In a game that left a clear majority of Nuggets fans concluding that George Karl has lost his previous abilities to coach an NBA game well, the Phoenix Suns buried the Nuggets in the second half with 3-pointers and the kind of ball movement that most teams can only dream about. The Suns bench outscored the Nuggets bench 39-9, but the even more alarming fact was that because George Karl essentially played just 6 players for the entire game, with Najera thrown in for just 9 minutes, there wasn't hardly any opportunity for Denver reserve players to score, because they simply did not play. The 6 Nuggets who played most of the game were worn down and out by the fast passing and accurate shooting of the Sun's scoring machine. The Suns were getting regular breathers on the bench, while the Nuggets were huffing and puffing for almost the whole game. While A.I. and Melo are the kind of super athletes who have enough stamina to play well for almost the whole game without breathers, it's not clear that players such as Nene, Camby, Kleiza, and Blake, who were the other four on the court for most of the game, have the kind of super athletic stamina needed to play at top performance for that long.
J.R. Smith, one of the best 3-point shooters in basketball, and an improving defender who has shown some Iverson-type ability to get steals that could have disrupted the flow of the Sun's passing and scoring onslaught, simply did not play at all. There was no report that he was injured, and Smith was observed sitting on the bench the whole night, apparently in good health. While it is true that Linas Kleiza has had 4 or 5 nice games from 3 point land in the last month, that's not enough good games yet to offset the 1/7 and 1/8 type games that he had regularly earlier this season, and then again tonight. So Kleiza has a long way to go before he can be considered comparable to J.R. Smith. When Kleiza failed in his bizarre mission to match J.R. Smith, the Suns buried the Nuggets with 10/20 shooting from beyond the 3-point arc, while the Nuggets floundered at 3/16. Notice that had the Nuggets hit half of theirs, or 8/16, they would have scored 15 more points and would have from that alone been in this game to the final buzzer.
I am not going to beat around the bush. Leaving Smith completely out of the game, while the Suns were rotating in their 3-point aces, such as SG Leandro Barbosa and SF James Jones, made it impossible for the Nuggets to win, unless either A.I. or Melo had transformed into Kobe Bryant and scored at least 50 points on 20/33 or better shooting. When that did not happen, and the Suns predictably crushed the worn out Nuggets, the fans were left hoping that George Karl is transformed into being the coach of another team no later than the start of the 2007-2008 season. This would require the owner of the Nuggets to buy out the remainder of George Karl's contract, and I am going to try to find out the details of that contract for a future report.
Actually, Karl presented a twin gift to those who want to see him fired; not only did he totally bench Smith for no good reason, he did the same to Reggie Evans, who is a rebounding machine and who would have been especially useful in the 2nd quarter, when the Nuggets led by as many as 18 points, to deny the Suns offensive rebounds and second chance opportunities.
And with Evans and Smith completely benched from game to game, neither DerMarr Johnson nor Yakhouba Diawara have any hope of getting any playing time for the foreseeable future.
And not only did the coach not make the moves that are expected of a professional basketball coach, he didn't really look like one either. He seemed too detached and unemotional, almost comatose at times. He did not at all look like someone who was very able to or very interested in trying to motivate his players to keep playing hard and smart. I know looks can be deceiving, but I thought I had to report this because many other fans who watched the game had the same reaction to Karl's demeanor.
The Suns had 30 assists to just 12 for the Nuggets, even though the Nuggets were a respectable .476 from the field. The Suns had 31 points off fast breaks, while the Nuggets had just 14. By half way through the 3rd quarter, the Nuggets were getting too tired to make many cuts away from their defenders, and assists and passing in general became more and more difficult. By not passing much, the Nuggets were able to keep their turnover count within reason and avoid a monumental rout. Even though Denver did keep it's turnovers under control overall, the Suns stole the ball 12 times from the Nuggets, whereas the Nuggets stole from the Suns just 8 times, with 3 of those being Anthony steals.
Both teams had plenty of opportunities inside, and the Suns had 58 points in the paint while the Nuggets had 52. The Suns shooting was so impressive that it would scare teams like the Spurs and the Mavericks if they didn't know that most of the Nuggets were too tired for most of the second half to deny very many open looks to the Sun's gunners. So dont worry Mr. Avery Johnson and Mr. Greg Popovich, the Suns are most likely not as good as the Nuggets made them look tonight.
SF Shawn Marion was the most outstanding Sun of all; he had 33 points on 13/17 shooting, along with 9 rebounds, 3 steals, and 2 blocks. And the Suns have the best shooting guard tandem in the NBA, with Raja Bell and Leandro Barbosa. Combined, they had 38 points on 15/27 shooting. PG Steve Nash had 18 points on 7/12 shooting, and he had 11 assists. Nash could have had 20 assists, but he shared the wealth with the Bell/Barbosa tandem, which had 12 assists.
Both Melo and Iverson played very well. Melo made 9 of 13 layups and dunks and 4 of 11 jumpers, including 1 of 3 from long range. He had 10 rebounds, and he led the Nuggets in assists with 5 and in steals, with 3. So now Melo is doing more of the non-scoring things, but the Nuggets have not been transformed into a better team as a result of that, so that appears to have been a miscalculation on the part of the Denver coaching staff. As for the Answer, he drew almost twice as many fouls as Melo did, and made 5/11 of his jumpers, 3/5 of his layups, and 10/13 of his free throws. A.I. and Melo, however, were offset by Camby and Kleiza, who were a combined 1/13 on jumpers and 7/21 overall.
All in all, it wasn't so much the loss that frustrated Nuggets fans as it was the realization that, without J.R. Smith and Reggie Evans in the game, the Nuggets did not stand a chance of winning. That and the coach seeming to be in a daze most of the time were the truly alarming things.
Kleiza played 28 minutes and was 1/7, 1/7 on 3's, and 1/2 from the line for 4 points, and he had 3 rebounds. Steve Blake played 39 minutes and was 4/8 and 1/2 on 3's for 9 points, and he had 2 assists, a steal, and a rebound.
Nene played 35 minutes and was 7/11 and 4/5 from the line for 18 points, and he had 9 rebounds, a block, and an assist.
Camby played virtually the entire game and was 6/14 and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he had 13 rebounds, 4 blocks, 3 assists, and 2 steals.
A.I. played virtually the entire game and was 8/16, 0/2 on 3's, and 10/13 from the line for 26 points, and he had a steal, a block, and an assist.
Melo played virtually the entire game and was 13/24, 1/3 on 3's, and 5/7 from the line for 32 points, and he added 10 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals.
The next game will be Sunday, April 1 in Seattle to play the Sonics at 7 pm mountain time.
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There are actually many more ways to choose and read Reports. For a complete description of all options, see this User Guide article.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
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Real GM NBA and Team Forums
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Armchair GM Open Posting Site
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The Fox NBA board is very low traffic, and the MSNBC NBA board doesn't exist anymore. The CBS Sports NBA Message Board is a layered site; you can NOT post topics nor expect to be considered seriously there until you have spent a few years posting there. We do not recommend CBS Sports. So the only real, fully open NBA forum hosted by a big corporation is the ESPN message board. Be forewarned though that the ESPN board is dominated by very young fans who make very short comments. On the other hand, it is a high traffic site, so we won't stop you from posting a Quest link at ESPN if you want to.
ESPN NBA Message Board
GIVE US THE JUICE TO PRODUCE REPORTS MORE QUICKLY
Although there is a guaranteed minimum rate of Report production regardless of traffic, IT IS IN YOUR POWER to help double or triple the number of and frequency of Reports. Simply take two or three minutes as often as you can to recommend Quest and post links to Quest on your favorite sports and other sites. The resulting automatic increase of traffic will in turn increase the resources that go in to producing Quest, which in turn speeds up reporting. If you want, e-mail how you helped (include the url of where you posted a link to Quest) and we will throw some Internet love back to where you tell us on the Internet. Thank you.
Here are some quick links that you can use to find a place where you might post a link to Quest and/or to Quest content.
HOLD MOUSE HERE TO EXPAND THIS MENU OF PLACES ON WHICH YOU CAN POST A LINK TO QUEST:
BASKETBALL SITES THAT ARE OPEN FOR CONTENT FROM ANYONE
Note: Beware of "layered" sites. None of the following are layered sites, which are sites that allow contributions from the public only in hard to find, low traffic areas, while the main areas are off limits for public input and are only for a chosen few. All of the following have at least some notable traffic, and all of them allow relatively equal and open participation. The order is from most recommended to least recommended, based on about half a dozen factors.
Bleacher Report Open Posting Site
Inside Hoops NBA Forum
Real GM NBA and Team Forums
Pro Sports Daily NBA Forum
Basketball Forum NBA Forum
Sporting News NBA Forum
Hoops Hype NBA Forum
Armchair GM Open Posting Site
SportsTwo NBA Forum
NBA Dimensions NBA Forum
OTR Basketball Forums NBA Forum
NBA Boards NBA Forum
NBA Wire NBA Forum
KFFL NBA Forum
Note: there are other forums, but they are all very low traffic and activity compared to the ones above.
MESSAGE BOARDS AT HUGE COROPORATIONS
The Fox NBA board is very low traffic, and the MSNBC NBA board doesn't exist anymore. The CBS Sports NBA Message Board is a layered site; you can NOT post topics nor expect to be considered seriously there until you have spent a few years posting there. We do not recommend CBS Sports. So the only real, fully open NBA forum hosted by a big corporation is the ESPN message board. Be forewarned though that the ESPN board is dominated by very young fans who make very short comments. On the other hand, it is a high traffic site, so we won't stop you from posting a Quest link at ESPN if you want to.
ESPN NBA Message Board
>>>I WANT TO STICK WITH THE WAY OTHER SITES PRESENT POSTS
Due to the number of, uniqueness of, and importance of the many other home page features we have, only one Report loads at a time, currently the one just above. To see the next Report (which would be the one that came out just before the one above) on this home page, click "Older Posts" that is at the very bottom of the Report showing above, just above the section header "Your Ball: Take Your Best Shot".
>>ALTERNATIVE HOME PAGES
There are three home pages, all of which have all of the Reports but which have completely different features appearing on the sidebar and below the one Report that is shown at a time. These pages have been designed so that they fully load in about 10 seconds (no more super long load times we used to be known for.)
HOME PAGE A: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE B: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE C: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
>>REPORT READERS: Complete freedom to rapidly choose and read what you need or want to read. The latest 40 Reports are found near the top of all three of the primary home pages (linked to just above) while Reports #41-#100 are found in three separate readers placed at various points down the page on all three primary home pages.
>>EXPRESS VERSION: Every Single Report but no Features: a Fast Loading Page: Click Here
>>FAST BREAK VERSION: The Latest 100 Reports via Report Readers Only; no Features, a Fast Loading Page: Click Here
>>QUEST ARCHIVE HOME PAGES--REPORT ARCHIVES AND A SMALL NUMBER OF CLASSIC FEATURES THAT WON'T FIT ON OTHER HOME PAGES
QUEST 4: REPORTS 101-200
QUEST 5: REPORTS 201-300
QUEST 6: REPORTS 301-400
QUEST 7: REPORTS 401-500
QUEST 8: REPORTS 501-600
QUEST 9: REPORTS 601-700
QUEST 10: REPORTS 701-800
>>FEATURES ONLY HOME PAGES: NO REPORTS, JUST FEATURES THAT WE CAN'T FIT ANYWHERE ELSE
QUEST OVERTIME
QUEST CLASSIC
>>COMPLETE TITLE INDEX: : A Complete Report Title Index, with Express Version Links to all Reports
>>LATEST 25 Reports: Direct links to the latest 25 Reports (with no truncated titles as you find with the poorly designed Google archive). This is located near the very bottom of this page.
>>GOOGLE ARCHIVE you will find this, with Reports shown by week not very far below.
>>I'M NEW AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE I WANT TO GO: Welcome to the Real Zone. Simply browse the page and see for yourself what is here. You will not be disappointed.
>>OR YOU CAN DO A CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE 13 BOOKS AND COUNTING CONTAINED ON THIS SITE>>>>>
Due to the number of, uniqueness of, and importance of the many other home page features we have, only one Report loads at a time, currently the one just above. To see the next Report (which would be the one that came out just before the one above) on this home page, click "Older Posts" that is at the very bottom of the Report showing above, just above the section header "Your Ball: Take Your Best Shot".
>>ALTERNATIVE HOME PAGES
There are three home pages, all of which have all of the Reports but which have completely different features appearing on the sidebar and below the one Report that is shown at a time. These pages have been designed so that they fully load in about 10 seconds (no more super long load times we used to be known for.)
HOME PAGE A: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE B: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE C: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
>>REPORT READERS: Complete freedom to rapidly choose and read what you need or want to read. The latest 40 Reports are found near the top of all three of the primary home pages (linked to just above) while Reports #41-#100 are found in three separate readers placed at various points down the page on all three primary home pages.
>>EXPRESS VERSION: Every Single Report but no Features: a Fast Loading Page: Click Here
>>FAST BREAK VERSION: The Latest 100 Reports via Report Readers Only; no Features, a Fast Loading Page: Click Here
>>QUEST ARCHIVE HOME PAGES--REPORT ARCHIVES AND A SMALL NUMBER OF CLASSIC FEATURES THAT WON'T FIT ON OTHER HOME PAGES
QUEST 4: REPORTS 101-200
QUEST 5: REPORTS 201-300
QUEST 6: REPORTS 301-400
QUEST 7: REPORTS 401-500
QUEST 8: REPORTS 501-600
QUEST 9: REPORTS 601-700
QUEST 10: REPORTS 701-800
>>FEATURES ONLY HOME PAGES: NO REPORTS, JUST FEATURES THAT WE CAN'T FIT ANYWHERE ELSE
QUEST OVERTIME
QUEST CLASSIC
>>COMPLETE TITLE INDEX: : A Complete Report Title Index, with Express Version Links to all Reports
>>LATEST 25 Reports: Direct links to the latest 25 Reports (with no truncated titles as you find with the poorly designed Google archive). This is located near the very bottom of this page.
>>GOOGLE ARCHIVE you will find this, with Reports shown by week not very far below.
>>I'M NEW AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE I WANT TO GO: Welcome to the Real Zone. Simply browse the page and see for yourself what is here. You will not be disappointed.
>>OR YOU CAN DO A CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE 13 BOOKS AND COUNTING CONTAINED ON THIS SITE>>>>>
SEARCH THE QUEST FOR THE RING--THE EQUIVALENT OF MORE THAN 13 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL
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SEARCH THE 13 BOOKS / 1.3 MILLION WORDSNBA LATEST 2010 PLAYOFFS VIDEOS
NOTES ABOUT VIDEOS: Some videos below appear only due to "spam tagging" and should be ignored; hover your mouse on the thumbs at the right to select videos.
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LATEST LOS ANGELES LAKERS VIDEOS
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THE QUEST FOR THE RING EMAIL ADDRESS
SITE E-MAIL
The site email address is the webmaster email address: nuggets1nuggets. This is a gmail address, so you add @gmail.com after the nuggets1nuggets. Use this email address to contact Nuggets 1 for any reason. If you are smart enough to know how basketball games are won, and you want to get promoted, nicely formatted space for you to publish your winning in basketball writing, by all means write to the above address. Alternatively, you can also comment or instantly publish your writing, by visiting and posting here.
The site email address is the webmaster email address: nuggets1nuggets. This is a gmail address, so you add @gmail.com after the nuggets1nuggets. Use this email address to contact Nuggets 1 for any reason. If you are smart enough to know how basketball games are won, and you want to get promoted, nicely formatted space for you to publish your winning in basketball writing, by all means write to the above address. Alternatively, you can also comment or instantly publish your writing, by visiting and posting here.
QUEST REPORTS #41 TO #60, GOING BACK IN TIME
QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PRIMARY WRITER
The basketball expert and maniac who writes most of this site doesn't know how to stop until he has said and proved it all. So we are simply in a League of our own, and much of this unique content is for truly serious basketball people. The Quest for the Ring primary writer has two college degrees, one in Economics and one in Accounting. Both were with high honors and straight A grades. He played basketball in high school mostly because he was so tall at an early age but, unfortunately, he didn't have squat for athletic skills. Is that why he respects players more than other writers do? Probably so. In any event, he has been very closely following pro basketball for more than a dozen years. He has been extremely closely following the NBA in general and the Denver Nuggets in particular for over 4 years now. He has been learning the Detroit Pistons in great detail since the Iverson trade. He learns fast.
QUEST LOADING TIMES, RELOADING, AND BROWSER USAGE
LOADING OUR LOADED PAGE: The Nuggets 1 Main Page is chock loaded and needs time to load from sometimes sluggish or clunky Google servers. You may not be able to scroll properly while the page is loading. Links, including unfortunately the jump link to the latest content, may not work until the page is done or almost done loading. Please be patient and let it load. Your own computer system contains many variables that also determine how long it takes for Quest for the Ring to fully load. For example, how many programs and other sites are already up and running on your computer, and whether you have recently cleaned your temporary internet history and related caches will help determine how long it takes for the page to long.
Despite great variations, we will make estimates of how long the Quest home page will need to fully load. The following time are for those with reasonably healthy and not overburdened systems. With a fast broadband connection, generally a cable connection in the USA, the page will load in full in about 30-60 seconds. It will take 50-120 seconds to load with slower broadband connections, generally dsl in the USA. In Europe and Japan, my understanding is that dsl connections are frequently much faster than they are in the USA, so it would be less time for dsl in Europe and Japan. With a dial-up connection, the Quest home page might take 1-2.5 minutes to load, so just go on to something else and come back in about 2 minutes would be my advice if you are loading the page with a slow dial-up connection.
However you are assessing Quest, it is well worth the wait, so please try to be patient and let it load. Remember, most good things require at least a little bit of patience.
RELOADING WILL BE NECESSARY SOMETIMES
Every once in a while, parts of the page will not load. You will notice some things missing. If this happens, normally, if you click refresh and reload the page, you will get a complete loading and it will be a quicker loading than the original loading was. Having said that, you will find if you are a very heavy internet user that at any given time, if you have more than one browser available to you, that different browsers may load a loaded page such as this differently, with perhaps only one browser loading the page in full and other browsers failing to load one or more elements.
BROWSERS
All major users of the internet eventually realize that they must have at least 2 browsers, because browsers gradually become less reliable as time goes by, and because even if a browser is freshly downloaded, it may not properly load certain internet pages, whereas another browser will. If you notice open spaces on Quest (or any other website) even after reloading the page, you may need to try a different browser in order to more fully view that page. At this time, the Quest finds that any of the following browsers are able to fully, or at least almost fully, load Quest for the Ring pages: We recommend all of the following equally:
Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Safari
Despite great variations, we will make estimates of how long the Quest home page will need to fully load. The following time are for those with reasonably healthy and not overburdened systems. With a fast broadband connection, generally a cable connection in the USA, the page will load in full in about 30-60 seconds. It will take 50-120 seconds to load with slower broadband connections, generally dsl in the USA. In Europe and Japan, my understanding is that dsl connections are frequently much faster than they are in the USA, so it would be less time for dsl in Europe and Japan. With a dial-up connection, the Quest home page might take 1-2.5 minutes to load, so just go on to something else and come back in about 2 minutes would be my advice if you are loading the page with a slow dial-up connection.
However you are assessing Quest, it is well worth the wait, so please try to be patient and let it load. Remember, most good things require at least a little bit of patience.
RELOADING WILL BE NECESSARY SOMETIMES
Every once in a while, parts of the page will not load. You will notice some things missing. If this happens, normally, if you click refresh and reload the page, you will get a complete loading and it will be a quicker loading than the original loading was. Having said that, you will find if you are a very heavy internet user that at any given time, if you have more than one browser available to you, that different browsers may load a loaded page such as this differently, with perhaps only one browser loading the page in full and other browsers failing to load one or more elements.
BROWSERS
All major users of the internet eventually realize that they must have at least 2 browsers, because browsers gradually become less reliable as time goes by, and because even if a browser is freshly downloaded, it may not properly load certain internet pages, whereas another browser will. If you notice open spaces on Quest (or any other website) even after reloading the page, you may need to try a different browser in order to more fully view that page. At this time, the Quest finds that any of the following browsers are able to fully, or at least almost fully, load Quest for the Ring pages: We recommend all of the following equally:
Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Safari