The Nuggets are about 17-2 against losing teams now, the best record against sub .500 teams in the League, which is the number one reason why their record is so spectacular. But those teams don't play in the playoffs, so big deal.
Here's another way of looking at how this franchise has fallen short. For several years, through and including last year, the Nuggets had this massively huge payroll, chock loaded with players who could come up big in the playoffs, but George Karl just sat on his behind during all the games, and he just let Allen Iverson run around and around and around to nowhere, with no and I mean absolutely no team concept.
Now fast forward to now. They have Nene coming from nowhere to be more or less a superstar. They have Billups coming from Detroit to be almost or perhaps actually a superstar. Most surprising of all, they have several obscure, low cost players, several of whom are playing just about half again as much better than they ever did before. And they have all of these assets while playing with a purpose and as a team. At least on defense, anyway.
George Karl, the ultimate "contrary indicator," the ultimate wrong place, wrong time type of guy, is up from his bench perch far more than last year, jawing the refs and much more actively coaching the team than when they had the expensive, playoff-level players. Oh well, I guess Mr Karl thinks that last year's Nuggets should have coached themselves.
Even these days, though, the Nuggets are largely one dimensional; their purpose or system, and their team concept, is really on defense only. On offense, they have the fast break concept, the drive to the hoop over and over again and make free throws concept, the Chauncey Billups directing concept, and the Nene stuffing a bunch concept, and that is about it. Unfortunately, the sum total of all of those is still too weak to set up a winning offense for the playoffs. Collectively these things are not enough. Individually, these things are more or less low return investments by nature, and/or because these things can be relatively easily countered in the playoffs.
For example, the fast break is notoriously easy to contain in the playoffs. Even more importantly, the fast break and the other offensive things the Nuggets are doing would not be very good payoff strategies even if the opponent could not contain them in the series.
The franchise continues to either not believe in or to be unable to implement any kind of real, hard to defend offensive strategy. The tactics of Chauncey Billups and the dunks and layups of Nene can only get you so far, especially when you consider that the opponent in the playoff series is going to be quite aware that all they have to do to contain the Nuggets is to hassle Nene close in and hassle Chauncey out on the perimeter.
As for the unofficial, quasi coaching of Chauncey Billups, one basketball player, even him, does not add up to a system , strategy, or a purpose. And since when is Billups qualified to coach a professional NBA team, anyway?
So the bottom line is that the Nuggets have a working, effective strategy and a purpose only on defense, while they still have a combination of insufficient strategies and anarchy on offense. And they no longer have enough playoff-experienced, talented players needed to dependably win a playoff series. So overall, they still do not have enough going for them to be able to win a playoff series.
Defensively, last year there were almost as many defensive specialists as this year, but their teammates, including Carmelo Anthony, were not playing very much defense, because their was no real team objective or team pride for that. Mr. Karl tried early on to get this but he was not able to maintain it over the course of the season. Remember Yakhouba Diawara, (now on the Heat)? Remember Eduardo Najera (Nets)? Remember Marcus Camby (Clippers)? And if they wanted to play like they are this year, they sure as hell didn't need Allen Iverson, so, remember Reggie Evans (traded to the Sixers for Iverson)? If they had Evans' heavy rebounding right now, they would be able to just about truthfully say they don't miss Camby on defense.
Another way the Nuggets could more than offset Camby would be if, god forbid, Renaldo Balkman gets more minutes and Dahntay Jones gets fewer.
These defensive specialists were like lone wolves, since the rest of the team was not sold on playing good defense. Just as bad, the defensive specialists were often totally out of the flow offensively. Poor Diawara, who has a decent three, had games where he played 20 minutes or so and hardly got the ball at all, even though the Nuggets were deficient in 3-point shooting!
So the Nuggets had defensive specialists last year just as they do this year, but they never used them in a coordinated way with the other players as they are doing this year.
In the recent years, the last two anyway, the Nuggets had more than enough offensive playoff talent, but virtually no playoff game wins was the result of not tying the team together and making defense a point of pride, and of having an offense that was more or less anarchy.
So now they have changed their stripes and have the team defense but they are still mostly lost offensively. And even defensively, they are in for some rude awakenings when their defensive specialists, most of whom have little or no playoff experience, play against quality offensive teams and quality coaches, and when they face referees who have seen all the inferior, rule shaving strategies before and twice on Sundays.
If you are a good coach and you encounter a team playing like the Nuggets are, you instruct your players to get physical right back on them, both off the ball and on the ball. Not only because you don't want to end up intimidated but, more importantly, you want to force the referees to get control of the game and, more specifically, to get control of the Nuggets.
In the unlikely event that the playoff referees need some persuasion to keep control of the playoff game, this is what Adelman or Sloan or Scott or whoever will do: they will instruct their players to get as rough as necessary until the referees are forced to take control and call a tighter game.
Judging from all the changes they have made from last year to this, the Nuggets are infuriatingly inconsistent in what they do, but they are consistent insofar as they are never doing enough to set up winning in the playoffs. The Nuggets simply don't do enough. Unlike top franchises such as the Lakers and the Celtics, the Nuggets seem to not understand that there is no legal limit on how many strategies you can have, or on how powerful and hard to counter they can be.
Last year, the Nuggets had the players who could win some playoff games, which is probably the most difficult to achieve prerequisite. They squandered it, because they had almost nothing in the way of coaching, offensive strategy, offensive purpose and pride, or defensive purpose and pride. So in the April 2008 series against the Lakers, George Karl was reduced to pleading with his players to pass more since, amazingly, there really wasn't any point guard! I am not exaggerating.
This year, between Karl doing a little actual game coaching work, Chauncey directing things, the consistent fast breaking on offense, the relentless driving to the hoop and free throw shooting, and especially the high intensity, hard charging defense as a defensive system, the Nuggets overall have to some extent a team strategy and purpose going. But alas, they no longer have the players who will be able to win playoff games, and they are still coming up short in terms of the quality and power of their offensive strategy. It has been a few steps forward and a few steps back, with no real increase in the ability to win a playoff series.
Denver: you have to have several powerful strategies going at once to be able to win in the playoffs, not just rotate in and out over the years one or two powerful strategies and a bunch of weak strategies.
The playoff referees are going to slap this team down if they come in thinking they are going to milk the refs and foul and get fouled their way to winning playoff games. And no team will be a punching bag for the Nuggets' high intensity defending. Playoff teams are not going to permit either Nene or Chauncey to drop 25-30 points on them in more than a game or two. They are going to make sure that Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith remain in their boxes most of the time. So in short they are going to know how to defeat the Nuggets in the playoffs.
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