Nuggets at Blazers recap: Nuggets bring nerf ball to whiffle bat fight

start jacking up some shots from all over the floor. This team needs a scorer and it will have to be him. Love good team play, but free up Gallo to shoot, shoot, shoot.

Why all the mopey faces? It’s ONE game out of the first 3 of the season. Let’s not get too far up or too far down.

Our boys in blue will be just fine!

Chuck still liking us more than the Knickerbockers.

We will need to find out how our bigs do when going up against the Lakers with 2 seven footers.

This game is the first in portland franchise history that they have won despite turning the ball over 18 more times than their oponent.
Testament to our missed shots.

Called himself a bonehead letting Vince make that shot.

our defense was for the most part very good. especially on the inside. i would have loved to have seen more of brewer and kosta though given that galo was clearly off and brewer creates havoc in the passing lanes, and birdman is completely ineffective when he doesn’t have the home crowd to praise him for dunking a basketball or blocking a shot.

the nuggs will be just fine, but this is going to be a tough season for every team. i hope kosta see’s bords minutes as attainable for him and works his ass off in those rare practice days.

Moz got early fouls, Bird was ineffective, Koufos should have been inserted into the game late in the second quarter.

if he had been put in and sucked it up then we can say, “Well we know what we’re gonna get from Koufos!” But since we were getting abused inside and he still sat on the bench it’s clear we’re paying the guy 2 million to not play.

Combined minutes for Ty and ’Dre: 75:16
Combined minutes for Nene, Moz, Al and the Bird: 75:26

HEY GEORGE, PLAY YOUR DAMN BIGS!

Oh well, though. 3rd game of the season and 2nd of a back-to-back on the road. I won’t get too down on this game. Hell, it felt like the Nuggets shouldn’t have even been in it.

…but that’s a small consolation. Gallo was just chucking it, as was Rudy and Afflalo, etc. Our size became more of an issue when Mozgov became a non-factor real quick, and we got crushed on the boards. That game was particularly frustrating because – despite it all – we really could’ve won it, and we didn’t. A better team would’ve won that game in our situation, regardless of it being the 2nd of a B2B on the road. Poor decisions in shooting the ball down the stretch (let alone in the 1st Q) gutted us in the end. We got hosed on several calls, but losses never hang on bad calls, IMO (with very few exceptions).

Sure winning by a lot is fun and the team feels good afterward. But putting Miller and Lawson to the test down the stretch was likely his way of forcing that relationship to form and become more well established. I think George is smart. Smart enough to know that to win is perhaps less important than developing the very important roles of the team in a season that is being forced upon him with little to now preseason. I’d like to think that if this was a MUST WIN situation the rotations would have been different.

But I think this loss shows us that we were all dreaming about this team. We lack an offensive threat to give the ball to in the final minutes, period. Neither Gallinari nor Lawson are very reliable, so we are going to suffer a lot against good defensive teams.

I’m very disappointed with the team right now.

I should go ahead and give the blazers and my blazer fan friends an apology, as they looked better than they have in years tonight. That said, there is no way in hell the Nuggets shoot this bad again. As my Blazer fan buddy said, “I know we’ll never see a Denver team have this much trouble with shots, but we’ll take and enjoy.” Our young Nuggets seemed to have been taking too much for granted with the dominant wins, and we needed this. Once again the two best players were Ty and Al, but the star had to be Andre. I may have to burn my old school Camby jersey now. Dude was a prick. Moz looks like trash, Nene was nearly useless and the refs deserved a full bitch-throttling. Let’s go Lickers!

Now I’m not 100% sure but I’m like 99% sure that CJ Miles was the one stepping out of bounds in 2010

Fatigue was a factor (how many open threes did we clank?), but I thought the extreme small ball hurt us the most. We made Batum look like Mutumbo tonight. Moz has to be smarter and not pick up a dumb third foul after getting a lousy call for his second. George can’t be that stubborn about his rotation, Kouf should have got some time in there.

I gotta believe the 3 point shooting will come around— that is just rust. But if the Nuggs want to have a shot in the post-season they are going to need better post offense from their big guys. The ability score in the post forces double teams and opens everything up. I almost thing the Nuggs need a big man coach to help Nene and Moz play bigger inside. Also KK needs those Bird minutes. The Nuggs are not going to be the Lakers inside, but they need to show improvement. Would love to see Nene and Moz learn how to use their big bodies to draw fouls and score inside against long teams (see Clippers, Blazers, Lakers, And OkC).

With that said i was very encouraged seeing them fight back. Guys if we hit some of those layups and make some of the WIDE-OPEN 3-Pointers we would have won or at least been in the game. 15+ steals that game? That was the most encouraging loss ive seen in a long while. Hopefully the Orange and Blue win, and then i can chane the channel and was the Orange and yellow win at night. Happy New Year!

Play a 4 guard lineup with Harrington at C.

You guys will never be that cold shooting again. Hopefully the Blazers will never turn the ball over that much again. A couple of back to back buckets to take the crowd out and Denver would have rolled us. Thank you Nuggets for not sticking it to us at home. If you guys had been clicking at all on offense, this would have been a blowout.

this was just a game to learn from and adapt. I do think however, that if Moz continues to under perform, I see no reason Kostas shouldn’t be put in the starting rotation.

We played in one of the hardest places to play if not the hardest. The Rose Garden is ALWAYS BUZZING. The only thing that stings is that we will not be 66-0 ;). Well that and the fact that we couldn’t buy an open shot, and the fact that Nene reverted to his old ways again.

if we don’t win that game, then I will be shocked.

or is he trying to get adjusted to his rotations? Brewer deserves minutes as does Koufas.

How we’re scoring our points is very sustainable – high percentage shots, getting to the line, and open 3’s. AAA’s shooting percentage will regress to his normal levels. I’ve given Andre Miller a lot of crap but he played a great game and came up with key baskets and continuously got to the line.

The big concern for me is still how many wide open 3’s we give up either do to poor rotations or poor scheme on defense.

This is the area that Faried could help us. He’s a rebounding specialist. I know his game is raw.

But Moz might not be very good…

Moz 0.4 Al Harr 24.5 Nene 22.1,
Kouf-17.7 Gallo 18.7 Ty 31.6 AAA 18.7
Dre 23.0 Bird 11.8. Rudy 9.8. Brew 9.1

Moz is the weak link so far.

(not jumping the gun just wondering)

How is putting a 4 guard lineup when you’re being SEVERELY out rebounded going to help? Time to play Kosta IMO

Everyone here fully expected us to beat a good Portland team off a b2b. The expectations are high.
All I see at RMC is bashing of the Nuggets when they lose and always looking at negates when we win. I think Jeremy and Charlie have a vendetta that Ujiri didnt rebuild lol. They seem so negative that they have gone to te other spectrum of reality.
We really can’t judge if we are elite till Jan. I can tell you we are a good team, but great teams will make themselves known later in the season when they jell.

their true test will come soon.

This season more than any is one where we can’t jump to conclusions either way.
Even if we won this game, which was very doable, we still really wouldnt know how good the team is.
Throw stats out the window, even Ty’s stuff. Once all teams are settled down and know what rotations work, then we can judge. I thought Denver would win yesterday, but they got gassed near the end, and the rust showed.
A fair fight/ marker will be our b2b with LAL where I think we can win both games and eek one out vs Milwaukee.

Even Al harrington, as much of a cancer I think he is, should had knocked down couple of those heaves cause he is very capable. With a respectable amount of 3 ptersmade this game was urs.

… Mozgov, Dirty-Bird and Koufos combine for 17 minutes. http://www.nba.com/games/20111229/DENPOR/gameinfo.html?ls=gt2hp0021100037#nbaGIboxscore

That’s 21 feet on Denver’s bench!

The league is built on adaptation, when one rotation isn’t working you continue along with other ones. Unfortunately for us, Karl does this, but with a 8 MAYBE 9 man rotation. I saw Mcmillan make some brilliant rotation moves last night, I’ve seen the same from Popovich and Jackson. All three (and there are more, just not GK) adapt(ed) the game to THEIR rotations. I didn’t see that last night, and I rarely saw that the season before. Good thing the season is young or else I would be FREAKIN OUT.

Rubio looking good. I’m starting to believe the hype.

Would a really good basketball player there, then, be called “The Lord of the Rings”?

just dont match well with the trailblazers— and they’re a team that brings their A game against us. we definitely need to worry about our bigs though. aside from nene’s spurt of aggressiveness we look a bit like the Downey Dream Team

Way late to the party. Too busy to keep up with DS. Yeah, great loss to all of you. (Sarcasm alert.)

Four guards plus whoever is one STRANGE-ASS line-up, yet Karl must have thought quickness would win out somehow. I guess it nearly did. It should be noted, too, that the Blazers were outrebounding us no matter who was on the floor.

One thing that was clear was Karl’s commitment to preventing Aldridge from beating us. When Nene was on the floor, his single coverage did the job—and how. The guy can be the Nuggets’ giant killer—great hands, great feet, great mind. When the Brazilian was on the bench, the double-team came quickly. This was effective stuff.

Unfortunately, the Blazers were doing what the Nuggets couldn’t do: hitting their shots after they hit the open man. To say there was a lid on the basket would not do justice to how OFF the Nuggets’ shots were for much of the night. Harrington and Afflalo were the most notable; they seemed to see the rim in places it could never be.

How can a great shooter like Al toss up an air ball from the free throw line? Why would the Nuggets suddenly develop a bad case of nerves on the court? Sure, it was gonna be a tough road game no matter what (excellent coaching, tremendous talent and heart, great crowd), but the Nuggets can win ANY GAME this year, and they should know that. Yet the confidence was not there, to say the very least.

I cannot figure out what we can only charitably call Karl’s “rotation.” The attraction of having Ty and Dre on the floor at the same time is clear to me: they bring very different—and complementary—skills to the game. And they can each shoot. (Yep, Miller too.) But as for the rest of how Karl substitutes during the course of the game… it’s like we need to be trained in Basketball Cryptography: there must be a code we simply can’t read. Sheesh.

For the “it’s just one game” crowd: Yeah sure, but it’s also a microcosm of what will plague this team: they don’t have an effective half-court offense, and their coach may be sabotaging some portion of their defensive strength some of the time. And they will get rattled even though they have the horses to come from down 20 most any time.

Here’s hoping they get it all figured out.