On a night that veteran Chauncey Billups worked to whip his young USA Men’s Basketball squad into shape, Nuggets teammate Carmelo Anthony committed himself to the US Team for the 2012 Olympics in London.
Mark Warkentien is on his way out of Denver after the Nuggets announced they are not interested in renewing the contract of their VP of Basketball Operations. With him will go Rex Chapman, the Nuggets’ VP of Player Personnel, whose contract has also expired.
The Denver Nuggets have developed a disturbing trend of sitting out the NBA Draft. What began with an ill-fated Draft Day decision the year after Carmelo Anthony was drafted in 2003 has become a legacy of poor draft-related decisions by the Denver Nuggets’ front office.
The blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of head coach Adrian Dantley, who was overmatched all series in the presence of Jerry Sloan’s masterful in-game coaching. The Denver Nuggets went out with a whimper in 2010, and the team will have a long offseason to consider what changes need to be made to improve in 2011.
Down three games to one in the opening round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs, Denver needed a big victory on Wednesday night. More than that, they needed a big outing from absent star Chauncey Billups. The Nuggets got both in Game 5 at Pepsi Center, part of their 116-102 win.
Denver’s bigs couldn’t make layups, their bench had no spark, and their defense made lazy rotations versus the Jazz for the third straight game. Not coincidentally, after going up 1-0 to start this opening round playoff series, the Nuggets have lost the last 3 games.
The Nuggets could have won this game (and this series) with consistent effort. When they played hard at both ends they were clearly the beater team. But Utah simply out worked them. Melo was the only one who played hard all the way through (et to Billups?) and he missed time with foul trouble again.
As dominant as the Nuggets were throughout the regular season series, the Jazz improved mightily in the final month of the season. Carlos Boozer came on strong after struggling for Utah since late last season, and the Jazz bench began contributing in a real way for the first time in years.
This was just what the doctor ordered for the Nuggets’ hopes to win the Northwest Division. Three starters played less than 29:00 minutes (Nene, Billups, Martin), so everyone should have plenty of energy to run with the Suns tomorrow. A win Tuesday night in Phoenix clenches the 3 seed.
The Nuggets’ 98-94 edging of the driven Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday displayed the offensive dynamism and (occasional) sharp defensive rotation that Denver has been lacking for most the last two weeks.
