Denver vs. Portland 10/29/09 Issues with Rotations

First off, this is not about Blake/Miller, neither guy had a big effect on the game positive or negative.  But I theorize that some other rotation issues did impact the point guard position in general.

The obvious reasons for the loss:

1.  The Blazers shot terribly

2.  The Nuggets, despite fewer rebounds, seem to get a quick hand on the ball more than the Blazers, disrupting shots around the basket

3. Foul shooting

4. Anthony playing great.

5. Foul trouble for our Centers

The last one we can partly chock up to the superior aggressiveness of the Nuggets, but mostly to the usual NBA refs we all wanted back so bad, deciding they would remove our size advantage from the competition to favor the Nuggets.  Allowing the clock to run down to 1.9 seconds, when Roy obviously fouled Anthony at 4 seconds was also extremely convenient, forcing a prayer shot.  As was discussed in the thread about a certain former NBA ref's tell-all book, you have to be at least 10 points better than the other team to beat them and the officials.  We let it stay too close

Now for what I saw as a big problem for us.  Rudy was the hot hand.  That's good right?  Well yes and no.  Because he was the hot hand, we had to stick with him, but we also need to stick with our other SG Roy at the end of games obviously, and we still need either Miller or Blake in if we want steady ball handling at such a crucial time.  That meant we were playing "small ball" for most of the fourth quarter, and even though Rudy was shooting the lights out, we had no defensive answer for Anthony, who was doing it at the other end, because Roy (small at SF) had to defend him, and expend extra energy doing it.  The moment they took Ty Lawson out of the game, we needed to put Martel or Outlaw in for Rudy, because we just lost the only serious matchup advantage we had with the small line up.  Or look at it this way, if we put in Webster or Outlaw, Carmelo has to guard them, and either Billups or Carter has to take Roy.  Then we have an advantageous matchup again.

The reason why Rudy rather than Outlaw or Webster having the hot hand makes it hard on our point guards is; because in a three guard line-up, They've got a bigger player on Roy, and in this case we don't have a true center in the game, there are less passes available than usual, and a lane where they have a big size advantage.  LMA is locked up by a bigger player, and taken out of the game too.  With one of our small forwards matching size for size, we could have opened it up more, even without a true center, and had a better chance of contesting Anthony's shots, and having Roy shut down one of their guards.  It seems counter-intuitve to say that sticking with Rudy who was amazing cost us the game, outside the obvious factors I mentioned above, but I think it did, because for every basket he scored, Anthony scored one taking advantage of his matchup with Roy, and he got to the free throw line at a greater rate.

Our lack of post scoring was also exposed once again.  It was our greatest off season need, and we didn't fill it.  It's really a shame we didn't get Milsap or David Lee.  As much as I like Howard, he is a shooter, which we already have a'plenty. Oden won't become a post threat overnight as many had hoped, so we are back to last year's issue of needing a banger PF.  A lot of fans didn't seem to get the urgency that some of us felt to get a good back-up PF, but it may start to dawn on them if they realize Oden's issues are not only that he didn't get the ball enough, and LMA is still not a post player.

Conclusion: we might have tried harder to establish either Outlaw or Webster, especially when we are playing against a team who's best player is a small forward.  I love it when Rudy has the hot hand, but hope it comes in the first three quarters rather than at the point in the game where there is no way we are going to sit Roy, and the other team is not going to sit their best guys, since I still don't think the Rudy/Roy back court has been proven yet, and "small ball" can kill us in this type of situation.  If Rudy at SG and Roy at PG is our best fourth quarter back court, then once again, we really needed to find that post scorer this summer, and not have taken Miller, but that's water under the bridge now.  In the more general sense, we need to be as aggressive or more aggressive than the other team, because even with all the things that went wrong, I see no reason we should have lost to that team if we had played as hard as they did.  I hope the guys have some Playoff flashbacks, to when they just weren't hard nosed enough to play with the big boys, and the angst they feel doubles their determination to show what they can do the rest of the year..