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.
