Pistons Roll Over Imploding Nuggets 95-82

The Nuggets played poorly in many respects, and the Pistons rolled over them easily, 95-82. The game was such a mismatch that the Pistons took and missed a bunch of lazy ill-advised jump shots, and didn't even bother to beat the Nuggets on the boards, though they probably could have had they thought it was necessary. The Piston's accuracy was only .427, but the Nugget's was a miserable .377, and in front of the home crowd no less. Ouch. The Nuggets piled up 19 turnovers, which included the Pistons stealing the ball away 9 times. Ouch again.

The Pistons are an extremely good road team this year. They are 19-10 on the road, and they are the only team in the Eastern Conference which has any kind of winning record on the road. Overall, only the Mavericks, the Suns, and the Spurs have a slightly better road record than the Pistons. The Nuggets are 13-14 on the road, good enough for 6th best in the Western Conference and 7th best in the League. This particular road win was probably one of the easiest of the year for the Pistons.

The Pistons starting center, Chris Webber, limited his jump shots to 4 and made 3 of them. Overall, he had 20 points on 9/11 shooting, along with 9 rebounds. With A.I. being continually double and triple teamed, and with Anthony having one of the worst shooting nights of his entire career, it didn't matter that SG Richard Hamilton was only 5/17, that PG Chauncy Billups was only 6/17, and that PF Rasheed Wallace was only 4/13. Wallace, although still up for a good argument with a ref that gets him a technical, is nonetheless one of those wise old veterans who can sense a team whose wheels have come off, and he will celebrate such a pushover by seeing how many 3-pointers he can make (he made 3/6 in this one), how many steals he can get (he got 4), and how many easy rebounds he can grab (10 in this one). Why bother going inside against Camby and Nene if you know you don't have to bother? So Wallace shot jumpers all night and finished with 17 points on 4/13 shooting. The Nuggets are becoming so bad that their opponents are starting to ramp down their games, as if it might be too rude or bad karma to rout the team that alot of people thought was going to be really good by now.

The Nugget's situation is going from bad to worse and there is now at least a 60% chance they will not make the playoffs. Diehard fans keep thinking there has to be a payoff from A.I., Melo, Camby, and everyone else learning how to maximize each other's games, but the chemistry remains off and the coaching seems to be almost delusional. I learned this neat expression from Van Miller, the former voice of the Buffalo Bills, that sums up the current Nuggets: the wheels have come off now. My game reports are starting to seem like a broken record, because the Nuggets are unwilling or incapable of dealing with what they do and don't do on the court that is taking them out of games.

Except in rare cases, it has been Nuggets other than Melo, A.I., and Camby whose shooting or defense has been so bad that it doesn't meet NBA pro standards and has taken the Nuggets out of games. So what does George Karl do? Does he call out Najera or Blake for passing on shots or Kleiza for taking too many bad shots? No. He claims publicly that Melo is not following the team concept enough and, specifically, is not passing the ball enough. Karl's reasoning is like you having 3 flat tires on your car and you demand an engine tuneup at the garage but no new tires. Even if you get the tuneup, when you drive off, you still have the three flat tires ruining your ride.

Let's think about this for a moment. You are Melo. You see Kleiza in the corner who wants to put up a 3. Kleiza is a career .315 3-point shooter, so you have visions of the ball clanging the rim rather than going in. You see Blake a few feet inside the arc loosely guarded. Blake is a .400 career field goal shooter, and his ability to drive to the hoop and get a layup without being rejected by the defense is limited. You see Najera, who will probably pass on the jumper like he usually does, and who will not even try to find a path to the hoop if any two big men of the opposite team are near it, and so he will most likely pass it to Blake or Kleiza if he gets it. Iverson is behind you because, as he has stated, and he is correct on this, Melo must be the primary scorer with him (A.I.) being a close second, if the Nuggets are to have any chance at all. What do you (Melo) do? You look for a lane to the hoop or you spot up to shoot that sweet midrange jumper that you have been living off of since you were 5 feet 6 inches tall at the pickup neighborhood court many years ago.

George Karl more and more seems to be delusional about the Nuggets, thinking recently that if only Melo and A.I. just pass it around a little more, the rest of the team will respond magically and start hitting shots they have never made before in their careers. And in case Karl has not noticed, the Nuggets are leading the NBA in turnovers, and if you start passing around more to try to generate scoring, you are going to have even more turnovers whether or not you get a little more scoring. And what ever happened to the idea that the Nuggets had to have quick possessions and as many fast breaks as they can crack?

I am going to go even farther here and suggest that George Karl, by whipsawing the playing time of players like Blake, Kleiza, Najera, Evans, Diawara, and Johnson, is making their accuracy worse than it should or would be. Now in that split second they are positioning, aiming, and powering their shot, they might in the back of their heads remember that they will have almost no playing time for a week or two if they miss most of their shots in a single game. But he who hesitates in basketball is lost; if you are worried about the consequences of missing, you will have alot more trouble making your shots. I know for a fact that every one of those six players except for Johnson, who hasn't played enough to have the choice not to shoot, has on many ocassions decided to pass on shots if he thought he might be having an off shooting night, because he does not want to get deep benched and lose his rhythm and development for the umpteenth time.

So George Karl is being way too extreme with his playing time allocations, occasionally spooking a player or two from even wanting to take shots. But ask Iverson if you don't believe me: the best way to get out of a scoring slump, and to improve your scoring in general, is to take all the shots that you are comfortable with and are reasonably open for. The worst way to try to get out of a scoring slump is to be benched for entire games by your coach.

Carmelo Anthony has been called "the ultimate team player" by a Syracuse University coach, and the first thing about any great team player is that he is supposed to have knowledge about the skills and the favorite plays of his teammates. Melo knows about Najera not taking enough shots and about Blake going cold as a winter's night some games, and about the frequently forced and almost desperate shooting of players like Kleiza, Johnson, Diawara, and even sometimes Camby. When he was at Syracuse, Melo knew which players could score and which had to be lucky to score, and he had more of the former than the latter there, while in Denver it seems more and more that there are way to many Nuggets in scoring slumps that simply go on and on and on. Meanwhile, Iverson has never concerned himself as much with such details about other players, being focused mostly on the huge effort he puts on the floor every time he plays. This was one of the reasons, or excuses if you prefer, that the Sixers front office used to give up on him.

Unless Karl backs off, the Nuggets may implode completely and lose 15 or more of their last 22 games. If Melo were to actually take Karl's advice word for word, or if his minutes were reduced, losing about 15 of the last 22 games is probably what would happen. As it stands, the best the Nuggets can hope for now is to win half of their remaining games and maybe just barely get the 8th seed in the playoffs. In order to achieve this, Melo should largely ignore what Karl has said, ride this bad season out, and live to fight another season, perhaps with a new PF who dunks and lays it up all night, perhaps with a swingman who likes to run and shoot, and/or perhaps with a new coach.

Aside from the never-ending flow of turnovers and having too many inaccurate shooters, with a very unbalanced offense as a result, the Nuggets don't have enough quality and energetic defenders. They have an all-star defender in Camby, a big man who is still learning how to defend well in Nene, a slightly above normal but seriously undersized veteran defender in Najera, and one or two young defensive projects who might be true defenders someday and might not. Melo is your standard defender, better than the awkward Blake, Kleiza, and Johnson, but not as skilled as Camby or even Najera. Iverson hustles on defense as with everything, but his best contributions on defense are always going to be his steals.

Melo has been working on defense since he returned from the suspension, and he has a few extra stops and blocks to show for it. But all of a sudden George Karl has ground the gears, because Melo is now hearing his coach complaining that he is not doing enough on offense, when in fact his offensive decisions on the court are usually very reasonable and his production of points, rebounds, and assists puts him at the very top of the list of the best small forwards in the League. Can you imagine Flip Saunders calling a sportswriter and telling him that he is going to bench Tayshaun Prince unless he starts passing the ball around more? Doesn't that sound kind of goofy?

Najera played 21 minutes and was 5/6 and 1/1 from the line for 11 points, and he had 3 rebounds, 2 steals, and an assist. Kleiza played for 24 minutes and was 4/13, 4/8 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he had 9 rebounds and an assist.

Blake played 33 minutes and was 3/10, 1/4 on 3's, and 1/3 from the line for 8 points, and he had 6 assists and a steal.

Nene played 29 minutes and was 3/4 and 1/2 from the line for 7 points, and he also had 7 rebounds, an assist, and a steal.

Marcus Camby played 30 minutes and was 3/8 for 6 points, and he also had 13 rebounds, 3 blocks, 3 assists, and a steal.

A.I. played 42 minutes and was 5/13, 1/4 on 3's, and 8/13 from the line for 19points, and he also had 4 assists, 2 steals, 2 rebounds, and a block. A.I. was double teamed alot and sometimes was triple teamed.

Melo played for 36 minutes and was 6/21, 0/2 on 3's, and 5/6 from the line for 17 points, and he had 7 rebounds, 1 block, and 2 assists. Rattled by his newborn, his fiance who just gave birth, the coach, the shortcomings of the team, and who knows what else, this was as bad as Melo ever plays. He didn't go to the hoop enough or as much as usual, missed 10 of 13 jumpers, and had 7 turnovers including 3 offensive fouls late in the game. This was kind of normal, Melo tends to get late offensive fouls when he senses that the game has gone to hell in a hand basket. Now, will George Karl become completely unglued and bench Melo as a result of this one bad game? He might, so stay tuned if you are a fan of sports disasters.

The next game will be Sunday afternoon in Sacramento to play the Kings at 1:30 pm mountain time.

Nuggets Without Melo Are Beaten By Balanced Warriors 110-96

One of the only positives from this dismal loss in Oakland is that George Karl now knows what happens if Carmelo Anthony is benched and J.R. Smith is out due to an injury: the Nuggets become one of the very worst teams in the League and are not competitive with an ordinary losing team, in this case, the Golden State Warriors. Five Warriors had a dozen or more points, the Warriors picked apart what little defense the Nuggets had with 31 assists, and they also buried the Nuggets 16-8 on 3-point shots as they scored an easy win over the Nuggets 110-96. Thank goodness that Melo's wife having a baby is a rare event because, apparently, it means an automatic loss for Denver.

The game was more evidence that the Nuggets who do not usually start are both defensively and offensively challenged. Nene, Blake, Diawara, and Kleiza combined had 33 points on 11/34 shooting. Overall, the Nuggets shot .384 while the Warriors shot .441. Generally, a team can not possibly win an NBA game if it's accuracy is less than .400. The Warriors actually were slightly more accurate from long range than from short range. They were 16/34 or .471 from long range, whereas the Nuggets avoided a total rout by coming up with 8/23 from long range, which is a percentage of .348. DerMarr Johnson was 3/8 and Yakhouba Diawara was 2/4 from beyond the arc.

So it was Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, and players who have not been consistent offensively or defensively since at least the first of 2007 versus the explosive Warriors, whose style and level of play is similar to the Nuggets, but who have a much more balanced scoring attack. In this game, A.I. was far ahead of anyone on the court with 35 points on 12/25 shooting, whereas the Warriors had every one of the next highest 4 scorers.

PG Baron Davis, who just returned to action this past Monday after recovering from knee surgery and missing 13 games, has picked up where he left off as an efficient and three dimensional scoring threat. In his 8th year, Davis is having his most accurate shooting season ever and the second most ppg ever, with 20.5. He is also averaging an outstanding 8.6 assists per game. Although his 3-point shot is not as good as it was 5 years ago, it is still a decent .280. In this game Davis led the Warriors with 22 points on 7/15shooting and he also had 9 assists. By comparison, there were slim pickings for scoring on the Denver lineup, and A.I. had just 3 assists.

PF Al Harrington, who came to the Warriors in the January multi-player trade with the Pacers, is the kind of dependable, scoring PF that Nuggets fans would love to see on their team. In tonight's game Harrington had 20 points on 7/19 shooting, and he added 9 rebounds. The Nugget's sort of starting forward, and I say "sort of" because George Karl changes the lineup so much that the Nuggets don't even really have a true starting PF, was mysteriously absent from this game. Eduardo Najera played only 5 minutes off the bench and I have not seen anything yet to explain why he didn't play.

On the other hand, it is getting so these mysterious absences are not so mysterious anymore. It seems like every game now at least one Nugget is being severly shortchanged on playing time by George Karl. Had Najera played and done as well as he did recently in Indiana and in Milwaukee, this might have been a competitive game.

Rounding out the plentiful scoring attack that Denver fans can only dream of having was SF Stephen Jackson, who was 4/9 from downtown and who had 18 points, and SG Jason Richardson, who was 4/8 from downtown and who had 16 points overall. Center Andris Biedrins, who is from Latvia, had 15 rebounds and scored 12 points on efficent 6/8 shooting. All of his shots were layups. He does the layup and does it well. Unlike Camby, he didn't worry at all about whether he can shoot a bunch of jumpers in this game. If the Nuggets are forced to "blow up" their team to try their luck at getting a better crew, they would be lucky to end up with the type of players that the Warriors have, because they would fit in with the kind of fast offense that the Nuggets theoretically (or used to?) want to run.

And some kind of blow up in the off season is more and more looking like the only reasonable strategy for the Nuggets. The Nuggets need to keep Melo and A.I. and shuffle the rest of the lineup as much as possible, because time has almost run out on this experimental roster and it has not worked. The Nuggets are still not competitive with the top teams of the West. Denver needs to go back to the trading block to give A.I. something more than a warmed over Sixers caliber roster, and to give Melo some teammates who can take more advantage than the current ones of his increasing passing and rebounding. The type of mega trade that Indiana and Golden State were involved in is what I have in mind. Or, if you think the Nuggets are underperforming mostly because of the dizzying rotation and minutes played inconsistencies from George Karl, then the off-season objective will be to fire George Karl and make a smaller trade or two.

The Nuggets are now 28-29 and right on the verge of dropping out of the playoff lineup. If you factor in the estimated net 3 games they lost due to the 15 game Melo suspension and the 10 game J.R. Smith suspension, they would be 31-26, which would put them ahead of Kobe "Why can't you keep your elbow to yourself?" Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers, who have 4 forwards sitting out with injuries, were blown out by the lowly Bucks in Milwaukee tonight so at least we can say that the Nuggets are not the only team that is doing substantially worse than expected.

Reggie Evans dusted off the cobwebs and played 19 minutes. He was 1/2 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he had 11 rebounds and a block. Kleiza played 20 minutes and was 2/11, 1/5 on 3's, and 3/4 from the line for 8 points, and he had 10 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist. Diawara played 21 minutes and was 3/7 and 2/4 on 3's for 8 points, and he added a steal and a rebound.

Steve Blake played for 30 minutes and was 4/10 and 1/4 on 3's for 9 points, and he had 6 assists and 2 steals.

DerMarr Johnson, who most Nuggets fans thought would get more playing time during the J.R. Smith surgery recovery but instead was totally benched by Coach Scrooge, had to play in this one due to the shortage of bodies and had a truly decent showing. He played 29 minutes and was 6/16 and 3/8 from long range for 15 points, and he added 3 blocks, 2 rebounds, and an assist. Thank you very much Mrs. Anthony for having the baby, thus forcing Karl to play Johnson. This Johnson sitting on the bench constantly was really driving me up the wall. At least the rest of the NBA is reminded again that Johnson has some potential, so that now Denver might be able to include him in a big off-season trade.

Nene played 34 minutes and was 2/6 and 4/4 from the line for 8 points, and he had 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, and a block. The Nuggets overall had 11 steals, but the Warriors had 10.

Marcus Camby played for 30 minutes and was 3/8 and 3/5 from the line for 9 points, and he also had 14 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 assists, and 2 steals.

A.I. played virtually the entire game and was 12/25, 1/2 on 3's, and 10/14 from the line for 35 points, and he also had 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

The next game will be Friday, March 9 in Denver against the Pistons at 7 pm mountain time.

Nuggets Win Easily Over Poor Shooting Hornets 106-91

The Hornets had a healthy 17 offensive rebounds versus 10 for the Nuggets and had 92 shots on goal versus 81 for the Nuggets, but they could not find the hoop enough in the high altitude and lost to the Nuggets 106-91. George Karl continued to play just 8 men, but the skimpy roster worked in this one as every player contributed to the scoring. More impressive still, there was the kind of sharing in rebounding and assisting that has been so notably absent in most of the Nuggets home losses, 4th quarter collapses, and losses to the top teams of the Western Conference.

Peja Stojakovic, the rebounding and good scoring percentage G-F who played for the Pacers last season and then went out due to lower back surgery this season after 13 games, during which he led the Hornets in scoring in general and 3-point shooting in particular, was sorely missed in this one. The Hornets are the opposite type of team from the Nuggets. Instead of having dominant go-to scorers like A.I. and Melo, the Hornets rely on a team approach to scoring; they try to nickle and dime you to death. Tonight, this didn't work, as there were too many pennies and not enough nickles and dimes, whereas the Nuggets were showing, to the extent possible with an 8 man roster, that they can make a team effort, at least to a limited extent and for this particular game. A.I. and Melo were still the dominant scorers, but they were not as dominant as usual.

So ironically, the Nuggets won playing a little more like the Hornets than they generally do. Nuggets fans, however, can not get their hopes up too much here because there has been no consistency with regard to offensive balance and, even worse, the pressure of playing any of the big 6 teams in the West has suppressed to one extent or another any offensive balance the Nuggets might have had literally every single time the Nuggets have played one of them. Specifically, when the Nuggets have fallen behind one of these teams, as they always do, they have been pressured to rely on A.I. and Melo all the more, and then the opponent can largely ignore other Nuggets.

The top scoring Hornets are PG Chris Paul, SF Desmond Mason, and PF David West. These three were a terrible 9/36 combined tonight. So Nuggets fans should not do much celebrating over this win, unless they want to celebrate the slightly better defense, but this is old news, and has not been enough to make the Nuggets competitive with Utah, Phoenix, or any of the three Texas teams.

Center Tyson Chandler led the Hornets with 15 points on 7/10 shooting, and he had 18 rebounds. Chris Paul, the 2nd year star PG from Wake Forest, who is averaging almost 9 assists per game, had 14 assists in this one.
With only two dozen games left in the season, this game had some playoff implications. Had the Hornets won, they would have been in better position to get into the playoffs, and Denver would have been in greater danger of failing to make the playoffs. So the Nuggets keep playing very close to the edge of the cliff, without actually going over it, which is driving fans and the head Coach up the wall.

The Hornets had just 40 points in the paint, as the inside defense led by Nene and Camby produced some real stops. Camby had 6 blocks to solidify his status as the best blocker in the NBA. The Nuggets lead the League in turnovers and they had their average 16 of them in this game, versus 13 for the Hornets. The Nuggets had an impressive 28 assists, with Melo, Camby, and Blake assisting on 6 scores each and A.I. on 5.

The Nuggets were supposed to be used to playing with their revamped roster by now, but all the lopsided losses to the big teams of the West, in which the Nuggets usually could not produce enough offense from their players other than A.I. and Melo, proved that they have not accomplished this objective. Making this situation much worse still is the recent absence of J.R. Smith, due to the knee injury in San Antonio on February 20. Smith is supposed to be healed from surgery and returned to the lineup in 1 or 2 weeks, but whether there will be enough time left in the season for him to go over all the hurdles that George Karl puts down for a player to get minutes remains to be seen.

The Nuggets have been totally outclassed by the Big 6 and would appear to have no chance in the playoffs due to the frequent lazy defense, the large number of turnovers, the overly restrictive player rotations of the Coach, and the insufficiency of dependable scoring from such players as Najera, Kleiza, Blake, and even Camby. It is ironic but very true that the team with two of the very top scorers in the NBA does not have enough scorers. Najera is not offensively minded enough, doesn't get open enough, and doesn't take enough shots. Blake's shooting is mediocre at best and he also is not offensively minded enough for the Nuggets to be able to compete with a Phoenix or a Dallas. Kleiza and especially Diawara are simply not accurate enough this year. Camby, despite having a career year on defense and being responsible for allowing the Nuggets to avoid being routed during many of the games against the Big 6, nonetheless deserves a little criticism on his shooting. He takes a few too many jumpers and sometimes allows a defender to get too good a position when he is going up for a layup.

A.I. and Melo have apparently gone through the reckoning I just did, and have decided to try to win games on their own shooting prowess, a strategy which has failed not because it is the wrong strategy, but because there is no strategy that will allow a team that is markedly inferior at PF and SG, and that has, dare I say it, one the worst benches in basketball, to compete with 6 of the best teams in pro basketball. The Melo-A.I. strategy to win games offensively largely by themselves might have worked despite the poor scoring from the rest of the Nuggets, were it possible for A.I. to get 40 points like he used to not so many years ago, or were it possible for Melo to start hitting some 3-pointers to go along with his sweet midrange jumper. Melo and A.I did their best to get the Nuggets wins by going all out themselves and this failed. Now the Nuggets have no alternative but to try to get other Nuggets consistently involved offensively, or they could easily miss the playoffs. And this is much easier said than done.

The first thing to worry about with respect to whether the Nuggets can address their problems and avoid being bounced in 4 or 5 games in the playoffs, or not making the playoffs at all, is George Karl, who is one of the problems himself and who is, according to a "Denver Post" story, starting to try to blame Melo for the Nuggets not being able to compete with the Big 6. This is extremely unfair and totally wrong. Unless you think that Melo can get Najera to get open alot more and contribute 7-17 points almost every game instead of just 3 out of 10 games, and that he can get Kleiza, Blake, Camby, and Diawara to start hitting shots that corresponding players on the other teams are hitting, Karl is wasting time and creating a straw man to divert attention from his questionable rotations, the poor Nuggets bench, the mess at PF, the inexcusable turnovers, and the poor defense.

Melo does not control where Najera goes on the court or how Blake, Kleiza and Diawara shoot their jumpers. And he is too young to assist Nuggets coaches in coaching the mechanics of basketball. Melo is averaging 4.1 assists and 6.0 rebounds a game, which are career highs, while at the same time leading the NBA is scoring, with a FG shooting percentage of .478. There are only 3 high scoring small forwards in the NBA who are getting more rebounds than Melo per game: Caron Butler at 7.5, LeBron James at 6.7, and Ron Artest at 6.6. And there is only one small forward who is averaging more assists than Melo per game, LeBron James with 5.8. No, Karl is in danger of becoming like a dog who barks up the wrong tree. Certain annoying older dogs tend to do this more and more, the older they get. Oh well, if the Nuggets fall apart and Karl loses his job, he can hope to coach LeBron in Cleveland, who is the only player left in the NBA who comes close to Karl's ideal of the perfect basketball player.

J.R. Smith appeared on the court for one minute at the end of the game, but I don't think this means that he is making a return to active duty a week earler than forecast. He probably will not play much until at least next Tuesday. Smith may have appeared late in the Nuggets win only to irritate Byron Scott, who coached Smith last year and has continued to make overly critical comments about Smith even this season.

Diawara played 13 minutes and was 2/4 and 1/2 on 3's for 5 points, and he had 2 assists. Kleiza played 23 minutes and was 3/7, 2/6 on 3's, and 1/2 from the line for 9 points, and he added a block and 3 rebounds. Najera played 24 minutes and was 5/9 for 10 points, and he added 6 rebounds, 4 of which were offensive rebounds.

Blake played 34 minutes and was 6/12 and 1/4 on 3's for 13 points, and he also had 6 assists and a steal. This was Blake's second good game in a row after he was a non-factor offensively for several games in a row.

Nene played 34 minutes and was 5/8 and 5/6 from the line for 15 points, and he had 14 rebounds, 3 assists, a block, and a steal.

Camby played 34 minutes and was 4/6 for 8 points, and he had 11 rebounds, 6 assists, 6 blocks, and 4 steals, despite playing with a painful tailbone.

A.I. played for 39 minutes and was 8/17, 2/3 on 3's, and 7/7 from the line 25 points, and he added 5 assists and 3 rebounds.

Melo played 32 minutes and was 8/18, 1/1 on 3's, and 4/6 from the line for 21 points, and he had 7 rebounds, 6 assists, and a steal. Anthony left the building immediately after the game to visit his wife, who is in the hospital having their first baby, which will be a boy. Melo will not be in California for tomorrow night's game against the Warriors, so A.I. will have the green light for a 40 or 50 point game.

George Karl in comments after the game started backtracking from his earlier comments which were too critical of the new father and the leading scorer in the NBA, who gets more rebounds and assists than Karl and most everyone else seems to realize.

The next game will be tomorrow night, March 7, in Oakland to play the Warriors at 8:30 pm mountain time.