What is the consensus now? I remember the buzz/hype after the AI trade, but I don't keep track of any other NBA team other than ours truly (Rockets). What I'm specifically interested in is if Melo and AI are meshing. If they are, why is their record so poor (28-28)?
Judging from the game, their DEF is atrocius. Having Steve frickin Blake on Tmac was a disaster from the get go. Juwan Howard is left wide open all the time. Watching this game makes me respect the Rockets DEF much much more.
The Rockets have basically shut down the paint and both Melo and Iverson rely heavily on getting into the paint so they've both been pretty bad. Melo just looks attrocious and is getting worked over by Battier and Iverson keeps trying and failing to get into the paint and is being forced to settle for bad fade away jump shots. And Denver can't play any defense.
They suck. Iverson should have gone to the Clippers and played alongside Brand and Cassell. Not trading Livingston looks real bad right now...
lol obviously. The guy's only out for a year, not to mention he might not be able to come back... I feel bad for him though. Wasn't he disgruntled in LAC anyways? Anyways, back to the thread title... Denver Nuggets...GOT ROCKED BY THE ROCKETS TONIGHT.
I was going to start this thread but you beat me to it. It is so obvious the Nuggets have no chemistry. They are a bunch of players but nothing resembling a team. They played 10 minutes of defense tonight: Closing out the 2nd quarter and the first few minutes of the 4th quarter. If Camby weren't out there, they would be the Golden State Warriors. I can't put my finger on their offense. For long stretches tonight the Rockets defense was very very good. Several times Melo got hacked and no call was made. Nuggets4, talk to me. I follow your team on a regular basis but don't see them play very often. It seems to me they are destined to be opening round deadmeat for the Mavs or Suns. I know they miss J.R. Smith, but what we saw tonight was ridiculous. The lead was 14 points with 3 1/2 minutes left and the Nuggets totally gave up. No rushing the ball up the floor, no pressing the ball, no nothing. A comeback was unlikely, but no way they should have slacked off that early. There would have been no 13 in 35 with that attitude. Are the players tired of Karl? Just why have they gone 6-12 the last 18 games?
I used to be a charter member of the Shaun Livingston fan club. This season, well before his injury, I jumped off the bandwagon. The Clips blew it by not trading him for a real asset. I used the term "fools gold" to describe Stromile Swift. I think it could also apply to Livingston, injury or not.
i'm not really sure why anyone ever thought the AI trade was going to make much of a difference. people were talking about them being contenders, passing the jazz, being scary for anyone to play in the playoffs and i didn't see it at all. they're an uptempo offense that isn't particularly efficient and play no defense. iverson was never really going to make much of a difference on a team like that and a team like that is never really going to do much in the playoffs (the suns are seriously efficient, that's why they work), especially against disciplined, efficient teams like san antonio, dallas, and houston. and if anything AI was going to mess things up b/c he has to try and integrate into them and they have to adjust to him. not that he couldn't have made them a little better and not having JR Smith can't be good, but the upside of the trade was just never what conventional wisdom held it to be.
I didn't drink the Kool Aid that the trade made the Nuggets the #2 contender for the Finals behind the Mavs (I can't remember which national pundit said that). But I thought it was safe to assume the Nuggets would at least be better, and that AI & Melo would be good compliments to each other on offense. Mid-season trades often bring out the best in players and AI was expected to bring his "A" game to the Nuggets while Melo would be relieved to have the help. Their much anticipated PnR didn't happen one time that I remember tonight. More than anything else, there is no enthusiasm. The players don't seem to enjoy playing together and George Karl doesn't seem amped up like his normal self. Something is wrong in that lockerroom. With Nene healthy, he and Camby, Melo, AI, etc should be winning more games than what they are.
It's not that surprising at all why they have struggled. I don't think Iverson is a tremendous upgrade over Andre Miller. Their PERs are pretty similar. Also, Iverson needs the ball a lot to to flourish as he is a high volume shooter. Same with Carmelo. With less touches IVerson becomes less effective.
It boggles the mind that George Karl is failing to make use of the most basic staple of half-court basketball: the pick and roll. I can't even remember seeing an Iverson/Anthony PNR ONCE in last night's game. It's all about fast break basketball and isos. And they don't play defense. Let's even forget about defense for a minute. You guys can't run a simple pick and roll? I mean...this simple play could be even more effective than the Nash/Stoudamire PnR ... both of these guys have 3 point range and both are deadly finishers around the basket. You could even play switch/iso and end up pinning Carmelo on a PG or the other way around -- life doesn't revolve around fast break points. You can't just run up and down the court, throw up a handful of alleyoops and expect to win games consistently. George Karl is a nice guy, but man, they need to find themselves a coach who knows what the hell he's doing. It is inexcusable to have the league's two most prolific scorers on your team and still struggle to keep your team above water.
Interestingly enough, when my friend did the AI trade in NBA2k7, their defense sucked hard there too. And, really, it has just plain sucked hard the whole time. They don't have any team chemistry, and they don't play D.
Why Denver sucks? 1. They have two one on one guys who don't make others better. 2. They have no defense. 3. They have no depth.
Denver has the recipe for major success. Even in the tough west. However George Karl is simply the wrong coach. Larry Brown should be coaching this team. They have the potential to be a fierce defensive team, add in the Iverson+Anthony duo and you have a contender. Larry Brown (or any defensive minded coach), combined with a healthy JR Smith and Kenyon Martin, and about 30 games for Anthony and Iverson to gel and you have success. If they find the right coach they will be in contention next year. They'd wind up a gimmick team. But so is Phoenix.
The problem is that neither is an exceptionally dangerous shooter (Iverson hits about 30% from downtown and Melo is worse). Combine that with the fact that Carmelo is not so fast that you can't recover or rotate to him and you can defend their PnR by showing to stop AI and then getting back on Melo, or even just by having the guy guarding the ball handler go under the screen. AI isn't John Stockton of Steve Nash out there, where you have to fight over the screen or you are giving up an easy three.
Comparing PnRs, AI and Melo are much more explosive to the basket than Stockton and Malone. AI is one of the fastest players off the dribble in the NBA and Melo is definitely fast enough to prevent players from recovering. He has very good foot speed and usually does very well attacking the basket off the dribble or after receiving passes. Plus, he could bury jumper after jumper off PnRs. Last night he got mugged a few times without a foul call. If he had exploded for a "T" it would have been justified. Something is up with that team and I bet it comes out eventually. From the moment the game begin the Nuggets didn't seem in sync. Their team plays less than the sum of the individual pieces. When an NBA squad exerts so little energy on defense, that's a telltale sign they aren't putting out (unless Nellie is the coach). If the Rockets played ONE game on defense the way I've seen the Nugs do 2-3 times since AI arrived, JVG would die of a heart-attack.
Their defense is just fine. They're tenth in the NBA. Pace accounts for a lot of those high scores. They're not great, but they're not horrible either. The team just isn't that great. Blake's playing 35 minutes a night. Linas Kleiza and Diawara -- ok players, but if they're combining to play 36 a night (which they are) your team is in trouble. Also, AI and Melo, I think, have played ten games together all season. They'll make some moves this summer, AI and Melo will get used to each other, they'll accrue depth somehow -- and they'll top out at around 52 wins. The team just isn't that great. Hardly AI/Melo's fault that nobody on that team can shoot.
I'll make a longer post when I have time but I just wanted to make sure you guys didn't think I was ducking this thread. Basically, my post will agree with Kelly's post quite a bit and it will also address the fact that we are being poorly coached.
That is fine if Stockton was the same type of shooter that AI is, but that just isn't the case. You have to take a fundamentally different approach defending Stockton on a PnR than AI, because Stockton was a much better shooter. You can go under the pick all night on AI, and that means you don't have to give Melo the chance to get to the basket. You play both of them for the drive so they have to shoot over the top and their 30% 3's are going to hurt them more than they hurt you. It doesn't matter that AI is faster than Stockton. When Stockton used a pick, you had to switch, double, or fight over the pick, because if you went under the pick he was deadly from the outside. It is the same reason Nash kills with the PnR, because he is fast enough and a good enough ball handler to penetrate if you play him to shoot, and he is deadly accurate if you lay off him.
I don't get it either. Maybe Earl Boykins meant more to that team than they realized.. Can always take pride in knowing that the Nuggets will sport some clean looking uniforms though. Get the Denver Nuggets uniform designers over to Houston now.
