A day in the life of a Nuggets timeout
by smoil on Apr 24, 2011 7:21 PM MDT
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There are very few people who get the chance to sit inside an NBA huddle. ESPN has given us small audio clips, but they're only are a few seconds long and don't show the strategy parts of the game. Well, everyone, we are in luck. I was privileged enough to get a recording of one of our timeouts from Saturday nights game. Enjoy....
Assistant: George, we're getting killed on the boards. We have to do something about this.
George: I got this, I've been coaching for 23 years in the NBA, but have never won anything. I'll call a time out here after the score has gotten out of hand, and then I'll tell the guys to rebound and play faster, that will work, watch...
Assistant: uhhhh George, we're still getting killed on the boards, and we can't guard their guys on defense. Ray is getting killed by Westbrook. They're just shooting over us, we're too small. What are we going to do?
George: I got this, I know how we're going to win. I'm going to put out the smallest line up I have with four guards and one undersized center. That should fix the rebounding and defensive problem.
Assistant: uhhh, George, are you sure? How about we try to play big against these guys? You know, impose our will on them. Maybe get some more fouls on their bigs.
George: Play big?? Come on, that's overrated. Why play big when we have so many good guards, I mean, if I could get away with it I'd just play five point guards. At least then I would trust everyone on the floor.
Assistant: George, what the hell? C'mon, we have all these athletic bigs collecting dust on the bench, lets just play big for a couple of minutes, or how about we just match their size on the court at least.
George: No, we can't play as fast when we play big. We just need JR smith to outrebound someone who's 6'10, Chandler to out rebound someone who's 6'11, Ty to guard 6'6 Harden and we'll put Felton on Westbrook. That should do the trick.
Assistant: But George, Ray has been getting killed by Westbrook. He's too fast for Ray, we need someone bigger on him.
George: (plugging his ears and closing his eyes) I can't hear you!!! I can't hear you!!!
I can't hear you!!!
Assistant talking with another assistant: Great!!!!!! Just F-ing great!!!! We're screwed. Well, I guess I can go on that vacation in the middle of May after all....
Players enter the huddle with the coaches
Player A: George, sorry we haven't been hitting our free throws, I don't know why, but we just keep missing them.
Player B: George, they're pounding us out there, we aren't hitting our shots, and we're getting killed on the boards. George, what should we do?
George: Play faster guys, rebound. We need to turn up our Defensive energy.
Players: That sounds great George, but how are we supposed to rebound better when we have such a small line up?
George: Don't worry about it, if we just play harder we will win this series. Guys if we all just buy into my game plan we're going to win.
Players: George, we've gotten killed the past 5 times we've played these guys, we need something different.
George: Play faster guys, rebound. We need to turn up our Defensive energy.
Players: George you just said that. It isn't working
George: Play faster guys, rebound. We need to turn up our Defensive energy.
Player A talking to other players: What's wrong with George? Why is he repeating the same thing, but expecting different results? I though this team had a chance to be really good. Ohhhh well, we're screwed......Better luck next year....
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during the game
they showed clips of georges huddle and brooks huddle. brooks said stuff like ‘we need to slow down just a bit. play our speed, not theirs’ george said ‘we have to do better’. no kidding we have to do better. it would be super helpful if you could tell them how to do better.
fire george karl
Imagine
George as James Brown.
GK : Fellas, can we hit it one more time?
Team : Yeah
GK : “Can we hit it and quit?”
Team : Yeah.
GK: “Play faster guys, rebound”
Player A: “What the hell is George talking about?”
Player B: “I don’t know man, just keep saying yeah, otherwise you are going to be benched”
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"All you fuckers who think we won't be good anymore, fuck you" - GK
by love4nuggets on Apr 26, 2011 8:25 PM MDT up reply actions
...and who would you rather coach this team?
Adrian Dantley? Mike Woodson? Eric Musselman? Reggie Theus? Flip Saunders? Isaiah? Eddie Jordan? Jeff Van Gundy? Byron F***cking Scott? Some assistant with 0 experience?
We can’t get Phil or Pop or Doc Rivers or the ghost of Red Aurbach… so as much as people like to rail on him, George Karl is about as good as there is in the league.
Period.
There are about 27 teams in the league that would trade coaches with us in a heartbeat.
by 12-piece Nuggets on Apr 28, 2011 11:50 AM MDT reply actions
I agree..
that most teams in the NBA would take GK as their coach, but at the same time look at what Chicago was able to do with Tom Thibodeau, or the Hornets with Monty Williams, or hell even Scott Brooks with OKC. Sure the Bulls have Derrick rose, but they have the best defensive team in the league. Your right in saying that we cannot get Pop or Phil, but we don’t have to. There are some really good Assistant coaches that are just waiting for their shot. The idea that an assistant we could hire would have 0 experience is off (Thibodeau was an assistant for something like 18 years. experienced assistants are out there). Assistant coaches do have experience, if you notice how the Nuggets are actually coached, GK lets the Assistants do much of the in game adjustments. It’s not like these guys are sitting on the sideline with a thumb up their ass. We are stuck with GK for the next three years, but if we have another first round flame out we should consider moving in a different direction. GK is a regular season coach. He has never been able to get it done in the post season (i.e. championship). He showed his stubbornness in this series. He continually tried to play small against these guys which put us at a huge disadvantage on the boards, and gave them a lot of second chance buckets. I understand that GK wants us to play as fast as possible, but that’s not the way to beat OKC. If the Thunder play the Lakers I think you will see them have a lot harder time because they play big. Sure we don’t have Bynum or Gasol, but we don’t have to roll out a Ty, Ray, JR, Chandler, Nene lineup either. Teams that play big in the middle win. Look at Grizzlies…. Teams who play small don’t, look at the Nuggets.
totally agree...
that there are exceptions to the rule, and some first-year coaches can be successful. How many Tom Thibodeau’s are out there though? He’s been being courted as a head coach for about 10 years, and he finally found a situation that made sense for him.
But for every success story like the ones you just mentioned, there’s many more that end up like Keith Smart (just fired yesterday) or Vinny Del Negro or Michael Curry or John Kuester or Mark Iavoroni or (gulp) Adrian Dantley….
Other than maybe Rick Adlemann (who also hasn’t won anything), there’s no one who could come in and do as good or better job than Karl. I’m not trying to be an apologist for the guy. God knows I’d have loved for him to rely on Felton a little less against OKC. I just think everyone calling for his head today is a little out of touch.
It’s not his fault the team shot like 65% from the line in the series. It’s not his fault the refs gave OKC an almost 3-to-1 FT advantage in Game 5. And yes, we were brutalized on the boards. But rebounding is much more about desire than size. And it seemed like every single player was heading back down court when a shot went up. OKC shot terribly, but none of our guys wanted to work hard, go kick someone’s ass and get the ball.
Gallo is 6-10, Chandler is 6-9, Nene is 6-10, Bird is 6-11, Harrington is 6-9. They combined for 1 offensive rebound, and only 17 total rebounds. That’s not a small lineup…that’s a bunch of pussies who don’t want to do what it takes to win. You gotta want it.
I know we all want Mozgov to be the second coming of Arvydas Sabonis, but he was banged up. Koufos wasn’t ready. There is a personnel problem on this team. We don’t have any bangers. Give me someone like Craig Smith or Chuck Hayes any day, even though they are 4-6 inches shorter than our “bigs.”
by 12-piece Nuggets on Apr 28, 2011 3:33 PM MDT up reply actions
Yep, on the money IMO...
… but “they” are right, we can’t play big.
Regardless of the number of tall players we put on the court at the same time, bit we can’t play big.
Maybe GK wouldn’t play small ball so much if we had tall players that were wanting to play “big”
Good points...
I still think that GK had a lot to do with the rebounding disadvantage we found ourselves in this series. You right in saying that guys have to step up and box out, but at the same time, GK wants us to run so much that our guys are leaking out on the break half the time. Is that the players fault, or GK’s fault? Either way it seems like this team has always had rebounding issues for one of three reasons: the style of play we use (up tempo with multiple screen and rolls with players leaking out on the defensive end), or that some of the guys we have are a little soft, or “pussies,” if you will, or our coach is in love with small ball, which leads us to getting out rebounded. In any case I really think we need to roll out a line up of Moz, Nene (if he re-signs), Gallo, AAA, Ty next year. This puts Nene at his natural position, and could hopefully shore up some of those rebounding issues. The we play would have to change a bit, but I think it could work. The question then becomes, is Moz gonna cut it? I guess we shall find out….
I'd like to see that!!
Wouldn’t mind a little of Laimbeer’s mindset instilled into Nene, that’s for sure.
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