Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late July, 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 JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

This is more commentary following the Camby giveaway. See also the immediately preceding post, (posted on the same day) titled: "Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of July, 2008"

Every time I read a Hollinger article all the way through I think he is more of a loony than before. In this gem, he endorses the apparent Nuggets crash and burn plan of going in one year flat from one extreme to the other financially. It's a backhanded compliment, because he says the only way the Camby offloading makes any sense at all is if you realize that the C Anthony-Iverson thing was a horrible mistake. (With compliments like that, who needs criticisms?)

So he talks about the Nuggets possibly going under the cap, and the possibility of their using the trade exception in 2009. He's silent as to the odds of that working out but believe me, he will be the first to criticize if it doesn't work out.

Hollinger also contradicts himself as he often does. First he claims that the Nuggets gain from the offloading of Camby. Then in the last 3 paragraphs, he goes into how the Nuggets are devastated by this move in basketball terms, and are heading for the "second tier" of the Conference.

Which is it Hollinger? He really should make his mind up in advance, so he doesn't write such a mealy mouthed article.
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Now we know that the Nuggets really were exploring Melo trades, no matter what they say in public, and no matter what they told him and his agent. They had the carving knife out from day one of the off season.

A Melo trade was a serious possibility, as I said before, though at the time I said that I didn't know what I know now, so I wasn't totally sure of it at the time I first said it.

What do you think phil77 you think Melo is going to stay if there are major losing seasons, or will he want to go?
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If the Nuggets realized that rebuilding is needed after they fell into the trap of using Iverson the same way the 76'ers did, then I give them credit for that at least.

But I can not figure out for the life of me why the Nuggets did not want a draft pick this year if they are truly now in rebuilding

The obvious best guess, as I said, is that Mr. Kroenke is consolidating his finances due to the rough and threatening economy. Maybe even for someone like him, times can be tough?
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Just about any other way of moving Camby would have been better than this, other than dumping him in a river somewhere.

As just one example, the Nuggets could have traded Camby and their first round draft pick for a higher draft pick, and then use that to draft one of the best centers available in the draft. That deal would be weighted in favor of the other team, but would not be a giveaway. Under this scenario, the Nuggets would get a promising but young replacement for Camby, and get substantial payroll relief at the same time.

The Nuggets saying that they needed to dump Camby because of an immediate need for huge payroll relief is nothing more than meatball surgery.
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Well, if the Nuggets could not find a team with payroll space, they should have waited until they could. It's not really difficult. Find a team that has cap space, offer them a deal that is lopsided in their favor, and avoid dumping Camby in the river. Get something for him, for gods sakes.

The Nuggets, whether they admit it publicly or not, have gone into rebuilding without exhausting the possibilities with their present high talent roster, though that may sound ironic coming from someone who had lost faith in them ever doing that. But I never asked them to admit they were failures in managing this roster, as they now have.

To me, the front office and the coaches in effect admitting they could not make the 2007-08 roster, one of the NBA's best, work out, before exhausting their efforts, is as bad as them not being able to make the roster work out in the first place! At least try to do it! You might get lucky, for one thing. AI might have decided to pass more on his own for example.

All of this raises the question: why did they in the first place spend the big bucks, including the big luxury tax, if there was a possibility they would short circuit the project and dismantle the team before making certain that the expenditure of all that money was not going to work out? Now the Nuggets have more or less wasted the money they spent on the big salary players and on the luxury tax, by not waiting long enough to get much of a return.

If they had given it one more year, they could have at the very least attracted more big names to be interested in playing in Denver, similar to the way Ron Artest was interested last year. But now that the team is being carved up, which good players are going to be willing to cut the Nuggets a little salary slack in order to be able to play with the mighty Nuggets? No one. To get anyone to play in Denver now, the Nuggets have to pony up and offer an extra several million dollars compared with what it might have been.

In other words, the Nuggets are signaling to the League and all of its players that they are not a truly front line, contending franchise, and those top players and their agents will respond accordingly. The Nuggets are reversing their investment before getting any return on it, with the snubbing of Ron Artest being part of that self destructive process.

But worse still, and this may be the most relevant point at this juncture, the Nuggets are screwing up the rebuilding in its early stages, Getting nothing for Camby (and nothing for Najera) is to say the least not a good start for the rebuilding. Repeatedly getting nothing for something is not going to get you anywhere, no matter how many hypothetical payroll razzmatazz possibilities you want to discuss for the future.

The trade exception is nothing more than an option for a team to acquire a new player and new salary and go over the cap at the same time. It doesn't mean you get the player for free if you use it, which is the way some posters make it sound sometimes. You have to acquire that player somehow, and you have to pay his salary too, the "trade exception" thing is just an NBA payroll accounting rule.
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Someone really smart and correct made an on point list:

I agree i'm hoping something big is in the works. Because right now this brain trust is just stupid to me.

1.Sign Reggie Evans to more than he was worth, then dump him for a far worse player to save money FROM THEIR SIGNING
2.Sign Nene to $60 million when he hadnt proved anything, and there were no teams with cap space that would have came close to offering it.
3.Trade our PG for AI but instead of making AI a PG who sets up his team they move him to SG but still mandate he controls the ball 20 seconds out of every posession.
4.Not make one dent in the draft, though some of the players we have drafted and traded for other teams have done pretty well.
5.Keep a coach that is not a fit for this team at all
6.Let eddie go because we have no money, then after he signs dump a bunch of salary for absolutely nothing. Not even a second round pick, nothing.
7.Future $7 mil a year deal that JR will get only to sit on the bench while AI/Chucky/Carter run the show
8.Say stupid s**t like "its a chess move". Yeah Memphis was playing Chess when they gave away gasol for nothing too.

I can understand if we said that we needed to clear salary and start over, but the majority of the salary issues we have were created by this front office, Kenyon is the only hold over, the other dumb contracts are on these guys. Wark/Bearup/Chapman clearly do not know what they are doing at this point.

My response was add to an already great commentary:

Excellent list; but now you have to at the least add #9: the Camby dumping.

The JR acquisition for almost nothing and the AI acquisition, and a few other minor positives, are swamped by these negatives. The front office has failed overall.
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Someone made a joke about J.R. Smith:

Sure...he could be worth 10 million next season. or he could run over david stern's granddaughters puppy while smoking a joint and be banished from the nba for life.

I added:

Seriously, another risk for him is an injury, for example from a fluke landing on a dunk, from another neck tackle, or from trying to fly like a bird with his vehicle.
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Well it was a glass full or glass half empty situation. On one hand, those who think strategically and who are basketball fanatics could tell that, the way the Nuggets were managing their team, they were never going to succeed, at least insofar as the playoffs. So if you look at it that way, as I usually do, you would say "alright, this is a failure; end it and stop paying the luxury tax for no reason immediately."

On the other hand, you could look at the glass as half full, and if you did, the Nuggets had no right to consider themselves to be at a logical dead end, and to short circuit the Melo/AI/Luxury Tax era. Consider:

1. From a what we officially know perspective, there hasn't been one word, nor one hint of a word, in public, about the Nuggets reaching an end to their project to become a real contender in the West. Quite to the contrary, Nuggets management has been consistent in saying that they are still on course to being a contender. Is this a stealth rebuilding or something?
2. From a basketball strategy perspective, the Nuggets could not possibly be at a logical end unless they actually, really, fully deployed Allen Iverson at the PG position, instead of just inserting him in that slot for the playoffs, for grins only.
3. From a performance measure perspective, you can't possibly say that one of the very most talented teams in the NBA has reached a logical end and has to begin rebuilding. If Camby and Najera were retiring, you could say that maybe, but they were not retiring. Would Boston, Los Angeles, or at least a dozen top NBA franchises be caught dead starting to rebuild while they were still one of the most talented teams in the NBA?
4. From the actual basketball results strategy, the Nuggets won 50 out of 82 games in 2007-08, one of their highest total number of wins ever. Moreover, the gap between their offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency in 2007-08 was substantially up from the year prior, and was one of their most positive gaps ever. You are not at the logical dead end when you have just completed your best season in many, many years.

In short, you have to wait until you are actually at the logical dead end until you take drastic action as a result of being at the logical dead end. The Nuggets are acting as if they are paranoid about finding out whether they were about to reach the logical dead end, which is ridiculous.

This is about like a man, suspecting that he is going to die soon, going to the funeral home, jumping in a casket, and telling the funeral director to bury him now!

I as a critic am entitled to look at the glass as half empty, but the Nuggets as a professional sports organization are supposed to look at the glass as half full, and act accordingly. Moreover, as I said, the Nuggets and any organization anywhere is supposed to continue to manage an investment until there is definitely no chance for a return from it, rather than cutting and running and failing to get a return before the possibilities for a return are exhausted.

Now switching gears, assuming that the Nuggets have gone into rebuilding, the question becomes how are they doing in the early going? And in my view they are doing rotten, and I don't see how that is disputable or complicated. How can you expect to have a successful rebuilding if you decline your one and only draft pick, and opt for dumping both Camby and Najera, with no young players with potential in exchange. I know that Karl is biased against younger players, but this is ridiculous.

To have a successful rebuilding (or a successful team in general, for that matter) it seems to me that you need to be continuously developing your younger players, making them better, and working them into your offensive and defensive strategies and schemes.

For the Nuggets to say: "We'll pick up everyone we need next year, and/or the year after that" is poor management in my book. For one thing, by not getting any young player who will be an important part of the rebuilding now, in particular a center or a point guard, they are totally wasting 2008-09, because obviously you can't be working with a player if he's not on your team.

Furthermore, it sounds like the Nuggets, by doing all the offloading this year and planning all the uploading for next year or two, are creating a very tall order for the front office to accomplish next year. This tall order is supposed to be satisfied in the jungle that is the NBA draft, trading and acquisition world, where any combination among 29 other teams can frustrate your efforts to get what you need, especially if you are in a hurry. Generally, the more you count on acquisitions via trade to make up for the lack of on court development of key players in your system, the more you are dependent on being lucky when you maneuver for position with the other 29 teams. And going from getting 0 players from the draft one year, to 3-4 players from the draft the next year, is another inconsistency that you should avoid if at all possible.

If the Nuggets, in this rebuilding, do in fact finally get some promising younger players in 2009, all at once, then there will be a logjam of younger players, and no coach, least of all Karl, will be able to work all of them in in just one season, so one or more of them will be wasted that season.

If on the other hand, the Nuggets, in this rebuilding, are actually just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; if they intend, in other words, to continue to overload with huge money aging veterans, and not worry about developing younger players into their system, then they will fail again with new names.

To be successful, you absolutely must have some kind of a balance between younger, cheaper players, and older, expensive ones. The payroll rules and the salary pattern make that mandatory.

In summary, I don't think rebuilding is something that you can wake up in the morning and say: "Alright, it's time to rebuild, and we're going to do it in 2009, and dump off some players this year to stop paying the luxury tax. To be a successful franchise, you generally are going to have to always be rebuilding to some extent. Every single year, you should be developing players who will in a year or two or three be crucial, as the older players go away. Every single year, you should be on the lookout for mid-level type players, including swingmen and guards who can hit threes, who appear on track to become quality starters.

I agree you need 2 or preferably 3 huge players to succeed, but if you spend most of your time and most of your money looking for and acquiring them, and if you overload with them, then what do you think is going to happen with the rest of the roster? Correct, it's going to rot to one extent or another. And your team overall will be top heavy and will fail in the playoffs.
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There are ways to criticize Camby's defensive style and choices without making a fool of yourself but this is not one of them.

Also, it's interesting to note that the Clippers are apparently going to start Camby at power forward, which if comments like this are correct, will devastate their defense, while the defense of the Nuggets will be much better without Camby.

This is seriously going to be an interesting test to see whether a defender who makes slightly unusual defensive choices is in fact a player who the mainstream, due to rebounding, blocking, and +/- statistics, thinks is a good defender, but is really a poor defender due to style, including choice of priorities.

As an important side point, obviously, a player's style and priorities depend on that player's real athletic capabilities, which in turn depend to some extent on that player's body and what he can do with it. So what the Camby haters are in effect saying is that no one with Camby's type of body and hand skills should be starting for a pro basketball team.

So we will have to see what happens to the defenses of the Clippers and the Nuggets this year: will they be better or worse than last year, and by how much? If the Clippers improve more than the Nuggets defensively, I for one will continue to never seriously consider that choices a player makes regarding playing style can be a major or a large factor in determining the real value of that player, enough to make all statistics and awards meaningless. Simply put, assuming there are no non-Camby related huge shocks regarding the defenses of either team:

Nuggets defense improves more than does the Clippers defense: Camby's defensive style and priorities did in fact partly or largely offset his raw production of rebounds, blocks, plus/minus, and overall team defensive efficiency.

Clippers defense improves more than does the Nuggets defense: Production is what counts; style and choice of priorities may be the derivative of production, but the derivative only matters much in calculus class.

Note: I have been staying away from NT because I am too negative about the Nuggets now to get any advantage from this board, but in coming here to find a link, I could not resist reading some topics, and then I noticed the quoted comment above, and I just could not stop myself from commenting. The idea that people can be happy that Camby was given away for nothing is so insane to me that I could not resist a comment and a follow up plan. So I will probably not be able to stop myself from coming back late this year to claim victory or admit defeat on this subject.

Remember, it was not Katrina that killed much of New Orleans, it was the fact the levees failed when they were not supposed to. Similarly, it will not be the trading of Camby that kills the Nuggets (assuming it does); it will be the fact that Camby was dumped overboard in a big hurry, without anything being obtained in exchange. Don't get it twisted.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of July, 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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MIDDLE OF JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

The following commentary was done in the wake of the Marcus Camby giveaway, done because the owner of the Nuggets wanted to severely cut back on payroll in general and on the luxury tax in particular. The fact that essentially nothing at all was obtained in exchange for Camby was smoking gun evidence that the Nuggets organization was packing it in and getting out the white flag for the Pepsi Center flag mast.

Whether or not the top Nuggets managers were blaming the Nuggets fiasco on Coach George Karl, they decided that it was futile to make a big effort to finally advance in the playoffs in the 2008-09 season. In short, the plug was pulled on the expensive Nuggets roster, but without either an official or a quasi secret, in fact rebuilding plan or process in place. So the Nuggets were left in complete limbo: not able to even theoretically compete with the top dog teams of the NBA anymore, but not engaged in any well planned new team building process either. In other words, the Nuggets were left in a foggy, unclear status, with apparently no established plan for moving forward as a sports team. Such a situation often leads to the team in question becoming a major losing team within a few short years, and a major losing team was what the Nuggets were just a few years ago, before the arrival of Carmelo Anthony.

With that introduction made, let's go on to the comments that I made immediately after the Camby giveaway was announced:

I honestly had no idea the front office was incompetent. First they go hog wild with expensive veterans, then they admit it was all a joke on the unsuspecting public, that they were never serious after all about going for at least a place in the Conference Final, if not more. They are literally going from one extreme to the other in their management scheme, as reflected by their finances, which is one of the worst things you can do while managing any organization, including a sports team.

If you have overspent, you want to very carefully back up, not dump everybody overboard and say the hell with everything. If you were going to dump Camby's money, at least you should have drafted a center, whereas the Nuggets drafted no one at all. What is wrong with them?

Was it this kind of thing that got the Nuggets down to about 15-67 a few years ago? I wasn't around at the time.
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Someone wrote:

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

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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EARLY JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

And why do you think that GK was very noticeably upset at having to part with Andre Miller? Because Miller did part of his job for him by creating a little bit of an offensive system. This past season, Karl started out by ruling out having Iverson himself be of any help in creating a little bit of a system. This despite the fact that if you look at his career as a whole including college, Iverson has been as much a PG as a SG.

Even Mr. Karl realized that AC could not create anything resembling a dependable offense (partly because Iverson kept in effect interfering with AC by playing both guard positions at once). Atkins was injured and never fully recovered. Taurean Green was way too young to get past Karl's age bias.

So by the time the playoffs came, and probably long before that, poor Mr. Karl felt he had no one on the roster who could bring any system at all onto the court for him, and he still could not or would not do it himself. So he ended up begging the entire team to pitch in to make up for the lack of a point guard on live national television no less! The whole thing would have been hilarious if you were not a Nuggets fan.
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Somebody asked me:

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

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

In other words, the FO is trying to build the Denver Nuggets without using all the blocks that other teams use to build their teams. By overdosing on high cost veterans and medium cost mid-career players, they have, among other things:

1. Ratified GK's bias against younger players.
2. Ratified GK's over reliance on older veterans and his occasional lame excuse for a Nuggets loss, that the Nuggets ran out of gas in the 4th. Well duh, if you play Iverson for 45 and Camby for 36...
3. Bloated the payroll, costing the owner millions in tax.
4. Made real Nuggets fans furious.
5. In all probability made the team too old to compete for a Championship. (Yes, I know there are other reasons they probably can't.)
6. By loading up with too many high and medium dollar contracts that are hard to trade, the Nuggets are limiting their trade options and, worse, they are setting themselves up for a dramatic fall into the basement of the Northwestern Division.
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Here was a comment with an allusion to the smash hit TV series "LOST," regarding which I have repeatedly compared the Nuggets to the survivors:

This group has us going around in circles and trapped on this island. It's time to move the island.
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The distinctions between the FO and GK are becoming more and more blurry.
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And amazingly, AI should have been against the trade as well and, had he been, a whole lot of grief would have been saved all around.

It's as if the FO and GK, from the Miller/AI trade up to the present, have conspired to deprive the Nuggets of something even losing teams take for granted: a true, undisputed, dependable point guard. George doesn't really know what one is, but I hear that point guards are very important. For example, Phil Jackson just blamed the key play of Rajon Rondo as reason #1 for his Lakers being pounded in the finals.

Did I say "as if they conspired"? That's not quite right: they have definitely conspired to do that.
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Someone made a really astute post in late June that summed up things so well that I had little to add:

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

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

Someone posted this query:

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.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Middle of May 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 MAY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES
Reasons to Take Melo Trade Rumors More Seriously Than You Usually Would


* 1. C Anthony may have finally figured out how screwed up the Nuggets are and how it isn't going to change until there are changes in team management. But the Nuggets are too dumb or cowardly right now to make the needed changes. Remember that he called the Nuggets a quitting team during and after game 3 of the playoffs blowout by the Lakers.

So Anthony may have more or less demanded a trade, but decided to do it out of the public eye.
* 2. The Nuggets were dumb enough to trade for Allen Iverson but not make any changes at all in his Philadelphia role, producing the same futile result. So they are dumb enough to make a dumb Anthony trade.
* 3. The Nuggets need salary relief.
* 4. The Nuggets need a scapegoat if they are too dumb and/or too cowardly to get rid of some coaches.
* 5. George Karl may have demanded that the Nuggets get better defenders on the team, so that he can rely less on his no structure, fast pace offense for easy wins against poor teams next year. Karl/The FO may be trying for the overly simplistic fix of getting better defenders in their quest to win playoff games. I'm not against better defenders but in and of itself it's not going to solve the Nuggets problems, especially if a dumb Melo trade is involved in bringing it about.

In other words, Karl and/or other team managers may have decided that the team needs to move heavily in the direction of more defending and less offense, which would make Melo expendable to some extent.
* 6. Any team dumb enough to even discuss a Melo trade that does not involve either of the two Nuggets 2-guards, both of whom are among the best 2-guards in the League, Iverson and Smith, in exchange for an outstanding point guard, is dumb enough to make a dumb Melo trade.
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I forgot an important one.


* 7. Karl has named AI as captain and Carmelo Anthony is not even co-captain. Also, Melo's game has been micromanaged by Karl/other coaches to some extent while Iverson has been given total free reign to play any way he wants. Both of these indicate that if the Nuggets make a major trade, it is more likely that Melo goes rather than AI.
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Well if there has been discussion, and every major media is reporting that there has been, then even if the NJ potential deal falls through, Melo may be moved to some other team after the draft picks become known.

The fact that JR is a NJ native and the fact that Karl doesn't like him makes the NJ discussions all the more interesting and worth taking seriously.

I rarely think about potential trades but this has to be an exception because I know too much not to know that it is in fact possible that the Nuggets would trade C Anthony during this off-season. I'm still not saying it's likely, but it's more likely than some would like to believe. If you had to put odds on it, the odds would be somewhere in the 25-45% range, with the 45% being correct if Melo has demanded to be traded.
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Yeah, and if that's really what the proposal is, instead of Williams/Jefferson/pick, and Melo wants out, then it is a real possibility, regardless of exactly what pick NJ gets, unless perhaps it's a really low one.
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A really smart basketball guy (other than me!) commented:

Again, I hate to be redundant, but this is the same front office that was seriously suggesting Zach Randolph at the deadline (All things considered, probably the worst potential fit for our situation). You are going to tell me that something like this is out of the question (Williams as the second piece)?

Melo has been made the scapegoat and unfortunately we have already run him out of town, it's only a matter of when

My response was:

Damn, you are saying what I am afraid to say but I think is true in the back of my head.
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The franchise seems to be content with having one or two historic stars on the roster, with filling seats, with selling merchandise, with preventing falling into the cellar as in years past, and in just barely making the playoffs if possible. Winning in the playoffs is too difficult in the current Western Conference, exactly as Mr. Karl explained recently.

For a relatively small market, you could actually make a case that this is not such a bad set of objectives. If you go for the gold, there is always a chance you will fall completely on your ass and end up in the cellar. But if you don't try for the gold, and just try for the bronze or for the honorable mention, you can most likely avoid the extreme roller coaster type of pattern. Remember how bad the Lakers were a few years ago, and how bad the Mavericks used to be a few years before that, and so on? Maybe the Nuggets are only trying to avoid the cellar, and they know that if you go for it all and fail, you sometimes get rewarded for that with a first class ticket to the cellar.
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And Karl is your man if you are thinking in that stupidly cautious way, because one thing Karl is good at is avoiding putting a really bad product on the court.

In the final analysis, if this is the overly cautious thinking that is really behind the Nuggets right now, the most important first step in changing that and becoming an ordinary sports franchise that goes for it all and isn't worried about falling into the cellar if it fails is to show most or all of the Nuggets coaches the door, including of course Mr. Karl. Whether or not anyone from the front office also needs to be shown the door will depend largely on how they treat Carmelo Anthony in the coming days and months, and what they get for him if they do pull the trigger on a trade.
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They got Iverson and everyone and his uncle was fooled into thinking that the Nuggets really, really wanted to win it all. But then they didn't make the slightest change in Iverson's role compared to his role in Philadelphia, so now it was sort of the Denver 76'ers. The Nuggets have now reached almost the exact same dead end that the 76'ers reached.

Mr. Kroenke and company went all out to bring the Nuggets up from the cellar and they succeeded big time and everyone needs to be eternally grateful for that. They made absolutely sure that the Nuggets were going to be safe from the cellar for years to come (unless Karl somehow causes a doomsday scenario by for example sponsoring a dumb Melo trade) and that the Nuggets were going to meet all major franchise objectives other than being competitive in the playoffs.

But since we fans are now obsessed about the Nuggets not being able to win in the playoffs, naturally we are focused on that one thing they have not been able to do. They have done a reasonably good job overall, but they have been blind with respect to the coaching aspect, and I for one want them to do an outstanding job. I want to grade them A or A- instead of B- or C+.
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About the only time teams like the Spurs run iso plays is on fast breaks.

And because of the tougher inside defending, you can't win in the playoffs without good 3-point shooting. This made it mandatory that JR Smith's minutes NOT be strictly limited as they were. It was also mandatory for Carmelo Anthony to ramp up his 3-point shooting. While Anthony's accuracy was way up from beyond the arc, his attempts actually fell slightly short of his career average, which constitutes another major coaching error. It was much more important for Anthony to get open and attempt and make more threes than it was for him to make more rebounds, but only the latter was accomplished.
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Speaking broadly, the Nuggets have three ongoing nightmares.

1. The coaching staff does not know how pro teams win playoff games. Karl actually virtually admitted this in public!
2. The front court is essentially never healthy and in sync.
3. The back court is totally hosed up because there is no established, playoff calibur PG nor, shockingly, even an understanding among the coaches of the importance of the position.

The fact that the team won 50 games despite those crippling problems proves that this team mostly played their best under the circumstances this past season. But losing in the playoffs was obviously inevitable, and will continue to be so unless the above is solved.

As a rough estimate, solving any one of the above would get the Nuggets' current roster in line to win a playoff series. Solving two of the three could get the Nuggets to the Western finals. If all three were solved, the Nuggets would then and only then be candidates to possibly reach the NBA finals.

But these nightmares are ongoing. Currently there is no end in sight to these bad dreams. Well, it could be the curse that won't let the team wake up.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Early May 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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EARLY MAY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

As time goes by, if he's like me, he'll realize that there's bad coaching and then there is Nuggets coaching. With Nuggets coaching, the team result is less than the sum of the players' results, so it is dangerous to cast blame all around the roster. Other than Nene who couldn't play and then wasn't worked in and Atkins who couldn't play and then wasn't worked in and, arguably, Camby (mostly due to his kind of crazy offense)there really wasn't any major Nugget who had a disappointing season this year, yet the team as a whole sucked in the playoffs, and wasn't as good in the regular season as it appears, because they were at least +3 games in lucky wins over unlucky losses.
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Don't know much about him, but I know he's right on the money here. A broken clock is right twice a day.
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The really interesting question is: who would gain the most by escaping the Nuggets disfunctional organization this off season? I used to think the answer was obvious: J.R. Smith. But now I am seriously thinking that C. Anthony might have more to gain by escaping the Nuggets island than would Smith.

Whether or not a better PG is brought on to the team, Anthony has become and will remain the odd man out on a Nuggets team where Karl and Iverson have been and will continue to call most of the important shots. Karl worships those who have already made history, not those who might make it in the future. And Iverson has never been one to have any faith in a forward who tends to draw the double team, unless of course he thinks he might get the ball back again from the one doubled.

Anthony's rewards for getting more rebounds, more steals, more blocks, a higher field goal percentage, and fewer turnovers this year than last was to be part of one of the all-time greatest playoff dismantlings, and to be trashed by at least 7 out of 10 basketball fans, and to be the subject of trade rumors. If that's what you get at the end of one of Karl's player maturity/reform projects, then who needs them, whatever their underlying theoretical merit might be?
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Yeah, I agree that Costa is a shock sportscaster here and does not include a whole lot of substance in his rants. By contrast, NT has substance and that's why NT is worth reading and writing. Nevertheless, I do not regret posting this because (a) Costa is more right than wrong here and (b) Denver needs in it's maninstream media, and in its organization, if not more like Costa at least more who agree with the small amount of substance that is here. You need to be intense enough to sound a little crazy about winning in the playoffs if you really, really want to win in the playoffs and not be content with just winninging in the regular season and selling tickets and merchandise. And (c) I needed a little stress relief from being destroyed in the playoffs.
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SOMEONE ELSE commented:

This is also a front office that could have traded Camby for Chandler and didn't, could have traded a bag of rocks for Artest and didn't and signed a chronically injured, underperforming, fat lazy sack of crap big man to a 60 million dollar contract when no one else in the league would have given him the MLE. Yea, I wouldn't put anything past this FO either.

My response was a little joke:

Is that big man contract you are referring to Nene's or Mr. Karl's?
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It was more like the Sonics took him to the finals; check out how loaded that team was with an incredibly deep bench to go along with quality starters. See this:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SEA/1996.html
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The Nuggets need to stop being content with simply not being a door mat team anymore and they also need to think outside the box just a little bit and give a deserving assistant an opportunity, such as Brian Shaw who everyone knows is going to be a head coach sooner or later.
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Karl will never back a player in the media nor demand that he be kept on his team unless that player is at least a 7 year veteran and has established himself as a notable player in the basketball history books.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Early May 2008, Part 1

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

Maybe if he said "Play better you worthless scubs" they would listen.
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I don't know what's worse anymore, what GK coaches in the first place, or the fact that he doesn't consistently make sure that his coaching is implemented for the entire season.

The Nuggets must have just been one of the worst spread the court teams in the playoffs in history. That started I think with a lack of respect for how important the 3-point shot is in modern basketball. In the playoffs the paint becomes like Fort Knox; it is better defended than in the regular season. So between drives and perimeter shots you need both, not just one or the other.

I don't know whether Karl thinks the Nuggets are hopeless in 3-point shooting or whether he doesn't agree that 3-point shooting is important. About the only time he ever says anything about the 3-point shot is when he is discussing how a player or players beat the Nuggets with their 3-point shot.
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Outstanding lineup if and only if AI takes running the point seriously, if JR is given real minutes consistently, if Nene is available for the season for a change, and if GK understands what you are talking about.

These are too many ifs for me to be very hopeful.
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Well alright then, see, there is stuff we agree on.

And just so you know, I'm not saying that I know as a 100% certainty that the Nuggets would have won a playoff series if Iverson had been designated PG. We wouldn't know for sure unless it was done. I am confident that the odds were at least 65% that it would have worked, and probably around 75-80%.

I did know that if the Nuggets did not try it, they would be slammed in the playoffs if they made the playoffs. So they needed to try it if they didn't want to be chumps.

But the Nuggets obtained Iverson after many years of him straying from his historical root position, and to what extent he could return to his roots is of course a question. The Nuggets did NOT need him to play just like CP3. They just needed him to play more like CP3 and less like Iverson not fully dedicated to either backcourt position, and trying to play both positions at once in many games.

It was very, very interesting and important that Iverson himself in his news conference the other day invited the Nuggets to think about solving the Nuggets offensive inconsistency by having himself be less responsible for scoring and more responsible for keeping the ball moving. Anyone who implies Iverson is a maniac who cares only about his own shooting was proved wrong once again during that news conference.
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The poster says AI is not a PG and makes for a horrible PG yet points out numerous things that AI does or that AI is that good point guards do or are and/or that bad 2-guards do or are.

AI is a combo guard and always has been. To say he is a horrible PG is going way to far, unless you have proof that Larry Brown destroyed his ability to run the point effectively. No one has proof of that, because a player of AI's calibur can not have his abilities to play a position destroyed completely by coaching errors. Negatively affected? Maybe. Destroyed? No.

(Sorry for me being stuck on this subject, but this particular poster drives me up the wall.)
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He's been shifted back and forth between the two guard positions since he started playing basketball and there are at least 3 ways you could instruct him to play:

(A) Play 2-guard only; make only the obvious passes and get only the easiest assists; score at will.
(B) Play any way you want, or any way you think is most appropriate. In practice, AI has generally been designated at SG under this mode. In this situation, Iverson plays both positions during games, varying the breakdown between the two from game to game for reasons that are not definitely known. There are many problems with this, including the offense being inconsistent and easy to shut down by a good defense.
(C) Play 1-guard (PG) only; work to make sure the passing game stays alve and try to maximize assists; limit scoring attempts to mostly uncontested shots.

Larry Brown changed Iverson's career by choosing A. Iverson played as a combo guard assigned usually to PG in all high school years all college years, and in his rookie NBA year, and Brown's idea could not and did not ever fully come into reality. Iverson in effect played according to (B) in the Brown years. The 76'ers never truly succeeded with him playing in that mode, although they once got to the NBA finals in the year when AI was at his all-time peak and playing at an insane level.

George Karl chose (B) because he chose to not change anything whatsoever from how AI played in Philly to how he would play in Denver. The results have been, as you would expect, about the same as what transpired in Philly. The results have been dismal and disappointing to the biggest Nuggets fans.

A possible argument that can be made is that Iverson's career was in fact damaged by Brown to the point where it is too late to choose either (A) or (C). If this is correct, then the Iverson trade was at least as bad for the Nuggets as the Shaquille O'Neal trade was for the Suns.

The upshot is simple: if the Nuggets are dumb enough to continue with (B), then they will never succeed, and it would be better to trade AI. Even more to the point, they never should have traded for AI if their intention was to not change a single thing about his role.
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This article to me is weird and not very realistic.
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Here is a crucial comment made by ANOTHER forum participant:

Fact: Karl wanted AI to be a scorer and to be aggressive at it. He was, its not what we needed. Karl was wrong. He's also our primary ball handler with the totally ineffective AC out there and we have to be a one on one team with no system.

There's no evidence that Karl has wanted AI to look to set up people in our offense, and if he has he surely hasn't made it any easier for him. There's no CALLED movement in our "system", no screens,etc.

Im not gonna lie and say AI can become a jason Kidd type point guard, but he has shown at times through his career that he can play pg in a system when asked, and he certainly has the skills to be a good Chris Paul/Baron Davis styled pg where he's looking to run the offense much of the time and pick his spots, and asked to just take over when he's feeling it or its needed. Right about now he's score, score, score and pass when its obvious or to bail himself out

There's a lot of things about AIs game i don't like, but he's unbearable if he's in an unstructured system. And I think he absolutely has to be the pg on a team, as he creates all types of mismatches defensively if we stick another pg out there unless its a Kirk Hinrich type

I don't mind getting rid of AI, but i don't want to blame everything on him because he was used incorrectly by his coach.

My response to this extremely valuable commentary was:
Absolutely 100% correct, on point, and imo a key part of reason #1 why the Nuggets underachieved this year.
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And another all time memorable and totally accurate commentary made by that same guy from the one just previous:

Its not so much as defending him as I am saying he's never gotten a fair shot at it. His team had to have his offense in Philly and he couldn't play a deferring pg. Here Karl automatically wanted the offensive AI. He has the skills to be a pg, but he's not smart enough or unselfish enough to do it without a system and we don't have one and he's the 2 guard here anyhow.

And he does do a pretty decent job of getting the ball to our shooters when they're wide open for 3s. I don't think that's some huge compliment or anything, thats as easy a pass as you can make and he still doesn't make it everytime its available, but he makes it a decent enough clip.

My response to thes outstanding commentary was:

At least 100% correct, maybe more.
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Lol at this hoopsworld writer who is about the last basketball fan/writer left who hasn't criticized GK and who fails to understand that GK and AI run the team now and Melo gets whatever they and Anthony Carter decide he will get in terms of offensive opportunities, which is not a whole lot compared to what he used to get and is less than what he should get.

Since point guards bring the ball up the court and since coaches get to tell their point guards what if any plays they want run, forwards are going to be subject to and limited by what the point guards and what the coaches decide.

The stats clearly show that this was C Anthony's best year ever, but he was limited to some extent by the decisions of Iverson, Carter, and Karl.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late April 2008, Part 5

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

Just watched the post-game news conferences. Melo either doesn't have a post-game news conference any more, or at the least it is not posted at nba.com. This is because GK, who worships history and tradition, annointed AI as the most important player on the Nuggets as soon as he arrived on the team. How would it look in the history of basketball if AI was not the most important player on his team after he left Philadelphia? It would look funny to guys like Karl. When anyone tells you that Anthony and Iverson are co-captains, they don't know what they are talking about, because Iverson outranks Carmelo Anthony, pure and simple. Carmelo Anthony used to have a post-game press conference on nba.com and now he doesn't.

I'm not saying that is bad or good in and of itself, but just wanted to make that clear.

Anyway, if you watch a press conference like that, you know in advance that 98-99% of it is going to be stuff you expected to hear and have heard many times before. You look for that 1 or 2% that might be important. I found something; at one point, Iverson says that "him scoring less" is an adjustment to consider for next year to make the Nuggets better.

So, if anyone thinks that Iverson is unwilling to pass more and to score less, or that he is too dumb to be aware of the problem, there is more proof that you are wrong. Just as importantly, this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that GK certainly did not ever ask him to pass more and to score less this year.

There was nothing in the Karl news conference of any importance, just a guy shrugging his shoulders and saying, if effect, "What did you expect from us?"
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You think you are arguing with me but you are arguing with an imaginary opponent. I never said AI is equivalent or even very similar to CP3. For me to be correct, all that has to be true is that AI be roughly similar to CP3. A Hyundai can get you where you want to go just like a Benz can. Even though they are completely different styles of vehicles, they are both vehicles and can both achieve a crucial and fundamental objective: to move you from point A to point B. Similarly, there are many different types of PGs who can achieve the crucial and fundamental objective of having a fluid offense that is not easy to shut down by a good defense. But just as you need a car that is not going to break down along the way, you need to have a PG who is not going to break down like Carter would and did against the best teams.

I don't know whether you really wanted to do this, but you just about agreed that the Nuggets in effect forfeited the season by saying that the Nuggets only chance was to get a different PG other than Atkins in the off season last year. That you would not take a chance with what you had is way, way too fatalistic and pessimistic for my tastes. What was the point of the 2007-08 season if it was known in advance that the Nuggets would be destroyed in the playoffs all along? Was it just to make Carmelo Anthony look bad in public relations at the end of the season or some other silly ass thing? Carmelo Anthony is going to once again be one of the best basketball players in the world in his off-season games, once he gets away from the Denver Forfeits.
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If he says score less, the shoot less and pass more is automatically attached to that.

In any event, Iverson isn't going to change a damn thing until and unless someone tells him to do so.

What we can agree on (until you twist things anyway) is that the Nuggets must get a serious new PG, or they have to get very lucky with Atkins coming back at absolute full speed, because GK is never going to play Taurean Green, and so if he continues to refuse to play AI at PG, and none of those other good things happen, they are completely and obviously doomed, just like they were this year, as you just agreed from your perspective.

But since AI just started at PG in this series, it is not a 100% certainty that GK will not shock the world and implement my approach. You have to learn to walk before you can learn to run, and at least GK took his first few steps by admitting that AC is not the solution.
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Someone who is, let's just say, very annoying, and seemingly almost always wrong, posted this gem of a comment:

Apparently you missed the lesson of what sports is about. Yes, on paper the Nuggets weren't NBA title contenders at the start of the season. They were still going to play all 82 games and there was always hope of a mid-season trade to improve the team

So my response was as follows:

Wow, sports is about futility and knowing in advance you have no chance? I never thought of it that way before, but it's something to chew on.

The Nuggets WERE NBA title contenders on paper, that's the starting point that you missed. Roughly 15% or almost 1 in 6 basketball experts thought the Nuggets were good enough to compete in the Western Conference final series this year. Close to 50% of basketball experts thought the Nuggets were good enough to compete in the Western Conference semifinals this year after finally winning a series. The consensus opinion was that the Nuggets would win in the first round and would lose in the semifinal round, but there was a substantial minority view that they would go to the Western finals series. All of these percentages were very depressed by the total lack of a track record and by varying levels of awareness of Karl's limitations.

Less than 10% of basketball experts thought that the Nuggets would fail to make the playoffs or would lose 4 straight in the playoffs. It seems that you have now identified yourself as being in that group. Very ironically, since you like to disagree with me on every little thing, I was practically in that group as well, but for reasons that could not be more different.
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As part of my explanation of how the Nuggets blew it with Allen Iverson, I had contended that although the styles are different, there is at least a rough similarity between CP3 and Allen Iverson. They both handle the ball a lot and they both score a lot for god's sakes, so they are at least roughly similar.

The annoying, obfuscating person refused to agree that CP3 and Allen Iverson are rougly similar basketball players!:

The only rough similarities between AI and CP3 are that they were Western Conference All Stars and that they are short by NBA standards. There is no rough similarity in how they play the game.

To which my put down was:

(Don't know how to react, are they from different planets or something?)
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Just so no one is confused by the attempt here to obfuscate the issue, Iverson in his news conference agreed, by suggesting it himself out of the blue, that a possible way to improve the Nuggets would be to have him pass more, make fewer shot attempts, and therefore score fewer points. And that was about the ONLY suggestion Iverson came up with for the management of the Nuggets to consider, so it is clear that it is a relatively important and obvious possibility to him.
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After yet another annoying and off point comment from that guy, I commented:

You are funny yet disturbing at the same time.
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And another comment I made addressed to the annoying and off base guy:

Now that you have lately been saying that the Nuggets "are a poorly coached team," you still have yet to give any reasons from your world why that is so. To the contrary, you disagree with the reasons put forth for that by others every chance you get. So as of now, you still appear to be someone who actually does not believe that the Nuggets are poorly coached.

So if you truly believe that the Nuggets are poorly coached, what are your reasons for that?
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It has to be more than NT writers who want GK to be gone, or to at least be forced to deploy basic strategies. The average Joe must demand it. But we now know for sure what we suspected, that Denver is not a "basketball town," a town with fans for whom just having a team with star power is not enough, but where getting your due in the win column in the playoffs is critical.

A big reason why GK was not coaching and thus was available to the Nuggets at the start of 2005 was that the basketball towns did not have any use for him.

It's a catch-22; the history of basketball is more shallow in Denver than in the basketball towns, so fans are not as demanding. But without more demanding fans, the history will remain shallow. We need something or someone huge to break out of the trap.
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One possible ugliness is for C Anthony to go back to shooting more and rebounding and assisting less, thus setting up a confrontation with the Karl-Iverson control of the Nuggets.

At the very least, we know that Melo is done with Karl and realizes that changes in his game have not in and of themselves moved the Nuggets any closer to being a real contender. Whether Anthony is done with Iverson being able to do anything he wants while he himself is managed in public remains to be seen. If he is done with that, there will be even less hope and much more disfunction next year than there was this year. The media would have a field day making fun at the plight of the Nuggets. Differences in ages and how much glory is in the histories notwithstanding, Karl's favoritism toward Iverson over Melo is an error where some of the potential damage is still waiting to happen.
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The Nuggets reached as high as 4th or 5th in pace adjusted defense about half way through the season and ended up 10th!