Very good inside look at the George Karl and the Denver Nuggets this week by Ian Thomsen at cnnsi.com. Nugget teams of the past few years were known to put up lots of points and give up tons as well. This year, the coaching staff is focusing more on the defensive side of the floor. Come playoff time, George Karl felt that they didn't have an identity defensively to go deep into the playoffs. Here is a look at the turnaround, which hasn't always been a smooth ride:
1.Going back to basics: Over the previous two seasons in Denver, Karl had focused on developing a passing-game offense aimed at creating gaps to attack the basket. He won't try making that a priority again. "I learned a lot, it was a good experiment, I'm glad I survived it," Karl said. "But there's no question I'm better when I coach the game from the defensive end of the court. My staff is more comfortable when I coach from the defensive end of the court, and deep down inside most players have a trust in that end of the court."
When his Nuggets lost in the first round last season for the fourth successive year -- having won three playoff games in that span -- Karl and his longtime assistant Tim Grgurich agreed on a new way forward: Return to the old system, based on the aggressive trapping defense that dates back to his long run of success with Gary Payton in Seattle.
"I remember the next two or three days [after the playoffs]. We said, 'We've got to go back to the old way,' '' Karl said. "There's too much freedom and openness to coaching offense. The discipline and the toughness and the soul of the game come from the defensive end of the court most of the time."
Karl understands why people say he didn't appear to be plugged in over the last couple of years: He was thinking his way through the game instead of reacting to it.
"So much of coaching is the trust and passion that the team feels from you, and if you're faking that over a 100 games a year, they find that out," Karl said. "I'm not sure I was faking it, but the last couple of years I was confused. When a problem came up, I didn't know how to address it based on my experiences. Now I think I'm back to feeling much more comfortable on how to attack a weakness that we've developed or a situation that has arisen."
2.Embrace discipline: "We were at Grg's camp [in Las Vegas] the first week in August and he said, 'Not only do we have to go back to the defense, but we've got to go back to touching our players and telling these guys that we can still win,' " Karl said. "Because the cloud in Denver was, We're done. No one thought we could win. Everybody predicted the doom."
Each of the assistant coaches reached out to players over the summer.
"He said some hard things to me, I said some hard things to him. Nenê has never been a guy who went to the gym until he had to. I would say within a week [of that dinner], he was in the gym five days a week from August on.
"Grg went to Dallas -- I think twice in that time -- to talk with Kenyon [Martin], and he talked about how we can't have the nonsense that we've had. And Kenyon bought into that. In our first team meeting, Kenyon stood up and said, 'I have been a problem, but I'm not going to be a problem anymore.' "
Both Nenê and Martin have had resurgent seasons. Nenê is averaging career highs of 14.6 points and 7.8 rebounds while shooting 60.3 percent, and Martin is playing his most minutes since the 2004-05 season.
3.Call it like you see it. "In the NBA we do not coach enough," Karl said. "We manage. We attitude-adjust, we call the league office, we talk to agents.
"I tell Pop [Spurs coach Gregg Popovich] all the time, 'Pop, you coach different than we coach. You have a no-nonsense, low-maintenance superstar.' How many of them exist? When you have a disciplinary problem with Melo Carmelo Anthony and you have an injury here and you have a dysfunctional personality on your team, that's not coaching; that's managing. The more that we have to manage what I call the de-energizers of basketball -- selfishness, non-commitment, not playing hard, attitudes in the locker room -- you're not coaching."
"Melo and I are now at the stage where I can talk to him about everything," Karl said. "Sometimes I do it with [the help of] Chauncey [Billups], and there are still the sensitive areas of shot selection and selfishness and commitment to defense, where sometimes it's easier to be with an assistant or do it through a video. But I would say Melo and I are at the stage now that whatever the headache is, even when he's [angry] he can bring it to me, and when I'm [angry] I can bring it to him. Before we always kind of walked around, holding back."
"I went to Chauncey and Melo in a couple of instances [this season] and said, 'You've got to take this off my plate. You've got to police this team. You've got to take responsibility.
4.Import leadership: The Nuggets were already committed to a new (or old) approach when they dealt Allen Iverson to Detroit in November for Billups, a blockbuster trade that enabled them to eventually limbo underneath the tax threshold even as their team improved -- a most improbable dream in this recession-based league.
"I'm blessed, for the first time in a long time, of having [leadership from a player like Billups]," Karl said. "Sam Cassell was my leader in Milwaukee. Now, come on, Sam's kind of crazy. Sam believes the right stuff, but he doesn't present it on a daily basis. Chauncey presents it on a daily basis. He reminds me a lot of Nate [McMillan] when I had Nate in Seattle, and I didn't know how valuable Nate was because I was still a young coach. People ask me at the clinics, 'Who was your most favorite player you ever coached?' And I say Nate McMillan, because on a daily basis he brought winning and leadership to [our] locker room and to [our] court.
"Chauncey does that. He makes your words be listened to. And when you're coaching five or six years with a team, that's important. Because they get tired of hearing my stories and my repeats and my desires and my demands. But Chauncey has kind of lifted that up."
"There is going to be a surprise team. And what I don't want [my team] to do is throw away the opportunity because of not knowing what it takes. Because we don't have the mature toughness that a Utah might have. We do have a lot of talent that we can throw away five possessions or 10 possessions and make it up, but that's not how you win big. And too many times I say, 'OK, we won, and yeah, you didn't play those first five minutes -- but this is not how you beat L.A. This is not how you beat Houston in Houston. You don't do it this way.' "
