Quote of the Day

George Karl on the Nuggets' disturbing trend of excessive turnovers:

"The thing that scares me right now is our turnovers. We turn the ball over warming up."

This only proves that Doug Moe has brainwashed the formerly defensive-minded Karl. Moe has turned poor George into a offensive-thinking machine. The poor SOB should be scared about defense.

Grrr...

Thank god for crappy teams like Memphis. The Nuggets gave up 107 points and still won. Hurray! If only the Nuggets could play Memphis twenty more times. The Nuggets needed to win this game, if only to get the stench of defeat off their uniforms. Unfortunately, the Nuggets will play better defensive teams. . . and better offensive ones.

The problem remains. No defense. When Pau Gasol scores 20+ points on your team, then it's a good bet that someone like Kevin Garnett or Tim Duncan or Dirk Nowitzki will drop 30 or more. It's great when the Nuggets get three players with 20 or more points, but there' s no way that a defensive oriented team like San Antonio would ever allow that to happen. Not in the regular season and certainly not in the postseason.

The Nuggets won a battle, but they're still losing the war.

Paradox

I think that I must be living in some sort of strange alternate universe. I watched the Nuggets play mediocre defense against the Jazz. They lost. Tonight I watched the Nuggets play mediocre defense against the Mavs. They lost. It's like Groundhog Day, the same horrific situation repeated over and over. And I, a lowly Nuggets fan, cannot escape. It's the same thing night after night...and the same result. Save me, please!

A lowly Nuggets fan responds to the team's latest lost.

Yet no one, from the coaches to the commentators, seems to notice that the Nuggets have absolutely zero defensive ability. They play average defense for 10 seconds, and then they fall apart. Opponents make uncontested layups, they hit uncontested jumpshots, and the Nuggets, as a team, seem content to let other teams do pretty much whatever they damn well please. I know that Doug Moe is on the coaching staff, and I know that Moe is the mastermind of the matador defense, but something has got to give. I always understood that George Karl was brought in to bring some toughness to the team. He was brought in to give the team veteran leadership. . . and a defensive spark, especially given the dominant defensive teams he coached in Seattle. But maybe Karl has gone soft. While his visage remains that of toughened pugilist, perhaps on the inside he has become a Rocky Mountain Santa Clause - delivering bucket and bucket to opponents both naughty and nice.

Until the Nuggets learn to play solid team defense for 24 seconds, they will remain on the fringes of success. A.I. can score 30 points every night, and Melo can chip in another 30. But it won't matter if they give up 110 to every team they face. Where have you gone Jeff Bizdelick? I yearn for the days when the Nuggets approached every game with the underdog mentality and a toughness that hasn't been seen under Karl's soft underbelly of a team.

The photo that graces that team's defensive manual. Answers so many questions, does it not?

Amblin' Man

In the words of Blackstar’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli (who borrowed the line from the movie Chameleon Steet), “The Man has programmed my conditioning; even my conditioning has been conditioned.”

In the socio-cultural world, conditioning of the type mentioned above is bad. But in the basketball world, you actually want your conditioning to be conditioned. Unfortunately, the Nuggets aren't conditioned and their conditioning has definitely not been conditioned. The guys in powder blue, in other words, are out of shape.

I'm not blaming JR Smith's knee injury on poor conditioning. Basketball is a rough game, and knee injuries happen.

I am blaming the late game collapses, the midseason mediocrity, and the overall underachievement of the team on poor conditioning. The Nuggets should be winning the division. They are vastly more talented than Utah. But their recent stretch of craplentitude makes you wonder if Coach Karl even has the guys run during practice. They certainly looked winded against San Antonio. If they want to be a running team, then they're going to have to run...in practice.

You can't amble into the playoffs and expect to win. (Not unless your coach is Bill Belichick.)

I'm pretty sure that the Nuggets know how to rebound. Melo seems to have a grasp of the basic concept. Camby is an expert. And Reggie Evans is like the Zen Master of rebounding, to the extend that he can't really do anything else (ahh, but does he need to do anything else?). So what, I'm asking myself at Monday night's game, at which I had brilliantly fantastic seats, is the problem with the Nuggets on defense?

And I think I've found the answer.

The Nuggets do well when other teams give them open shots. With guys like Melo and A.I., it's easy for the role players and even the stars occasionally to get wide open jumpers and layups. Even in the pre-A.I. days, Andre Miller was adept at getting the other players lobs and open looks. And the Nuggets took this to heart. Open shots are great, they began to think to themselves, and they help us score lots of points. But then those silly men in the sky blue took their sugar sweet logic a step too far. Maybe, they continued secretly to themselves daring not to voice their magic secret aloud to Coach Karl, if we give other teams open shots then they will give us open shots in return. The Nuggets keyed in on the essence of egotistical altruism. Unfortunately, they failed to realize that they're playing in the Machiavellian NBA where the ego is supreme and altruism is a babe's bedtime story.

There were so many uncontested shots against Golden State that the slow white jump shooter in me could've dropped 20 on the Nuggets. In the first half. It was absurd. How hard is it to put a hand in the shooter's face? Poke him in the ribs for Christ's sake. Do something. The Nuggets' defensive woes lie in their fairy-tale belief that games should look and feel like a shootaround. Good luck with that one boys. See you on the beach come May.

Hack-a-...Reggie?

When I was assistant-coaching, I would have recommended the hack-a-Shaq defense to my head coach. Granted, we were coaching middle school kids, but the theory is sound. Evidence: Milwaukee head coach Terry Stotts employed the defensive technique against the Nuggets' Reggie Evans, whose free-throw percentage is closer to Ted Williams' batting average than we're all comfortable with given that the guy is a professional athlete. It worked. The Nuggets pulled Evans for Eduardo Najera, an inferior rebounder, with plenty of time left in the fourth quarter. Stotts' move surprised nearly everyone, including Evans, who gives us today's quote of the day:

"That has never, ever happened to me in the history of my life. Ever."

I'm betting this defensive trend catches on. Every team has a weak link at the free-throw line. Alas, Reggie Evans, you are that link for the Nuggets.

Quote of the Day

JR Smith:

"We're in a tough conference. In order to get in the playoffs, you've got to be above .500; it's not like the Eastern Conference, where you can have 12 wins and be in first place. You've really got to settle down and be good enough to beat the Eastern Conference teams, and be even better to beat the West teams."

What I'm hearing is that it's possible for me and the whuburbs kids to beat an Eastern team. I believe it.

Midseason Tragic

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The team wasn't supposed to self-implode. A.I. was the answer. Blake was a great passer and shooter (in that order). Melo was to return and lead the team to their epic destiny. But in some tavern on the side of the road, the Nuggets seem to have left their defense behind.

Maybe it got lost in A.I.'s duffle bag. Maybe Steve Blake got it mixed up with his conditioner. Maybe the team never really had it to begin with, and Blake and Iverson just exposed a gaping hole in the Nugget's playoff chances. Whatever the cause, things are looking bleak right now.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. (Not Shakespeare by the wa - Sir Walter Scott, long lost kin to Steve Blake. The resemblence is in the eyes and nose.) The Nuggets have deceived everyone, including themselves, by running, literally, on the assumption that they can play defense. They haven't all year, and I'm beginning to suspect that they can't, not this season. It's pitiful. No one on the team, with the possible exception of Marcus Camby, has any idea what defense is. Nene looks like a lost child on both ends of the floor. A.I. and Blake simply aren't built to defend - they're about as bad as Boykins. Melo couldn't stop a pencil from rolling off a desk, and JR Smith plays what my friends and I affectionately refer to as olee defense (think bulls and matadors).

The time has come. Let us invoke the spirit of our most important elder. Perhaps the Nuggets can burn all those extra Boykins jerseys in some sort of ritual to channel the defensive prowess of . . . Dikembe Mutombo. Mutombo's big right finger has more defensive ability than the current roster. Maybe his spirit can reach out from the AARP meeting he is attending right now and wag that spiritual finger in Denver's direction.