Carmelo Anthony Emerges From the Background & Leads the Nuggets Over the Hornets 105-99

In an interesting and very close game between two seemingly evenly matched teams, the Nuggets played a strong defense in the 2nd half, and made a good number of key shots in the 4th quarter, to come away with a win against a team that had beaten them earlier this season in another close game in Denver, the New Orleans Hornets. The final score was 105-99.

The Hornets led 59-45 with a minute to go in the 1st half, but two reserve F-C Hilton Armstrong shooting fouls, a reserve G Bobby Jackson offensive foul, and an Allen Iverson steal off PF David West allowed the Nuggets to get 6 quick unanswered points in the last minute of the half, so that the half time deficit was 59-51.

At the start of the 2nd half, both teams started out cold, but the Nuggets quickly heated up and were able to very quickly eliminate the Hornet’s scoreboard advantage. The Hornets remained cold for the entire first 3 ½ minutes of the 3rd quarter, which is an eternity in basketball. Reserve SG Jannero Pargo, who started in place of the injured Morris Peterson, was particularly disappointing for the Hornets in this stretch. Then, however, Chris Paul and David West gave the Hornets a little run of their own, so it was 69-62 Hornets For the rest of the 3rd quarter, the evenly matched teams played about evenly, and it was 81-77 Hornets at the end of the period.

The momentum started to go to the Nuggets with 8:38 to go in the game, when Chris Paul lost possession to the almost always hustling Eduardo Najera. Carmelo Anthony then tried and sunk his one and only 3-pointer attempt of the night, which tied the game at 86. After Pargo, who was 2/13 on jump shots overall, missed another one, Najera, this year’s big Nuggets surprise in 3-point shooting, made his 18th 3-pointer of the young season, for 89-86 Nuggets. Iverson and Chris Paul then traded jumpers, but Jannero Pargo finally hit something, and it was a 3. It was 91 each with 6:39 to go.

Some games Carmelo Anthony gets a good number of calls and other nights he doesn’t get squat. There seems to be a big difference of opinion among various referees as to what extent Melo deserves to go to the line while he is double teamed and often hacked during the course of a game. Very fortunately for the Nuggets, this was one of those referee squads who think Melo does deserve his full share of foul calls and trips to the line. So after Chris Paul was called for a foul with 5:31 to go, Melo made both free throws, and it was 93-92 Nuggets.

Then West missed a 19 footer, but Melo hit a 13 footer, for 95-92 Nuggets with 5 minutes left. Then Kenyon Martin got the steal off Paul, and Melo dunked it for 97-92 Nuggets. But then Paul and West teamed up for two successive Paul assisted West jumpers, and Camby missed a jumper in between, so it was then 97-96 Nuggets. So as not to be outdone by the Hornet’s 1-2 punch, the Nuggets similar 1-2 punch then combined, as A.I. fed Melo for a nice dunk, and the Nuggets led 99-96 with 2:42 to play.

Then Byron Scott, Coach of the Hornets, called timeout to try to figure out how to slow down the exploding Carmelo Anthony led Nuggets. But Marcus Camby was there to spoil the always important post time out play, as he blocked a 12-foot West jumper attempt. Camby had 4 of the 8 Nuggets blocks in this game. The Nuggets had a massive 13 blocks against Sacramento in the previous game, and the 21 blocks in 2 games is more evidence of how improved the Denver deffense is this season as compared with last.

But after Rasual Butler blocked a Melo layup, Tyson Chandler got an offensive rebound that enabled Chris Paul to get a second chance at hitting a three, which he took full advantage of, so now it was 99 each with 2 minutes to go. Allen Iverson then missed an ill-advised 3-point attempt, but Marcus Camby got the tip in on his second try, in what was undoubtedly the most important tip in of the night. It was 101-99 Nuggets with 1:40 to go.

Then the Hornets did what Allen Iverson did just prior to the Camby clutch tip in: they foolishly started jacking up threes in a very close game. Memo to Byron Scott and the Hornets: you should only be jacking up threes in the last two minutes of a game if you are too far behind to win with higher percentage shooting. And this foolishness on the part of the Hornets occurred just when I was starting to think that the Hornets in general and Byron Scott in particular were a much smarter team than I thought they were before this season began. So Butler missed his 3 attempt, Anthony Carter missed his 18 foot two for the Nuggets, and then Paul missed his 3 attempt. Then with just 38 seconds left, Anthony got the deuce while being fouled by Pargo. Melo’s made free throw made it 104-99 Nuggets.

Now the Hornets were in real trouble, because they now had to get a three. But their two best three-point shooters, Peja Stojakovic and Morris Peterson, were both out injured. Paul would have been the much better bet, but somehow David West, who doesn’t take a lot of threes but can make them, made the Hornet’s attempt. He missed. So the Hornets, in the crucial final 2 minutes of this game, were first taking 3-point shots when they should not have been, and then they had the wrong guy attempt a three when they were forced to attempt a three. Oh well, at least Byron Scott appears to have been half right instead of all wrong regarding J.R. Smith.

Camby snagged the rebound off the West miss, and Melo was intentionally fouled and he sunk a free throw to ice the game for the Nuggets.

This game against the Hornets featured what will probably be only a temporary return of Carmelo Anthony to the status of most important Nuggets’ scoring threat. Anthony emerged from a relatively minor scoring and rebounding slump by the 4th quarter of this game. He finally decided to drive to the hoop a lot more and he did so.

Just as importantly, he at least temporarily emerged from a developing strategic blunder that the Nuggets are starting to make. I think the real danger for the Nuggets that has come up over the last couple of weeks is that A.I., with full support from Coach Karl, has decided to take full ownership of the offense without there being any agreed upon strategy for getting the most out of Melo. If this pattern of the Nuggets not getting open enough for the double teamed Melo, and A.I. favoring K-Mart, Carter, and Kleiza over Melo were to become a permanent fixture, the Nuggets have just marginalized their best overall scoring threat. That would then enable teams to start cheating on their double teams of Melo and then the Nuggets would be in real trouble on offense.

If it happens, all the know it all observers will be saying that Melo has been sidetracked by A.I., implying that A.I. is some kind of selfish maniac, and that the A.I. trade has failed after all. You'll be seeing that during the next losing streak if A.I. continues to over dominate. Keep in mind that if it happens, it will not be Iverson’s fault, but rather George Karl’s fault.

No one should waste any time trying to bash Iverson relative to Anthony or trying to bash Anthony relative to Iverson. Both players have roughly the same huge offensive potential to bring to the court each game. I believe that the key to the Nugget’s getting an offense that could be good enough to compete in the playoffs is whether or not they can develop an offense where both A.I. and Melo have big and roughly equal roles. An alternative strategy, which I call “share the wealth,” would be to have a three headed monster of an offense, with A.I. one head, Melo one head, and everyone else one head. The problem with the share the wealth offense is that you have to have coaches who are able and willing to get their playmaking and rotations fully up to speed, and the Nuggets definitely do not have such coaches.

However, it’s not clear whether the share the wealth strategy would be better than the relying mostly on A.I.-Melo equally strategy. A share the wealth strategy is the best one for the majority of teams, but it is not the best strategy when there is a particularly large gap between the offensive potential of the top one or two players and the offensive potential of the rest of the team. The Nuggets are a close call in that dimension. But in any event, whether the share the wealth strategy would be better for the Nuggets than relying on A.I. and Melo is a mute point, because the Nuggets lack the coaches to develop and implement a share the wealth strategy. In the West, Phoenix, San Antonio, Los Angeles (except when Kobe takes over) and Golden State will remain the best examples of a successful share the wealth approach to a basketball offense.

For the Nuggets, A.I. roughly equals Melo in offensive potential, and both need to have a big and roughly equal role in the offense. The Nuggets can't win if either one of them takes everything over. The attitude of Coach Karl, Iverson, and PG Anthony Carter had better not be "Let's forget about Melo, because he's usually double teamed and we can't figure out a way to get him into the heart of the offense. So we'll work a 4 on 3 offense and Melo will just be a decoy." If that's how it's going to be, then it's 4 or 5 games and out again this year for sure.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 13, 2007

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off from recent years and a little inconsistent 4 Points

2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 5 Points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers. Karl will normally be in the 5-13 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 10 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 7 Points. This would be up to 17 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart is lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 45, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins against mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team like the Nuggets has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

RESERVE WATCH
It’s under development. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 He’s making a run for the exits.

ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well they played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 7 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 43.4 Season 40.3
Marcus Camby: Game 43.1 Season 32.8
Carmelo Anthony: Game 38.2 Season 36.6
Anthony Carter: Game 28.2 Season 21.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 23.4 Season 19.9
Eduardo Najera: Game 15.4 Season 14.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 9.3 Season 16.4
J.R. Smith: Game -0.8 Season 15.6

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

HORNETS
Chris Paul: Game 54.9 Season 42.3
David West: Game 49.4 Season 31.6
Rasual Butler: Game 33.7 Season 9.0
Tyson Chandler: Game 12.8 Season 25.4
Bobby Jackson: Game 12.6 Season 12.8
Jannero Pargo: Game 7.8 Season 9.2
Julian Wright: Game 3.6 Season 4.4
Hilton Armstrong: Game 1.8 Season 6.2

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
The All Iverson All the Time Offense, with Anthony Carter and/or Linas Kleiza frequently playing second fiddle instead to A.I. of Carmelo Anthony, disappeared for this particular game, as Carmelo Anthony got a lot more touches and tried hard to emerge from his relatively minor early season slump. He partially succeeded, and the success part was fortunately in the 4th quarter. Anthony scored 15 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter, including a three-point play with 38.4 seconds left. Up front, Marcus Camby and Kenyon Martin played well enough to stay ahead of the Hornet’s power combo of David West and Tyson Chandler.

For the Hornets, no one other than Rasual Butler was able to step up to make up for the absences of Peja Stojakovic and Morris Peterson. Butler needed a teammate to go with his great performance in place of Stojakovic, and didn’t get it. In particular, Jannero Pargo in place of Morris Peterson did not work out well for the Hornets.

As for the Nuggets, and this is a surprise, they have recently been able to get by during the injury absences of PG Chucky Atkins and PF Nene without big problems. Carter has played better than expected, and Kenyon Martin, after a slow start, has now come back from rehab stronger than folks would have thought for this point in the season.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 7 minutes are shown.

Allen Iverson: +9
Carmelo Anthony: +7
Eduardo Najera: +5
Kenyon Martin: +4
Anthony Carter: +4
Marcus Camby: +1
J.R. Smith: -2
Linas Kleiza: -5

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
What you always want to see in the plus-minus is for Iverson’s and Melo’s number to be about the same. The more different it is, the more evidence you have that the offense has become unbalanced between the two great scorers. The more unbalanced the offense becomes between the two, the more the Nuggets are doomed in the playoffs. Kleiza’s negative number broke a string of strong positives, and would indicate how Anthony, at least for this game, got his customary touches and shots back from, among others, Linas Kleiza.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 7 minutes are shown.

Linas Kleiza played 16 minutes and was 1/4 and 1/4 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 block.

Eduardo Najera played 23 minutes and was 4/5, 2/2 on 3’s, and 0/1 from the line for 10 points, and he made 1 rebound and 1 steal.

J.R. Smith played 8 minutes and was 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 1 assist.

Anthony Carter played 28 minutes and was 6/9 and 1/2 on 3’s for 13 points, and he made 5 assists, 2 blocks, 1 assist, and 1 rebound.

Kenyon Martin played 35 minutes and was 4/5 and 3/5 from the line for 11 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 block.

Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 6/13 and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he made 15 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 assists, and 2 steals.

Carmelo Anthony played 40 minutes and was 10/28, 1/1 on 3’s, and 11/13 from the line for 32 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played virtually the entire game, 45 minutes, and was 8/16, 0/2 on 3’s, and 6/6 from the line for 22 points, and he made 11 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Saturday, December 15 in San Antonio to play the Spurs at 6:30 pm mountain time. Neither the Spurs nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.