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trading for thugs hasn't worked out well for them.
They're paying a good chunk of luxury tax money to keep Carmela, AI and KMart together. If they don't make the playoffs, do they need to blow it up and start over?
trading for thugs hasn't worked out well for them.
Denver has an NBA franchise?
they need someone who can coach
Steven A!
Denver is ing horrible.
Melo is butthurt they didnt trade for Artest.
Three all-stars on that team. Defensive player of the year.
Carmelo Anthony is still crying that they didn't make "moves" this year. Pitiful (see Heat w Wade/Shaq with 9 wins for another example of this travesty).
Umm him and AI were the ones that blocked that trade.
I guess growling after every dunk and making ugly ass faces doesn't help your team win games.
I think the Warriors may fall out of the playoff race and the Nuggets may slip in...
Nene's nut cancer hurt their front court depth a lot. The loss of Chucky Atkins hurt too because he's a very good three point threat. They need a point guard with good size to defend 2-guards and can control the tempo when Melo and Iverson start jacking up shots uncontrollably in transition.
Sam Cassell to the rescue!
^More like Yao Ming to the rescue!
With Yao out, it's almost guaranteed Nuggets and Warriors can take over the last two spots in the playoffs....
They never should've gotten rid of Earl Boykins.
oh well, injuries are part of the game.
Nuggets havent had Nene or Chucky basically all season.
Ummmm...WRONG...the Rockets probably still better than those teams^More like Yao Ming to the rescue!
With Yao out, it's almost guaranteed Nuggets and Warriors can take over the last two spots in the playoffs....
If McGrady stays healthy the Rockets will still play at a very high level even without YAO but that is a very big IF
This is why I hate Karl. They're up 32 points with 8 minutes left in the 4th against the Sonics and he still has Iverson and Camby out there.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Denver has one of the toughest schedules left, and Houston has one of the easiest.^More like Yao Ming to the rescue!
With Yao out, it's almost guaranteed Nuggets and Warriors can take over the last two spots in the playoffs....
KRIEGER: Karl likely casualty if Nuggets fail
By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News
George Karl knows how these things work. He can hear the hounds baying.
He is coaching an $80 million basketball team and sweating to make the playoffs. Three days after a stirring home victory over the Celtics, it surrendered to the Bulls and Bucks, a pair of Eastern also-rans. Sometimes his team shows up and sometimes it doesn't. When you pull up the usual suspects for that, the coach is at the top of the list.
"There's no question that our team's up and down performance frustrates a coach," he said the other day.
"The frustration of the same problems over a two-year period or a three-year period bothers people. When you're losing for doing the same things, sometimes 'stupid' comes to be the word that you evaluate yourself as. But I think if you're going to label us stupid, you'd better label us better, too."
He is comparing the record to last season at this point, which is fair enough. On the other hand, when Karl first showed up a little more than three years ago, he took over a 17-25 team and coached it up to 32-8 the rest of the way, finishing with 49 wins. The Nuggets haven't reached that total since, even after acquiring Allen Iverson to play with Carmelo Anthony.
For most of his coaching career, Karl has been criticized for being too explosive, getting on his players too much and too publicly. Suddenly, at 56, the question is whether he puts up with too much.
"The only thing I want my team to realize is what they can be and who they can be," he said. "If I go negative, they're never going to realize who they can be. If I go negative, we're just going to fight each other and beat each other up. Now, am I as tough? There's a change in me, but I don't go crazy in front of the camera because I don't want to. That's not who I want to be.
"In the locker room, though, I think I've been pretty crazy a couple of times. Now, how many times can you go crazy? This team pushes the limit. I shouldn't have to go in the locker room as many times as I go in the locker room to go crazy. They should have more maturity, to understand that they've got to do this on their own. I can't do it for them."
The late Jack McMahon once told Karl a coach can go off on his team no more than six times a year. More than that is counterproductive, he said.
By his own count, Karl has exceeded that number already this season. "And most of the time, it has worked," he said.
"But beating up your team doesn't work all the time. And sometimes there's a negative flow to the players of today. There's a reaction. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I don't think there was as much reaction to a coach being angry. Now, sometimes you've got to evaluate what you're going to get."
In part, the focus of the Nuggets' failures falls on Karl because you can't fire the players, and in part because it's difficult to assign responsibility in the organization's three-headed front office. Who decided they couldn't afford to bring back point guard Steve Blake? Was it vice president of basketball operations Mark Warkentien? Was it vice president of player personnel Rex Chapman? Was it adviser Bret Bearup? Or was it owner Silent Stanley Kroenke himself, putting his foot down on a payroll already well into luxury tax territory?
Who decided all the money should be at the front of the roster, leaving such a short bench?
"I don't know of any other coach who could get through to these guys as much as I'm getting through to them," Karl insisted. "They're not the easiest bunch of guys to motivate or coach and fit together. You're playing with two scorers without a point guard a lot of the time. You're playing with big guys that are really talented and really good, but sometimes we don't fit them into the puzzle well.
"There's just a kind of dichotomy of talent. But when it works it's really fun and really powerful. And I think it's more powerful than it's ever been. Now, it's also ugly at times. There's also points where, wow, what the 's going on out there?"
The Nuggets still have a chance to get it right in time for the postseason, but time is growing short. If they continue playing only when they feel like it, their coach will take much of the blame.
At the executive level, that's how the game is played, even if your coach has more than 800 career wins and his last losing season was 20 years ago. It's in the players' hands now. If they want to threaten Karl's job, all they have to do is keep doing what they're doing.
LINK
http://www.ocregister.com/sports/den...erence-carmelo
Denver is odd man out in Wild West
By ART THOMPSON III
The Orange County Register
There were lofty aspirations going into the season.
Talk of winning a division championship and competing for the conference le.
A proclamation of winning 60 regular-season games.
Supreme confidence that they stood with the elite teams in the league.
A team with two All-Stars in Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony, a premier defensive stalwart in Marcus Camby, an astute coach in George Karl and a solid supporting cast could imagine achieving those goals.
The Denver Nuggets are multidimensional, able to play up-tempo or switch to a slower, half-court pace. They are one of the NBA's top scoring and rebounding teams. They create havoc, ranking second in the league in causing turnovers and first in steals.
"That's probably the best thing about them is that they can change their game," Utah forward Andrei Kirilenko said. "Some teams, like Golden State and Phoenix, like to run, run, run. But Denver can play a set offense. Carmelo Anthony and A.I. are great players and Marcus Camby, he's the best defensive player in the league."
Kirilenko said the Nuggets would be a dangerous first-round opponent for any Western Conference playoff team.
"They're solid in every position," Clippers guard Sam Cassell said. "They can score with the best, they can run with the best. You play an erratic game against them and it could be your butt."
But so far Denver has fallen short of being the team its players thought it could be when they assembled in training camp. The Nuggets cause a lot of turnovers, but they also rank among the league's most turnover-prone teams. They score a lot, but only three teams allow as many points per game as they do.
"At times, we see spurts," Anthony said. "Our goal this season was to (achieve) consistency. We haven't had that all season. We might go two or three weeks being consistent, where we do everything well. And then we'll come back and for a week we'll do nothing well. I have no idea why."
That inconsistency could turn out to be their downfall. If the playoffs started today, the Nuggets would be spectators.
Such is life in the ultra-compe ive Western Conference, where Lakers star Kobe Bryant says, "Everyone's a threat."
The Nuggets' record would earn them the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference but is only ninth-best in the West.
"No doubt it's definitely a dog fight," Phoenix Suns forward Amare Stoudemire said. "It's a situation where every team has to be on top of its game. You can't take any games off, especially in this last stretch of the season."
Nine Western Conference teams are on pace to win at least 50 games. Neither conference has had that many teams play better than .600 ball over the regular season. Denver's remaining 25 games include 20 against Western Conference opponents, starting with Friday night's game against the visiting Clippers.
"It's going to come down to the last week of regular-season basketball, especially in the West," Anthony said.
At their current pace, the Nuggets will fall short of their goal of winning 60 regular-season games. More shocking is that even if they play .600 ball over the final 25 games and win 50 games, they could miss the playoffs.
"Obviously, our record could be better but we're satisfied at where we're at," Iverson said at the All-Star break.
When asked if the Nuggets still considered themselves a viable contender for the NBA championship this year, Iverson fired back, "What kind of stupid question is that?"
Asked what he believed it would take to push the Nuggets over the top, Iverson said, "Michael Jordan,'' after which Anthony playfully suggested that he answer the questions.
"We know we can score," Iverson said. "We need to make sure that we're strong on the defensive end because that's how you win games in the playoffs, with your defense."
That scoring prowess is the main component that would make the Nuggets a dangerous playoff foe.
"Oh they'd be dangerous. No doubt about it," Stoudemire said. "With those two scorers, Marcus Camby down in the post, and the players around them, they're a solid team."
Cassell, who was coached by Karl when the two were with the Milwaukee Bucks, agreed the Nuggets could present a challenge but could be hurt by one major flaw if they reach the playoffs.
"There's too much inconsistency with them," Cassell said.
But should the Nuggets get in the playoffs, Anthony has a warning.
"I truly believe that we're one of the threats in the West and in the whole NBA," he said.
Nuggets are a classic example of looking great on paper, looking not-so-great on the court. IMO, they need to trade Carmelo...
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