if you count the game in which K-mart went out early against the heat. You wouldn’t think that he is that important, but our defensive intensity is just that much better when he is out there. Let’s hope he’s back soon.

Karl being 20-19 against Larry Brown. What I saw, was 2 teams with a lot of equality (not neccisarily in terms of talent) yet one was much better coached. The Cats tonight were more disciplined, worked harder and most importantly, played team ball. Thats the thing that I think kills us quite often. We have so many ego’s and star players on this team who all want the ball, that sharing becomes a scarcity because everyone wants to “get his”. Still, it’s Karl’s job to adress this issued MID-GAME, not wait till the press confrence. It’s just as though he is inept when it comes to making in-game adjustments. It’s his job to recognize and stop the runs that the Cats made before all the quarters ended by calling time outs, and it’s his job to design plays to make things easier on his players on the offensive end of the floor so they arnt’ always going one on one. I hate losing to teams like we have this year, but at the same time I would rather us be able to beat the great teams in the league than just beat up on all the sub .500 teams to achieve a great record. I’m still happy with the way the season is going for the most part, but these types of loses are going to really bite us in the ass come April/May when the playoff seedings start to take shape. Plus, Utah has been playing really good lately, gotta watch out for them!

Denver should have won, no excuses. Nuggets are part time winners. That’s what we have – part time winners.

because of the background of coach brown and karl in many ways the 2 teams are a mirror image of each other. add to the fact chauncey played for larry brown there should never had been any surprises. rebounding- the general formula i use is 10 rebounds from the guards, 20 rebounds from the center-power forward and the rest from the small forward. denver’s guards had a total of 4, 2 each from earl and afflalo. it is a major contrast from the sixers game where cb had 7 and ty had 6. bobcat guards totaled 9 boards. nene and andersen had 18 between them. nene had his classic great start with 7 rebounds then had 1 rebound in each of the three remaining quarters. gerald wallace at 6’7" shows the real key to rebounding is working for position and constant effort. graham, balkman and melo combined for 13 rebounds. denver has a realistic chance of going to the nba finals. one of the keys for that to happen is all the players, at all positions must rebound all the time. free throws is normally where denver gets to the line more than the other team. the amount of times denver goes to the line is another indication of how well they execute the half court offense along with assists. 3 point shooting 2 makes for 16 attempts. the 16 attempts is the max shots for denver to take in any one game. the 2 makes is more of a reflection of not getting the 3 point shot in the context of the half court offense. kmart not playing can turn out to be a blessing in disguise. the rotation is now forced to expand to include a greater number of players. nuggets need to execute in the half court offense and manage the 24 second shot clock from the very beginning of the game. the past 3 games show a pattern of a lack of discipline in the first 3 quarters. the result is a very exciting 4th quarter for the fans but places the team in a very compromising position. the broncos had a 4 game losing streak. a players only meeting took place. the nuggets do not need to have a players only meeting at this time. this loss is not about referees or coaches. it is up to the players to cut the crap and make the most of their opportunities.

I’m with this team, we are okay after this loss but it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. Yeah, K-Mart was out, there are excuses for this loss and that’s the problem with this group isn’t it? Melting down at the first sign of adversity is not what i expect out of this team. 4 out of 6 losses to sub .500 teams. That’s garbage no matter who you are. We can;t learn anything from this loss. Everyone was shit. Another game behind the Lakers and one more to make up. K-Mart is NOT an excuse for selfish play. Next game plz

because 4 0f the 6 losses were to shitty teams and i’m tired of the excuses an elite championship calibur team should’nt make excuses just go out and fucking win. this shit is already getting old. were becoming a laughing stock losing these types of games how is anyone going to take us seriuosly really? don’t tell me i’m overreacting because the losses prove it and i have watched these games and theres no reason to play this piss-poor.

Melo needs to check his ego. His bad ego. The ego that fouls a guy away from the ball at the end of the game and seals the loss for the nuggs. totally unnecessary.

lose to sub .500 teams, than lose to good teams. Because come playoff time we won’t be playing any sub .500 teams. I guess we just have to win enough to get to the playoffs and we’ll be fine…

Did Joey actually get any on the court time against Stephen (his brother, not Jackson)?

I used to be a Balkman fan, but that guy is plain awful. No skills on offense, matador style defense and at 6’8" 200lbs, he gets pushed around inside like a rag doll. Surprised the Nuggets re-signed him at $2.2 million per.

Lack of Assists and Lack of Ball Movement. Plain and simple. The Nuggs have to learn that they must play better team ball to win on the road. They also don’t seem to have the same energy and hustle on the road as they do at home. Great teams play even harder on the road, and the effort seems to be hit and miss on the road for the Nuggs.

On offence, Nene looked lazy and tired—seems like their are nights that he simply does not feel like working the paint( what was up with that 3 pt air ball).

Its not rocket science or a coincidence, when the nuggs don’t pass the ball they lose.

Salvatore IS a shitty ref—as long as Iv’e been watching games that he officiates, he blows. Another mark of a bad ref is when the fans start to know your name e.g. salvatore, malloy, tony brothers.

The Nuggets were obviously tired last night as evidenced by all the missed layups and no rebounding effort. Melo wasn’t so much becuase he didn’t play so many minutes in Philly.

Nate, I had a similar thought about Petro during the game. There was a point where it was obvious the Nuggets needed some size. I would have gotten Petro off the bench and said to him “I’m putting you in to rebound and play defense. As long as you rebound and defend you’ll stay in, but if you’re not getting the job done you’re coming right back out”. It seems to me that would have been worth the experiement and they really had nothing to lose at that point since what they were doing wasn’t working.

I started adjusting my expectations after the Twolves loss and am pleased to report that so far, this loss is not upsetting me very much.

I’ll keep following the Nuggets this season and will always root for them, but it looks pretty certain to me at this point that we’re looking at a season where the Nuggets will be lucky if they make it as far as they did last year.

Who knows, anything can happen, but I no longer have any real hope that the Nuggets can seriously contend for an appearance in the Finals this season.

Being a Denver sports fan is all about coping. My coping mechanism for the Nuggets is to reduce my expectations as much as I can, without actually abandoning the team entirely.

Boy it was hard to keep expectations in check during the playoffs last year. During the Dallas series my wife said to me “For the first time in all the years I’ve known you, I finally understand why you follow that team. They’re actually making you _happy!”_ So yeah, I was pretty crushed during the next round.

I’m not jumping ship, I’m following them all the way this year no matter how far they go. But my coping mechanism is what works for me. Really, all the discussion here after these bad losses mostly boils down to different people having different ways of coping. It’s hard when you’re investing emotion in something that you don’t have any control over!

AC has been riding pine for some time now. That does not suck.

I think it is quite depressing that four out of the six teams we have lost to this season are teams we did not lose to at all last year (Clippers, T’wolves four times in a row, Heat, and the Bobcats). That shows that, so far, in the games that seem like should be won on paper, are getting increasingly difficult due to the lack of heart and hustle we display. It seems like we have to be counted out by everyone, even the fans, to play all out and do the dirty work and win. Also, it seems like George Karl only works hard during games against team that are at the top of the rankings. That is an extremely questionable mentality. Also another tidbit, Nuggets are 5-0 when AC starts, which is disgusting to me. Yuck.

Lawson not having more assists.

seems like at the very beginning of the season, when he was really fighting for the backup pg position, he was throwing assists out to everybody. I hope he hasn’t purple drank the kool-aid in terms of buying into how good he is (even for a rookie) he should really focus on jetting down the court at full speed and then dishing to someone else for a layup/dunk…

though I didn’t get to watch the game and from what I read the team missed a large number of layups which will skew the stats some of course.

I can’t figure Charlotte out. They lost seven in a row to teams like Chicago, Detroit, Philly and Milwaukee and then they turn around and pick up W’s against teams like Cleveland and Denver.

If you watched the game, you would have to agree that Charlotte didn’t play great and are a pretty average team. This was the Nuggs game to win, but it was the Nuggs that wilted down the stretch.