to Mr. Kroenke, seriously? I highly doubt he lost his mind.

Rather, I seriously think he is being hammered by the current bank crisis/credit crisis/economic recession, and he decided to make up for some of his losses by taking a carving knife to the Nuggets.
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Yes it is, if its the worst off season ever.

It may be the worst economy ever too, except for my Great Granny's Great Depression. Yes, I know the economy is still alright overall in Denver, Texas, and in a few other places, but in most areas, the economy is underwater.
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Well you are right, it all comes down to off season 2009 now and whether the Nuggets get the right young players and the right key veteran or two or three or not. If everything went right, the Nuggets could avoid the freaking 20-62 seasons at least, Then if C Anthony were to stay, they could take another shot with him and possibly Nene, JR, Linas, Taurean Green still around.

This off season is unbelievably ugly, though.
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Commentary made in July, in the wake of the Camby giveaway, continues in the next post, which will be titled "Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late July, 2008."

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Early July, 2008

I agree with you to an extent. But A.I certainly had a problem conforming to Cheeks' set offense and Brown's as well if I recall.

My response:

But this is the older, more mellow AI, so it was a golden opportunity to find out if he could be happy with a little bit of planning ahead instead of him deciding everything on the fly. Not to mention that Iverson himself, in his own man of few words style, has on a few occasions been hinting that the Nuggets should do something to take at least a small percentage of his freedom away for the good of the team as a whole, including in his post series news conference.
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Weems is a 2-guard, not a forward as the Denver writer says in the article at the top of this. So since the Nuggets need a 2-guard like they need a hole in the head unless JR has quit the team, then either the FO has gone completely insane or there has to be a fairly big trade soon.
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I made this comment was made when it became clear that Anthony Carter was going to be given another contracted year:

The front office, whether they know it or not, has completely given up on the goal of the Nuggets winning more than a single playoff game a year, let alone a series.
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Regarding the Carter contract extension, a major forum person commented:

why not just wait?

see what else shakes out.

the dumb thing to do is rush to sign a scrub like carter on the first day he can be signed, regardless of the minimum contract.

My response:

Exactly. The FO does not understand that things can't get any worse to speak of if you wait, because no one is going to snatch up Carter and, if they did, the Nuggets would get the equivalent of Carter all day, and be no worse off overall. Damn this is bad.
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Has there ever been a starting point guard up for grabs who did not get at least one offer from another team?
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It has appeared since the brawl in New York that George Karl's number one objective is to make sure that JR Smith never starts and that he never gets more than 10-20 mpg. He will do anything to reach that objective, anything at all. It appears that Mr. Karl will never forgive JR Smith for getting up and going after the guy who neck tackled him to the floor and risked cracking Smith's head open.

Had AI left the team, GK would have seen to it that Smith was replaced, to avoid having to start him.

So it would NEVER, ever be AC/JR. Also, the whole point of the FO signing AC is so that there isn't going to be another PG. So everything you are talking about is completely out of the question.
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I am hoping but hardly expecting that my assumptions are wrong. My assumptions can be proved wrong very simply this season, and should be proved wrong by rights. JR Smith, who even Mr. Karl admitted was much improved during this past season, needs to start. It's that simple. If he never, almost never, or only in severe team injury situations starts, than my assumptions will, as far as I am concerned, be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I'll be the first back here to say I underestimated Mr. Karl if JR Smith finally starts and gets 30 mpg or very close to it.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late June, 2008

You are right Iam pist and rightfully so. I never said that Miller was a better player than AI I said we had a better team when miller was here. The Nene deal was all Bearup Kiki was on the way out by then. And Kiki sucked at the draft thank god for the pistons otherwise we would have darko and skita. I have said that the FO has done good things but the bad outweighs the good right now and IMHO a big part of the problem lies with George Karl he is the coach not a gm or vp of personel he is a coach but he is being allowed to make gm type of decisions which makes our FO a mess.

My response was:

Agreed. And since it's summer and time to take it easy, why figure stuff like this out yourself when there is frequently this good type of commenter around at the forum to explain things and save your lazy a#% from having to think? (Laugh out loud.)
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But our guns are loaded as we venture forth into tradeland.

[I posted one of those uncertain smilies.]

They are loaded aren't they?
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Well then its time to man up and understand and admit that if there was no plan to adjust AI's role from his futile role in Philly, than the trade never should have been made. Only a very small number of GM's were going for AI at the time. The vast majority saw the big downside of trying to work a 5' 11 1/2" SG, who was always used more as a franchise marketing fixture than a major tool in building a playoff-winning team, into their rosters.
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It was a trade too good to be passed up unless you have, as GK himself says, "kind of a wild team" where the players themselves, and the skills they bring onto the court, mostly determine how the offense and the defense will be managed. With that kind of team management, which never changed as you would have expected it to after the trade, you want Dre, not AI. Because AI benefits from being part of a system, a plan, a set of plays, something along those lines, much more than Dre, who can create his own system to a big extent.

What you have with the Nuggets is a player who is kind of wild, Iverson, playing in a system that is kind of wild. That is too much wild to produce playoff wins.
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Notice too that the 76'ers with Dre won two playoff games against the Detroit Pistons, a team about as good as the Lakers without Bynum. Meanwhile, the Iverson-led Nuggets could not win a single playoff game against those Lakers as they tried to win with a very loosely managed offense in general, and with no clear point guard in particular.
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I'm not saying that AI should not be kind of wild. All I'm saying is that it is not in his or anyone's interest for him to play on a team that has no set plays, few safety valve shooters out on the perimeter, and an obsession with speed over anything else.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From June, 2008

What, in AI's career, causes you to believe that a) its possible to have a decent pg next to him and b) ai would change any part of his game if a pg was there?

I responded:

I don't think it's possible because the better the PG, the more that PG's abilities are mothballed by Iverson, not to mention that you can't afford two ultra expensive guards, so it's a catch-22 that you can't win. If you put in a token PG, someone like Eric Snow (Larry Brown, you are a jerk) or Anthony Carter (but Carter played his heart out this past season, it should be said) then by definition you are not getting the scoring production, and probably not the defending production either, that you need from the PG position.

So no matter what you do after you place AI at SG you are most likely screwed, and this is another huge reason why I have been saying over and over again that the Nuggets have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making AI responsible for the PG role, a possibility which AI himself alluded to in his news conference after the Lakers disaster.

So your (b) is obvious: AI is not going to change no matter what PG is inserted, precisely because he is the 2-guard. The only possibility that AI will change is to make him responsible for keeping the passing game alive and for keeping the assists up. If you are too chicken to try this, you will have the Denver 76'ers until Iverson is off the team.
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Someone posted this on point comment:

Every time I look back at how well JR and Melo were playing together before the incident in NY last year, it makes me sick. Makes me sicker wondering how good they'd be together with two full seasons together.

My response was to elaborate on this guy's point:

This was the top scoring tandem in the NBA at that time and the Nuggets were more rational back then than they are now. Now, they are all messed up, let's face it. Using my LOST analogy, the incident in NY was where the Nuggets crashed on the island, because after that, crazy stuff started to happen, largely because Karl seems to have lost his bearings. Karl went from marginal to downright dangerous as a Coach--dangerous to his own team that is. He turned supernaturally hostile toward J.R. Smith and lashed out at Carmelo Anthony in the press as well. At the same time, though, Smith fell into some kind of island hole too, when he made Karl look better and made a bad coach-player conflict even more complicated, with his June 2007 traffic accident that killed his friend, and by a few lessor transgressions after that.

But I will forever be pissed that the Nuggets didn't get those suspensions reduced. Does anyone think that the big market teams would have accepted without a fight 15 and 10 game suspensions to the top scoring tandem in the NBA? Of course, I understand that a big market team probably would not have been hit with suspensions like that in the first place.

But yeah, before the crash, Nuggets life was good, and even more importantly, it was relatively rational. Now, as Karl himself complains, there is too much drama on the Nuggets. But he can look in the mirror to find out who caused a lot of it.

If you are a Coach, never, ever feed the drama.
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Since Iverson came into the picture after the crash (after the Knicks incident) that would make him one of "The Others."
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Someone asked me a question that had me sweating in my boots (laugh out loud):

I recall the nuggets starting klieza at SG and moving AI to the point game 2 vs the lakers. did Ai play like a point? no. more dribbling up the floor, wasting time on the shot clock, and forcing up shots while ignoring teammates.

I explained to this guy what happened with Iverson at the point in the Lakers playoff series:

He played less like a point after he was the point than he did before he was the point.

It was way too late to do what I want in the Lakers series. And the solution is not simply to play AI at the point, but to make him responsible for the role of the PG. You want to make him responsible for keeping the passing game alive and for keeping the team assists from falling through the floor. To do this, you have to:

1. Assign him to the PG position.
2. Tell him that he will be judged based on how good the Nuggets passing game is and on whether the Nuggets are getting enough assisted scores. You want not only him to pass more but for teammates to pass a little more too.
3. Inform him that the team needs him to make assists MORE than it needs him to score the ball. You can honestly tell him that there is no chance in hell that he will ever win a Championship while blending the two guard positions and while often making the other guard on the floor of little value. His only chance is to become a PG with SG tendencies, because obviously it's never going to happen while he is a SG with PG tendencies.
4. Set a mimimum assists per game target, about 10 assists per game.
5. Since he has played 2-guard for years, after his early years as a PG, big change is not going to happen overnight. But if you were just a little lucky, change would start to happen after a month or two. In any event, you have to give him plenty of playing time to try to meet the above, which will require him to reduce some bad habits he has acquired over many years of playing the 2-guard position with no PG responsibilities whatsoever.

All the Nuggets did in the playoffs was #1.

It was a joke.
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From the guy who predicted Boston over Los Angeles in the NBA finals back in March, namely, me:

The Nuggets will not make the playoffs next season. All six of the following teams will make the playoffs:

Lakers: Obviously
Spurs: Still not old enough to miss the playoffs.
Rockets: Adelman, Yao, McGrady make it a 100% certainty.
Mavericks: New Coach will mostly or totally make up for a relatively bad trade.
Jazz: One of the very best teams in the NBA in theory.
Suns: Still a playoff team despite the bad trade.

And 2 of the following 3 teams will make the playoffs:
Hornets: One Chris Paul injury away from being in big trouble.
Trail Blazers: Oden's arrival almost but not quite guarantees a playoff spot.
Warriors: Don Nelson will not finish behind George Karl, who only seems to be getting worse every year, for two years in a row.

The Nuggets will simply not make the playoffs and we already know that the Denver front office and the owner won't really care that much, given how little they cared about this year's collapse.

Someone has to rescue the Nuggets and their fans or this coming season is going to be horrible, plain and simple.

Signed
Cynical but Realistic Dude
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Lol, but you are correct. That was too much ego for a post, I stand corrected. At least 1 of every 4 had Boston over LA by March.

As a Nuggets fan, I get all defensive because of my team's, uh, um, situation. And when I get defensive, I start wanting to showcase my abilities too much. I'll watch that from now on.
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Does anyone think that the Nuggets can finish ahead of the Trail Blazers this coming year after they have Oden? Being a cynical b@@%%@d, I don't see how the Nuggets can hang with them once they have Oden.

Damn, the Nuggets are frustrating. They pack the roster, pay the luxury tax, get people thinking they are going to contend, but then can't seem to understand some basic things, especially the importance of the PG position. The PG role is NOT something you can just divide up between the other positions and expect the offense to have a good flow.

And what about guard defending, Nuggets coaches? Do you seriously think that having two short guards on the floor at once gives you a chance in hell? Give me a break.
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Comment regarding the Nuggets' decision to not draft a player in the 2008 NBA draft:

You take a couple weeks off from following the Nuggets and all you typically get when you come back is more upset. Shame on the FO. GK needs to fire the FO immediately.
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Here is another comment about the Nuggets electing not to get a player from the draft. I was seriously ticked off:

Oh god, scientists warned about this possibility. Karl's great bias against young players has migrated to the front office and infected them.

Seriously, this was really, really dumb. I was hoping the Nuggets would draft a center, which is a relatively safe position to draft. I came here expecting to comment on whatever point guard was drafted,

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late May 2008

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 MAY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

You see, there isn't enough time in the day to come up with new explanations of how Mr. Karl is negatively affecting the Nuggets!

The things that horrify me the most at any given time about Mr. Karl change from one season to the next, as new discoveries are made.

At the moment, the thing that horrifies me the most is the realization that he doesn't think the role of the PG is all that important, and rather thinks that the role can be distributed throughout the team rather than much more efficiently concentrated in the PG and to a lesser extent in the 2-guards. This was clearly shown in the Lakers series, where Karl was the only Coach in God only knows how many years who played a different player at the PG position in the playoffs than he played during most of the regular season, with no injury reason for doing so.

If anyone can, please explain why Karl should not be fired for just this single reason. In the regular season, he swore by Anthony Carter at point guard and refused to consider anyone else at the position. Then in the playoffs, all of a sudden Carter wasn't good enough, and in came Allen Iverson.

Since Karl apparently strenuously disagrees with the importance that most other coaches place in the role of the point guard, and since he never instructed Iverson to pass more and shoot less even after he was designated as PG for the playoffs, Iverson did not shoot less and pass more after being so designated. All Karl did was ask for ALL Nuggets to shoot less and pass more, which seems more and more lame the more you think of it. In effect, Karl was asking for the rest of the team to make up for the fact that he does not believe in the importance of the PG role, and/or to make up for his inability to select the right player for the position.

In fact, adding injury to insult, but in an appropriate knock to the face of Karl, Iverson actually made substantially fewer assists per playoff game while designated the PG, 4.5, than he made per regular season game, 7.1, while supposedly playing shooting guard! That is beyond screwed up my friends.

Now if a pro football coach deserted his regular season quarterback and put in a new quarterback for the playoffs, and the playoff quarterback was a miserable failure in that role, and his team was routed 45-6, which is the equivalent of what happened to the Nuggets, would that coach not be fired immediately? Of course, he would be fired so quickly he wouldn't know what hit him.

The way the Nuggets offense was managed this season was nothing short of madness unless you think that an offense that Karl himself has described as "kind of wild and crazy" is a good, reliable offense. It was worse than last year, and it made a mockery of the concept of the role of the point guard. If Karl doesn't think that positions in general and the point guard position in particular have significance, than why doesn't he lobby for the elimination of positions in official basketball records and statistics?

Karl had no "scheme" at all that made any sense, he failed to understand the importance of the PG position for a team that obviously does not have the passing skills of the Spurs, he failed to choose the best man to play the point in the regular season, and then he finally chose the best man available to run the point in the playoffs when it was way too late.

You need some kind of a point guard on a team like the Nuggets. The Nuggets are loaded up with players who like to score in isolation. They don't have hardly any players who like to help teammates score more than they like to score themselves. It doesn't have to be a pure point guard. It doesn't have to be a point guard that everyone agrees has a good style. It doesn't have to be a high scoring point guard. It doesn't have to be a low scoring point guard. It doesn't have to be any point guard in particular except that it has to be someone who is responsible for keeping the passing game alive and someone who is responsible for preventing what the Nuggets became, which is a very easy to defend team of players who are usually in shoot first, shoot second and shoot third desperation mode.

Karl swore by Carter and then deserted him for the playoffs and in effect was left with no point guard. The Lakers made him pay through the teeth for that:

PLAYOFF SERIES ASSISTS
Game 1 Lakers 33 Nuggets 20
Game 2 Lakers 33 Nuggets 12
Game 3 Lakers 26 Nuggets 22
Game 4 Lakers 20 Nuggets 20

The Nuggets are supposed to average about 25 assists a game at their pace, or 100 assists in 4 games. They made 74 assists instead of 100 or 110 or 120. What would you expect when it ended up that no one had primary responsibility to keep the passing game going?

Is it too much to ask of Mr. Karl to provide a qualified point guard for his team? He could have had Atkins ready. He could have stuck with Carter. He could have designated AI on or before March 1 and told him to really be a PG. For god's sake, he could have put in Taurean Green. The point is, he didn't do a damn thing about the need for at least one player to be responsible for keeping the passing game going.

(Now you see why I have to do stuff like create the Fat Nene picture? I have to lighten up after my latest Karl discoveries.)
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Someone nicely commented:

If the FO choose's Karl over Melo, they are crazy. This is when they should say if you can't coach Melo then your out of a job.

My response:

Yes if you are in normal space and time this is how it works, but not so if your franchise is: L O S T
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What to you would be a mere Spurs iso play would be a deluxe team play for the Nuggets.

And you are correct, Nuggets iso plays are as crude and simple and easy to defend as a basketball play gets. Do any of the 4 remaining playoff teams run even 1/3 as many pure iso plays as the Nuggets did this season before they were bounced?
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If you are going to persist with banging your head against the wall with the 5'11 1/2" AI at 2-guard then I guess what you want is what many would call a "pure point guard," and I think they mean one who is smart enough to:

1. Always keep the passing game alive.
2. Always be unselfish and consider assists as more important than scores.
3. Make up for poor and negligent offense coaching by directing traffic.
4. Be tall enough and able to defend almost any guard in the League.
5. Be enough of a leader to keep the iso plays limited.

Good luck finding someone who can meet those specs. If you have a PG with only some of those attributes, you will not be able to offset the disadvantages of Iverson at SG, among which are a too short backcourt and a team that takes after Iverson and thinks that iso plays do not need to be limited. It's going to be the Denver 76'ers until a pure point guard is found, or until the Iverson trade is reversed.

The only other solution is to try to get Iverson to be a real PG full time and not just when he wants to be. But we know that hell will freeze over before these coaches will ever go for that.
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Because some get tired of blaming everything on the FO/coaches and like to pretend that the Nuggets are a normal team where the players are at fault?
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If the Nuggets got a quality PG as described above and AI was still damaging the flow of the offense than at least we would know for sure that the trade was asinine. Then in turn we would know for sure that the FO is a total failure, because they would be on the hook for both keeping Karl and for the trade, two huge mistakes.

I honestly don't know to what extent AI's bad habits (Larry Brown, you are a jerk) can be limited, but I do know the Nuggets are blowing a huge opportunity to find out, either by getting that PG or by demanding that AI be responsible for the PG role.
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This really outstanding and very knowledgeable guy commented:

Sorry E, I love that you post here and really appreciate it but this is dillusional.

The worst part of the post is that it really sounds like Karl has won controll over the organization. Pardon me if my memory is mistaken, but Karl was basically hired as a band-aid was he not? Does this organization lack a basic knowledge of recent NBA history? Do you guys not know what GK has done to other teams?

The fan-base is not going to buy any more Karl support. It's apparent that your tone regarding Gk has dramatically changed since the middle of last year. To me this reveals that at a time when GK's job was least secure, he started pointing fingers and bullshitting and the organization came to his rescue.

Off the top of my head here are the lies and misdeeds that GK has authored that he should have been fired for a month ago.

1) Not winning more than one playoff game a year with a top 3 payroll
2)Attmepting to change the team's identity each pre-season, only to give up during the season. ('We are an offernsive team right now, but we may be a running team tommorow and I think we could be a passing team next week. It's just a feel I have.'")
3) Insisting on overplaying at least one midget per year. (Let's remember that Karl is a "feel-coach" not an adjustments or match-ups coach)
4)THE FO having to force GK's hand on playing JR Smith.
5)Having a defensive scheme that does not work in the current NBA nor one that vibes with our personell.
6) Endlessly praising Marcus Camby at the cost of others.
7)Never fighting for his players during a game, let alone showing any sign of life on the bench.

So we are going to give up on a 23-year old Carmelo Anthony before we give up on George f***ing Karl.

This is a nightmare.

I commented back as follows:

Agree with the above great summary at least 100%. To me its like the Nuggets players are characters on LOST. Somehow the overall situation the players are in, what's going on behind the scenes of basketball games, and who is behind the scenes, as determined by the owner, the front office, and the coaching staff, is more powerful than normal, and is warping the usual realities of the life of a basketball franchise. Meanwhile, the more typical primary concerns of a basketball franchise, such as winning even if heads have to roll and making sure that the right changes are made in the strategies and tactics of the basketball team, are less important than normal.

To put it simply, just as on LOST the island and the people trying to harness it or profit from it are more powerful than the objectives of the castaways (and their "fans", which would be their families and friends), on the Nuggets, it seems that the management structure has become more important than the objectives of the players and the fans to win at least one damn playoff series before the Nuggets start to sink back down to who knows how low.

There also is a misunderstanding of what level the Nuggets achieved this past season, which then creates the false idea that a little tinkering can get the Nuggets in a position where they can win a playoff next season. A little tinkering is NOT going to do it, sorry.

The Nuggets were actually nothing more than a marginal playoff team with no hope of winning a series. They in reality won only about 44-45 games this past season, not 50, because they were at least +2 in lucky wins over unlucky losses and they were about +5 in hosting teams in Denver who were playing on back to back nights while the Nuggets were rested over games the Nuggets were on the road and playing on back to back nights against a rested home team. Those types of games are won by the road team about 10% of the time at best.

What really gets me also is the fact that several big market teams are moving ahead with smart coaching staff changes; Chicago, New York, Dallas, and Miami to name a few.
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Is it literally true that the FO forced GK to give JR more minutes?
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The Nuggets are totally hosed in the backcourt, it's that simple.

1. They have concluded that Iverson can not possibly be held responsible for the PG role and that it is not worth finding out whether his bad habits can be limited. Therefore, they keep Iverson at SG. This creates a huge problem defensively, because the Nuggets are trying to defend NBA teams with two short players in the backcourt. At the same time, the offensive problem of Iverson dribbling and shooting too much is of course made worse if Iverson has no PG duties at all.
2. The Nuggets do not want to part with J.R. Smith, who has become already or at the very least is very close to being one of the best 15 SGs in the NBA, which obviously makes him a starter. But since Karl hates his style and completely mistrusts him, and since Iverson is the SG (see #1), Smith can not start and his minutes will be artificially limited. So the Nuggets get only a fraction of what Smith is capable of bringing to a team.
3. The Nuggets theoretically need a tall, pure PG to pair with Iverson but such a player hardly exists in the real world let alone is one available to the Nuggets. As a result, the Nugget's defense will continue to be crippled by inadequate guard defending, while the offense will continue to be inefficient due to Iverson playing both guard positions at once, in the proportion he decides, while not being truly responsible for either one of them.
4. To make #3 even worse, the Nuggets are about to lose Yakhouba Diawara, who is the one SG the Nuggets have on the roster who is an excellent backcourt defender. Also, Yak can hit threes, which the Nuggets need desperately.

When you look at this mess, how is it possible that the Nuggets will be better next season than they were this season past with what they are planning? Especially when you consider that most likely Anthony Carter was at least as good as the aging and injury plagued Chucky Atkins will be next year, and that Chris Duhon is nothing to write home about either. It's not possible that the Nuggets will improve with what little they are planning. The tinkering planned will not only be insufficient, but it will actually leave the Nuggets' backcourt at least slightly worse off than it was this past season.