Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From April, 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that 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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APRIL 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

Your pro basketball publisher was aghast when Carmelo Anthony celebrated the Nuggts squeaking into the playoffs by partying most of the night and then weaving across traffic lanes while driving under the influence and getting pulled over and cited for driving under the influence. The following posts relate to the incident:
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I meant by "wild type of team" a team that has extreme inconsistency on both offense and defense from one game to the next, because roles and strategies are not clearly enough defined, and because specific tactics are few and far between. I didn't mean wild in the sense that you thought.

Guess what though? I honestly think that if you have a wild team in the sense I meant it, it can lead to a wild team in the sense that you are thinking of: players who are wild off the court. I bet anything you could prove a correlation between those two wilds.

On the other hand, you could have a team that is wild off the court but is not wild on the court, in basketball management terms.

But I don't think the Nuggets this year are more than slightly more wild off the court than the average NBA team, although that is just an educated hunch.
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Right now the situation is:

1. There was a traffic stop, which is a special type of arrest but is technically not a full scale arrest due to the light penalties associated with most traffic stops. It became more of a full scale arrest when Carmelo Anthony was booked. But it was "booked on suspicion" and there are as yet no formal charges and there may never be any charges.
2. This stop was on Interstate 25 in Denver. The time was about 5:23 am, so there was little traffic and relatively little risk of a car crash on the Interstate at the time, whether it was DWI, DUI, DWD (driving while distracted), or DWE (driving while exhausted).
3. Melo's car was drifting between lanes, but that drifting did not create a risk of an accident at the time, due to the light traffic, and because there is no report that there was a near crash of any kind. The drifting could have been caused by cell phone or CD player usage, or simply due to the driver being extremely tired. It is not a crime to be driving while extremely tired. It is a crime in New York State to drive while holding and talking on a cell phone, but that is not a crime in Colorado.
4. Melo cooperated completely including consenting to a blood test. Results are not expected for about two weeks.
5. According to a major news source, Anthony "failed a series of sobriety tests." However, failing of sobriety tests can be caused by someone being extremely tired alone, or by a combination of someone being extremely tired and very slightly inebriated, but below DWI and DUI levels.
6. There was no breathalyzer, which can instantly clear someone, but which is not trusted by many jurisdictions. Rather, there was a blood test, which of course everyone would think of as reliable.
7. There is still today a huge legal difference between DUI and DWI, because DUI is considered to be only mildly dangerous, while DWI is just plain dangerous. If this turns out to be DUI, it would be something that until about 20 years ago was considered a minor offense, but is now more serious as a result of the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Crime." Even today though, DUI is a much less serious offense than is DWI.
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8. Further developments to come, and questions surrounding them:

blood test results in two weeks: DWI, DUI, or Sober?
--What delay will there be, if any, between the results and any charges?
--The NBA can not suspend with just blood test results and no charges (yet) can they?
--If DUI, can the charges be bargained away?
--If charges are bargained away, could the NBA suspend for a game or two anyway? I highly doubt it.

If DUI and the charges are filed immediately
--Does the NBA have the right to suspend before there is a conviction or can they suspend just for charges?
--Will the NBA suspend at all, even on a conviction, for the relatively minor DUI offense?
--If the NBA suspends for a DUI conviction, but not on mere charges, it will be for games next season, because there is no way a conviction will happen so quickly that the Nuggets are still in the playoffs when it happens.

If DWI and the charges are filed immediately
--Does the NBA have the right to suspend before there is a conviction or can they suspend just for the charges?
--I am assuming a DWI conviction would generate a suspension. Anyone have any idea about how many games it would be?
--If the NBA suspends for a DWI conviction, but not on mere charges, it will be for games next season, because there is no way a conviction will happen so quickly that the Nuggets are still in the playoffs when it happens.

I don't trust the NBA on something like this. I wonder why? They do have a track record of being fair and evenhanded in their Nuggets punishments, don't they?


Anyone who knows reliable answers to any of the questions above regarding how the NBA would react to the various possiblities, please clue us in. Anyone know of any other recent DUI or DWI situations and how the League reacted?
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The Denver Coach clearly seems to think everything important is decided in advance. His lame excuses and his monthly win quotas are just about like something from a comedy movie. According to Karl, the Nuggets could not end up in the top 4 of the West despite being in the top 4 in talent. Why? It was inevitable, because the great tide of history dictated that little old Denver would not be able to reach the top 4.

Who knows how many specific reasons in total have been spinning around in his head, but here are some of them we know about:

--Melo's game is not well rounded enough, and Melo's personality is not quite mature enough.
--Iverson was changed from PG to SG many years ago for mysterious but valid reasons that must have something to do with Iverson's personality, and it would be futile to try to fight the tide of history to officially recognize AI as the PG for Denver this year. So AI can play PG but it can not be admitted in public that he does so, and he can not be designated as the PG, because you can't mess with history and tradition and personality like that.
--J.R. Smith is unqualified to start or to be a full scale NBA shooting guard by virtue of a deficient personality/character.
--Yakhouba Diawara somehow proved to have a personality too weak to avoid a more or less permanent benching.
--The Nuggets as a whole have a soft or wobbly "personality". When your team has that, you are automatically doomed.

To Karl, there are massive forces, such as tradition, history, destiny, "team personalities," and personalities of individual players, that determine results, and neither players nor a coaching staff can overcome those forces, so why should he or the assistant coaches get all worked up about trying to win each and every game?

Since he decided in advance that the Nuggets were not worthy of reaching the top 4, and since there is no telling how many reasons he has piled up for that, he does not believe he is responsible for the results. Nor would he feel responsible for making lineup, rotation, and other game management mistakes, assuming it could be proven to him that he made mistakes that cost the Nuggets. He would respond, like he always does when challenged, by saying the Nuggets would have ended up in almost exactly the same final result even if those decisions were made differently.

In other words, Mr. Karl has built himself a fortress to protect himself from ever accepting even the slightest responsibility for the Nuggets not reaching their true potential, which is final 4 in the West minimum. If he is ever fired he will not accept even a small shred of responsibility. Rather, he will look at his long career and say that he had to be a worthy basketball man simply because of how long his career lasted.

The trouble for him is, his reasons are neither logically sound nor truly explanatory in the real world. I'm sorry, but personalities do not decide who among the most talented teams actually reach the very top. And I'm sorry, but nothing is determined in advance unless you say it is. If you think you can't win, then you almost certainly will not win. If you are a coach who thinks that way, and you can't keep that a secret and coach as if you don't believe that, then you have failed as a coach. End of story.

It really doesn't matter much whether the Nuggets have become slackers or not, or to what extent Karl's strange beliefs have rubbed off on them. Because first and foremost they did not get what they needed.

The Nuggets came to the table with all the raw talent needed to be truly outstanding but with no basketball system and with little real confidence they could actually get to the top. They needed roles defined rationally, they needed a coherent offensive plan, they needed a few specific plays. Individual players needed protection from arbitrary and rhythm killing benchings. A few players just needed a little playing time. They didn't get any of those things.

Most of all they needed real confidence. The Nuggets are mostly players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, more so than on other teams. I used to think that most NBA teams are loaded with players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. In the last few years I found out that this is simply not true. But it is true in the case of the Nuggets, many of them come from straight from the ghetto. You run short on real confidence your whole life when you grow up that way.

How someone thinks is the most crucial part of that person's personality. What someone thinks results from how someone thinks. For a man who thinks personality is so important, Mr. Karl seems strangely ignorant of the power of positive thinking, or real confidence in other words. True, real confidence without the real potential to get the results is lame, but not having real confidence when you do have the real potential to get the results is both lame and idiotic.

Why is Melo out all night after the Nuggets squeak into the playoffs, only to be pulled over and suspected of DUI? Because he is so lacking in real confidence that he was worried the Nuggets would miss the playoffs, and it would be partly blamed on him, so when at least the Nuggets made the playoffs, he had to be out all night celebrating that the stress was over. The bigger the gap between where you are and where you are supposed to be, the more you irrationally over celebrate getting to that lower level.

The last 24 hours have been another wild ride on the Nuggets roller coaster, happy and sad at the same time. But mostly sad, really.
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The next posting will be commentary that was made during games against the Lakers in the playoff series. That posting is titled: "Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From Late April, 2008, Part 1".