Nuggets at Clippers recap: No more Clippers highlight reel ...

The much maligned AAA played well last night. Good D on CP3 and looked much better on O.

Nice to see the bigs get time and play well. Good work Moz!

thats awesome

Every child is a treasure.

Sometimes I am walking with my daughter, I’m talking to my daughter, I’m looking at her, I’m pushing her in the stroller. And sometimes I pick her up and I just stare at her and I realize my only job in life is to keep her off the pole.

Keep my baby off the pole!

I mean they don’t grade fathers but if your daughter is a stripper you f*&$#@ up.

I have three kids and my youngest at 14 looks like a 2/3 scale model of Gallo!

Keep holding her close!!

can I add

1.b Mozgov continues to exact revenge for that over rated dunk. Takes the Clippers as a personal challenge. Good for you Mozzy

1.c Its Alive! Eat Ease A LIve! AAA is stirring.

4.B Reason why Knicks could make a crunch shot is because they had only their “stars” shooting them. How’s that for reverse conventionalism? Did you hear that from ESPN? No because they have their own religion.

My preseason prediction that was posted to a Daily Dime comes true. ;-)

We know how fickle fans can be, but reading the post article comments shows how much people really enjoy team basketball. Heading to the game tonight. I hope there is a good turnout despite the snow and everybody is fired up. Karl-build off this momentum.

he basically sat back and let them try to run stuff. oddly enough, miller’s only turnover came on a deep lob attempt to faried that was mistimed a bit

you freaked me out when you said Stone was dropped.

My biggest criticism of Mozgov was not the fouls but rather fouls where he was trying to draw charges. Ridiculous. get up there, hit, challenge.

So, what do we make of these Denver Nuggets?

It’s a question we’ve tossed around for months now, or at least since Feb. 22, 2010, when the infamous Carmelo Anthony trade was finally consummated. With a third of the 2011-12 season in the books, it seems the public still doesn’t have a good grip on the surging squad. Perhaps it’s because the Nuggets boast nary a household name. Perhaps it’s because they don’t play in Los Angeles or New York.

Or perhaps it’s because conventional wisdom assumes superstar-less teams aren’t supposed to be this good in a superstar league. Just how good are these Denver Nuggets?

The post-Carmelo era

Much like the infamous “Herschel Walker” trade in the NFL, the Nuggets dealt their franchise player for young players ready to bloom and a bounty of promising assets. Before last season, SportsNation voters ranked Anthony as the sixth-best player in the NBA, so it was probably a bit shocking for the public to see the Nuggets play significantly better without him. At the time of the trade, the Nuggets were 32-25. Since then, the star-less Nuggets are 33-14, matching their pre-trade win total in 11 fewer games. Meanwhile, the Knicks have struggled just to keep their heads above water, disproving the tired maxim that the team that lands the best player automatically wins the deal.

Since the Anthony trade (or the Danilo Gallinari trade, if you will), the Nuggets haven’t just been good; they’ve been great. The Nuggets have posted a bigger efficiency differential (plus-8.5) — which is simply how much they beat opponents every 100 possessions — over that time than the Miami Heat (plus-7.9), Oklahoma City Thunder (plus-6.8) and every other team not named the Chicago Bulls (plus-10.3).

How have they done it? By locking down the defensive end. Coach George Karl and Anthony have traded barbs about Anthony’s dedication to the defensive side of the ball, but the results are hard to ignore.

Before/After Carmelo Trade
Trade W L O-Rtg D-Rtg Net
Before 32 25 109.7 107.2 2.5
After 33 14 107.7 99.2 8.5

Looking at the comparison to the right, we find that the Nuggets’ defense has sharpened dramatically since Anthony jetted for the Big Apple. The team’s defensive rating dropped from 107.2 to 99.2 (remember, defensive rating is like a golf score; shaving points off your defensive rating is a good thing). The eight-point improvement on the defensive end more than compensates for the dip in offensive firepower.

This season, the Nuggets are ranked in the top-5 of just about every objective rating system. John Hollinger and Basketball-Reference both have them ranked fourth, ahead of other consensus contenders like Oklahoma City and the teams in Los Angeles. So why aren’t they getting equitable national recognition? When a team improves defensively, it’s just about the least sexy story in the sport, especially when we’re talking about a team whose fast-paced playing style obscures how stingy its defense actually is.

But aside from the team’s location and lack of a captivating source of improvement, there’s another thing going on here.

The star-less contenders

Here’s a question for you: Do the Nuggets have any legitimate All-Stars on their team? You might be able to construct a fairly persuasive argument for Ty Lawson, Gallinari, Al Harrington or Nene, but each of those candidates would need Scott Boras or Drew Rosenhaus to even have a fighting chance to earn a spot on the team over the guys who sell the jerseys.

Al Harrington
Jerome Miron/US PresswireAl Harrington has been only one of a deep and congealed Denver squad.

As cliché as it may sound, the Nuggets play team ball on both ends of the court. Their assist numbers have risen dramatically (56 percent to 62 percent) since Anthony left town, and the team’s defensive acumen has soared up the ranks once everyone bought in. With Gallinari, Lawson, Harrington and Nene, the Nuggets are stacked with young, team-focused players just a shade below the stratosphere of the elite.

This gets at the heart of why the Nuggets are a tough sell for the national audience. How can you be considered a qualified title contender if you don’t even have a star on the team? But if we have paid attention to the underwhelming performances of the Heat, Knicks and Lakers, if the pieces aren’t fitting well together and there’s no depth on the roster, then the box office star power means squat. Basketball might be more star-dependent than baseball or football, but one or two big names do not make a contender.

The household-nameless roster has worked phenomenally well in the regular season, but can it work in the playoffs when rotations shrink and games shorten?

The championship model

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Nuggets aren’t qualified for championship contender status until they have a clear No. 1 option who can take over games when called upon. All the usual suspects of contenders — Miami, Oklahoma City, Chicago, Dallas and both Los Angeles squads — share a common trait: they all have go-to guys they can lean on for scoring in a pinch.

Do the Nuggets have that guy? Before we delve into that question, we need to answer this one first: Does it really matter if they don’t? The Nuggets share the ball almost to a fault. There are 26 players with usage rates north of 26 percent (about one ball-dominant player per team) and none of them wear Denver blue. Looking at Denver’s roster, Harrington’s 25.4 percent usage rate leads the team, while Gallinari, Lawson and Nene hang just a shade above 20 percent, the standard rate if all players shared the ball equally.

Look at the list of recent champions and you’ll notice that they all have go-to scorers. The Mavericks had Dirk, the Lakers had Kobe and the Spurs had Manu and Duncan. But what about the Celtics? What about the Pistons? In their championship runs, they shared the ball much like the Nuggets have this season.

Looking at the most recent example in Boston, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett led the C’s in usage rate with 25.5 percent and 24.8 percent, respectively, that season while Ray Allen posted a 21.6 percent figure.

During that championship run, many will be surprised to learn that the Celtics actually were pretty terrible overall in crunch time, being outscored by 21 points in clutch situations (game within five points with under five minutes left). Pierce, Boston’s de facto closer, shot 1-for-14 (7.1 percent) with games in balance. Beantown triumphed over the Lakers even though its so-called closer stunk up the joint.

This is not to say that the current Nuggets squad is a mirror image of the Celtics’ title team in 2007-08 or the Pistons’ title team in 2003-04. The point is that establishing a closer in crunch time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Most games are decided outside of clutch time and you can win just as easily if you play suffocating defense, much like the Celtics and Pistons did.

The issue is whether the Nuggets can bring the hammer on the defensive end. Right now, the Nuggets aren’t there yet and they were exposed in the playoffs last season on that end. But if they’re looking for a team-focused blueprint to copy, they can find one in the Celtics’ and Pistons’ championship teams. Denver might not have the collective talent as those crowned teams, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s time we stopped doubting the Nuggets’ ceiling.

but I like Chandler much better as a starter, than coming off the bench. Take last year, when he came off the bench his mentality was get as many shots in as possible (similar to the role Karl carved out, and criticized, JR for). If Will’s a starter, he will be far more prone to play with the system. I know Chandler’s a good defender, but haven’t seen him go up against enough 2 guards to make a conclusive assessment. But AAA would be an ideal bench player because he is well aware of his role on the team.