Maybe not tor you but Mr. George Karl is often really funny to me: Laugh Out Loud George Karl! The page is loading, but very slowly, for me.
What? The experience of getting you ass handed to you on a platter by the Lakers last playoffs, so much so that the Denver players admitted to quitting towards the end...is that the experience you are referring to Mr. Karl???
In my opinion there is one and only one team that has a remote chance of upsetting the Lakers: the Hornets. Maybe there is a 1/400 chance of that, and it would have to be something that came about due to at least a couple of Lakers' injuries. At the beginning of the season, I was thinking the Rockets might have a chance to upset LA too, but it's just one injury after another for them, so I don't see how it's possible anymore.
he's just pissed cuz we cut his precious little coby karl. anyway, yeah, coach karl is an idiot, and i dont see how he still is employed, i mean, he really truly beleives what comes out of his fat ugly face is the truth! he's just disrespectful to the lakers and now if they meet in the playoffs the lakers will remember what he said and whoop the nuggs worse than we did last year! what a dumb-ass coach!
Coby might just be the next Coach for the Nuggets. Seriously, the Nuggets are 16-1 against losing teams now, the best in the League, which is the main reason why their record is so spectacular. But those teams don't play in the playoffs, so big deal. Here's another way of looking at how this franchise has fallen short. They had this massively huge payroll, chock loaded with players who could come up big in the playoffs, but George Karl just sat on his a&$ and they just let AI run around and around and around to nowhere, with no and I mean no team concept. Now fast forward to now: they have all these low cost players, all of whom are playing at least half again as much better than ever before, and they have achieved this by playing with a purpose and as a team. And George Karl is up jawing the refs and much more actively coaching the team than when they had the playoff level players. Even these days, though, the Nuggets are one dimensional, their purpose or system is primarily on defense only. The franchise either does not believe in or is unable to implement any kind of real offensive strategy or system other than fast break, which is notoriously undependable and lame in the playoffs. Other than that, all they have is the tactics of Chauncey Billups and that is all and that seems like all they want or all they think they need. One basketball player, even Chauncey Billups, does not add up to a system or a strategy or a purpose. So in summary, last year they had the players who could win some playoff games, but they had almost nothing in the way of coaching or a purpose. Karl was reduced to telling them to pass more in the Lakers series, since there really wasn't any point guard! I am not exaggerating. This year between Chauncey, the hard charging defense as a system, and even Karl doing a little actual coaching work, they to some extent have a team purpose going, but they do not have the players who will be able to win playoff games. The playoff referees are going to slap this team down if they come in thinking they are going to milk the refs and foul and get fouled their way to winning playoff games. And no team will be a punching bag for the Nuggets. And playoff teams are not going to permit Chauncey to drop 25-30 points on them, come on, he's not that hard to guard at his age. So in short, in recent years they had enough players but not enough purpose. Now they have some purpose, more than enough of it on defense actually, but not enough "playoff players". You have to have both at once, Denver.
Last year there were almost as many defensive specialists as this year, but their teammates were not playing defense because their was no real team objective for that. Remember Yakhouba Diawara, now on the Heat? Remeber Eduardo Najera (Nets)? Remember Marcus Camby (Clippers)? And if they wanted to play like this, they sure as hell didn't need Allen Iverson, so, remember Reggie Evans (traded to the Sixers for Iverson)? If they had Evans' heavy rebounding right now they would be able to just about truthfully say they don't miss Camby on defense. These defensive specialists were like lone wolves, since the rest of the team was not sold on playing good defense. Just as bad or worse, the defensive specialists were totally out of the flow offensively. Poor Diawara, who has a decent three, had games where he played 20 minutes or so and hardly got the ball at all. So they had defensive specialists, but never used them in a coordinated way with the other players until now. So in the recent years, the last two anyway, they had more than enough offensive playoff talent, but no playoff wins was the result of not tying the team together and making defense a point of pride. So now they have changed their stripes and have the team defense but they are still lost offensively. And even defensively, they are in for some rude awakenings when their defensive specialists who have little or no playoff experience play against quality offensive teams and quality coaches who will adjust until Billups is contained, and face referees who have seen it all before and twice on Sundays.
If you are a good coach and you encounter a team playing like the Nuggets are, you instruct your players to get physical right back on them, both off the ball and on the ball. Not only because you don't want to end up intimidated but, more importantly, you want to force the referees to get control of the game and, more specifically, to get control of the Nuggets. In the unlikely event that the playoff referees need some persuasion to keep control of the playoff game, this is what Adelman or Sloan or Scott or whoever will do: they will instruct their players to get as rough as necessary until the referees are forced to take control and call a tighter game.
