Thirty-two and eight doesn’t happen like that.
At least it never had before last winter. And it was even less likely to happen for a team such as the Nuggets, who found themselves near the bottom of a Western Conference pile-on midway through last season.
Playing .800 ball down the stretch may have set an NBA record for a team making a midseason coaching replacement, as Denver did with George Karl. But there’s a difference between a hot streak and an 82-game grind. Even an exceptional team doesn’t play at that clip for a full schedule. A dynasty does.
Yet here stands Carmelo Anthony, a 21-year-old, third-year pro, discussing how his Nuggets are ready to break through the NBA’s Plexiglas ceiling.
“The way we’re going right now, it looks like we can keep that pace up,” he said.
Entering their 30th NBA season, the Nuggets are as confident as their opponents are nervous.
“At full strength they’re going to be one of the powerhouses of this league,” said Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson, who is measuring his rebuilt roster against Denver’s power and speed.
“I’m scared to death of them,” said San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich, whose team has won two of the past three NBA titles and appears deeper than ever this season. “Now they got a training camp under George, and they are running even harder than they did last year. They’re playing even better defense individually. They understand what he wants more. They are more set in their roles. They’re deeper than they were last year. They’ll be hungry after losing to us in the first round. I think they’re going to be as good as anybody in the West.”
Told of Popovich’s compliment, Anthony replied, “We don’t want to scare people, man. We just want to go out and play basketball. Last year we were going after everybody. This year we’re going to have a target on our backs.”
That’s fine with Karl, who knows what separates a one-and-out playoff team, as the Nuggets have been the past two years, and a true contender.
“It’s a combination of talent, confidence and mental toughness,” he said. “It’s hard to be a top-of-the-mountain team. Everybody says they want it, but when you get challenged in your commitment to do it, it takes a lot of work, a lot of team, a lot of togetherness, a lot of organization.”
And where are the Nuggets?
“I think this team’s ready for a challenge.”
Sacrifice a key element
The Nuggets are trying to reach rarified air. They have not won a division title since 1987-88, when they won a team-record 54 games. They have not gotten past the second round of the playoffs since 1984-85, when they made their lone trip to the Western Conference finals.
From the Nuggets’ perspective, how far they go this season revolves around three criteria – their health, their consistency and their unselfishness. Not all are slam dunks.
The Nuggets’ roster is full of players with a history of injuries. Their three best big men – Marcus Camby, Kenyon Martin and Nene – missed a combined 55 games last season and played hurt at other times. Sharpshooter Voshon Lenard missed all but three games because of a torn left Achilles tendon, leaving no consistent long-range scoring threat. Key reserves Eduardo Najera and Greg Buckner also have injury histories.
“We all understand the window to being a champion in the NBA is very short,” Buckner said. “It can close on you anytime. We all want to win that championship. We know right now we’ve got the talent, but anything can happen, so we’ve got to take advantage of things right now.”
To do so, the Nuggets have to develop a proven consistency. A year ago, they started 17-25, leading to two head coaching changes. If they had simply started .500 in that same 42-game stretch, they could have won the division with the 32-8 finish and earned a No. 3 playoff seed, not the No. 7 spot opposite San Antonio.
The Nuggets know the road to playoff success starts at home.
“We dug ourselves a hole the first half of the season,” Camby said. “Trying to get home-court advantage in the first round, that’s a big plus for us, especially getting teams up in that altitude and running them.”
The biggest cure for injuries, and uneven play, would seem to be a deep bench pining for playing time. The Nuggets appear to have it, but should everyone remain healthy, egos might need soothing as playing time grows scarce.
“The commitment of sacrificing your statistics and your ego and your individuality for a championship team is not always learned in one year,” Karl said. “But I think a lot of guys on this team feel that we can be really good.”
Anthony already got a taste of basketball greatness – and the importance of being unselfish – by helping Syracuse to the 2003 NCAA championship .
“It wasn’t just this person standing out,” he said. “Everybody knew what they had to do for us to win. A lot of people have to sacrifice. From the first guy to the 12th guy, we’ve got to sacrifice at least something.”
Depth allows flexibility
In the end, talent wins in the NBA. Though the Nuggets had no all-stars a year ago, those inside and outside the organization believe the pieces are in place for a banner season.
“You’ve got great bigs,” Karl said. “You’ve got a young star in Carmelo. I think you’ve got an unsung point guard (Andre Miller). How we fit in the pieces is going to be our challenge.”
The team’s long bench has Karl licking his lips. He can use seemingly endless combinations. He has experimented with a small, fast lineup and a taller, more defensive-oriented one. He even envisions one set of five players being sent out specifically to draw fouls.
“They are going to be great,” New York coach Larry Brown said. “They have unbelievable depth. Carmelo is really playing well in the games I’ve seen. I really like their team.”
Just as important, with depth at every position, the Nuggets’ management could easily adjust at midseason to fill a hole.
They might need to bolster their 3-point shooting if defenses again give away the perimeter and clog the interior, as has happened in recent years.
But for now, Karl and general manager Kiki Vandeweghe want to see how far this group can get.
“George and I really love the chemistry of the team,” Vandeweghe said. “We love the talent. We really want to give it a chance to play together fully healthy. Whether we ever get that chance or not, I don’t know. Before you make changes, major changes to try to improve the team, you want to see what they did healthy together. I think the team deserves that chance.”
While the Nuggets appear to have all the elements for a memorable season, assistant coach Doug Moe offers a word of caution. It was Moe who was in charge of those mid-1980s teams that set the franchise’s gold standard. But in his mind, even those teams were good, not great.
“You’ve got to have it all to be a great team,” Moe said. “You’ve got to have the work ethic. Everything’s got to come together. You’ve got to have talent to start off with, but it’s not just talent. You’ve got to put all the pieces together and there’s just so many of them.”
Expectations weigh on good teams and bounce off great teams.
Martin felt it in New Jersey, where two trips to the NBA Finals were not enough to prevent a rift that sent coach Byron Scott out the door midway through the following season.
“As long as we keep that focus we had last year and we have now, it’s easy to win games,” Martin said. “When you let that other stuff creep in, where you think you’re too good, you can’t be beat, you start relaxing. We witnessed it in Jersey. We didn’t have that same focus that we (once) had. As long as we do that (here), the sky’s the limit.”
Much of the league seems to agree. Brown, Jackson and Popovich are the only NBA head coaches with championship rings since 1996. They’re all on Denver’s bandwagon.
But it’s one thing for preseason prognosticators to call a team great. And it involves more than playing great for 40 games.
As young as he is, even Anthony knows that much.
“Winning an NBA title,” he said. “Now that’s the definition of a great team.”
Staff writer Marc J. Spears contributed to this report.
Staff writer Adam Thompson can be reached at 303-820-5447 or athompson@denverpost.com.
