Big man play is optional... (Nuggets/Celtics recap)

Kenyon is, as you know, out. Birdman can barely stand.

Nene is not a cutter. He’s an old school, post up, back-to-the-basket, bang em down low kind of big guy. Bird and Kenyon are the slashers with the big ups. And those two are grounded. Petro is in the mold of Nene, but with less meat on his bones, and less talented.

With no movement in the paint, Denver becomes limited to a jump shooting team and an isomelo team. They got away with it for a while when everyone was raining it from downtown. Now that the shooting percentage has come down to Earth, we see the real Denver Nuggets, sans Martin and Birdman. Don’t be so mad at the current team not being able to replicate Bird and Martin’s production. K-Mart meant everything to this team. Don’t forget that.

No Kenyon in this game equals a loss. Back to back, home, away, every day of the week and twice on tuesday. I was hoping for a Boston choke job too, but we were over matched from the start.

Jamadrian Dantwelch hasn’t been able to get this group playing with passion since the home stand last week. The Nuggets swagger is being slowly and painfully beat out of them as the games get tougher. I’m not trying to blame anyone, I’m not sure how to fix it. Something has got to change though.

Go Nuggets

I’ve been worried about him since he first got that goddamn knee injury. He’s been getting worse lately and one has to wonder if he’s going to be able to do anything in the playoffs. I think it’s time to just sit him out for a while. Do we need him? Yes. However, his contributions have been going down game by game.

As for the game today, it was worse then last night. One can argue that it was a 2nd on a back-to-back, but that’s no excuse. They’re professionals, and it’s the NBA. They should of been able to win both games.

As of now, the only game I see the Nuggets winning is in Toronto, considering they’re struggling too.

the knicks and celtics game show nene is not a starting forward in the nba. that does not make him a bad guy. petro is limited and this game shows why he is a 3rd string center. that does not make him a bad guy. coach dantley was forced into the head coaching position under the most difficult circumstances. that does not make him a bad guy. kenyon martin is the best defender and team enforcer. that makes him a baaaaad guy. take any team in the nba that will be in the playoffs. take away their head coach, best defensive player that is also a starter. what would utah be like without sloan and boozer?

I mean….Melo seems to be the only one giving 100% effort. Bird just doesn’t have it physically….Nene is weak mentally…Chauncey is getting tired.

I’m hoping that they pull their heads out of their asses with enough time to do SOMETHING. Toronto kinda sucks…so maybe we can get well against them. Who knows.

Also whenever Nene has fewer boards than Billups…. thats just sad.

With the way they’re playing inside on the defensive end, I don’t see them beating anyone on this roadtrip. Unfortunately, major injuries to Melo, Chauncey, Kmart, and Ty have stunted this teams long-term success.

is a national punch line. As a Nugget fan (even one who DESPISES that gangbanging joker) this makes me sad. It’s pretty clear that he is 95% of the reason that everyone calls us “stupid” and “mentally weak” and I cannot disagree. Since we have no one on the bench with any balls, I am rooting for a suspension; maybe he’ll get busted for smoking dope in a strip club (“Wait, I though it’s all good to smoke shit inna strip club???”), or, more likely driving through a theatre with 3-D glasses on. I am all about doing a Tinsley here: Paying Him to STAY HOME. We automatically become a smarter, more consistent ball club. Addition by subtraction. I still haven’t gotten over this dufus going out to the hot LA Clubs everynight during the WCF last year and twittering about it. (JR in Club Beyond! Party!) Not to mention his 4/20 tweets and his Piru Blood shit.

And his non existent defense. All this media talk of him being a top 3 player now only applies to his offensive game. Overall game I’m not sure he cracks top ten. Opposing SF’s have just gone off these last three games and melos is to blame for most of it.

Are being short sighted and completely results oriented from the last few games.

Oh, we lost 3 games, it’s time to panic! This team is way better than the team that went to the WCF last year. The difference? We ran hot with injuries last year…our team didn’t have any injuries and our bigs didn’t get injured all year. What we’re seeing this year is a regression to the mean…it’s expected that some of your players are going to get injured during the season. Portland Trailblazers anyone?

This team has one big weakness, and that’s lack of big depth (imagine if we had ended up with DeJuan Blair in the 2nd round). If we don’t go far this year, I’m pretty sure our front office will address this issue in the offseason.

No one would have complained that the Nuggets were “too soft” last year in the playoffs when we were called the “Thuggets”.

We’ve always had undersized, more athletic bigs. Nene has always struggled against true 5’s (the 7’2" like Shaq, Yao, etc). Melo taking it to the hole and grabbing his own board through 3 or 4 guys isn’t soft.

What you’re seeing now is our bigs are undersized and rely on athleticism rather than physicality. This creates a team that’s better on defense, can run the floor, but doesn’t rebound as well. That’s fine, and usually not a problem because Melo and our guards rebound decently (not Rajon Rondo well, but good enough). What you’re seeing now is a combination of injuries and lack of depth. With the Kmart injury, we have less depth so guys like Graham and Petro who are scrubs are getting more time. Our athletic bigs are playing more minutes and Birdman is injured. An athletic big who relies on athleticism instead of size to defend and get rebounds obviously isn’t as effective when he’s injured.

This is the same really good Nuggets team we’ve been watching all season…just injured at a bad time! I’d rather have our guys rest up and heal for the playoffs than try to push for a higher seed.

No KMart and an injured Birdman. It’s not a characteristic of this team in general, well, with the exception of Nene against larger bigs, to be soft.

Also, Boston has traditionally been a very physical, well executing, slow paced defensive team. They play good team defense and they foul hard.

In contrast to the Lakers and the Zombies, it’s going to seem like Boston was more physical and we played “soft”. I don’t think we were softer than we were all season. We got outrebounded, our rotations were slow, and we weren’t making open shots.