George Karl emptied a postgame beer into a paper cup Sunday night in his Pepsi Center office, savoring both the pour and the first sip as if it were Dom Perignon.
“I’m happy,” the Nuggets coach said by way of explanation.
Indeed, a cause for celebration. Through the years, it often has been hard to bring a smile to Karl’s face. While not quite as doom-and-gloom as one of his mentors, Larry Brown, those men share a penchant for anguish — usually brought on by their team’s failure to, in one way or another, do justice to their own vision of the beautiful game.
But on Sunday, despite a performance in which Denver shot but 34 percent from the field, Karl was all asparkle. That was mainly because of a grinding effort down the stretch that helped the Nuggets not only survive their abysmal shooting but come away with a 90-84 victory.
The triumph marked the team’s second consecutive dominant defensive performance. Friday, the Nuggets beat the defending NBA champion Celtics 94-85 at Boston. The back-to-back performances marked the first time in three years Denver held consecutive opponents to fewer than 86 points.
Even more encouraging, Karl said, is the idea that the contests weren’t some sort of aberration.
“It’s nothing complicated: You’re going to play defense, you’re going to play hard, you’re going to try,” Karl said. “I’d forgotten how much better you feel when you coach defense. You’re more comfortable. The game is easier to coach when defense is your dominant personality.”
Karl said playing hard defense has always been one of the tenets for his teams but admitted he got away from it early in his Nuggets tenure. Denver tried to play like the Phoenix Suns of the last few years, running incessantly and taking quick shots in an effort to simply outscore the opposition.
“I’ve always liked to shoot early, but we got irresponsible with it and then it became the only way we could play well,” Karl said. “We didn’t have the other option. We were too deficient — too many deficient coaching philosophies, too many deficient defensive players, too deficient a defensive commitment. You can blame everything and everybody.”
That changed, first during the summer when Karl spread the word he was angry and things would be different. Then in training camp, at least the first hour of each day’s practice was devoted to defense. If players balked, Karl merely shrugged.
“If you didn’t run back on ‘D,’ you weren’t going to play,” he said. “If you messed up trying hard, you might stay on the court. But if you messed up not trying hard, you wouldn’t. And when I took you out, you might be sitting for longer than you thought.”
Karl admitted that there were, and still could be, “moments of hypocrisy,” if, for example, Carmelo Anthony was having an explosive offensive night. But as it turns out, the players also were ready for a change. In some ways, the portal to a new approach was opened when Marcus Camby was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Now, instead of hoping the angular center would cover up their mistakes with a blocked shot, the Nuggets realized they would have to take care of business themselves. That shift moved the game away from finesse to something much more jarring, something more in the manner of Kenyon Martin.
Offensively, Martin never will win many style points, which is why he often looked out of place amid the Anthony- and Allen Iverson-inspired 110-108 shootouts that occurred so often the last couple of years.
With Iverson gone and Denver more likely to grind it out on any given night, the game is on Martin’s court, so to speak.
“Guys are digging in and want to get stops,” Martin said. “That’s the way I’ve always played. Holding a team to under 100 is a wonderful thing. I don’t like those other games, the 110s and 115s.”
The danger for Denver has long been that it couldn’t win a low-scoring game, that when push literally came to shove, the team couldn’t execute in the half court. That has changed with the arrival of Chauncey Billups. Now the Nuggets have a classic point guard whose forte is directing the offense and getting teammates into position to take the shots they need to take, when they need to take them.
And Billups is a willing defender at the point, a necessary first step when it comes to disrupting an opponent’s attack.
It can’t be coincidental that Denver is 5-1 with Billups.
“In some ways, I’m still out of sync with these guys,” Billups said. “Like in Detroit, we never double-teamed in the post, so sometimes I’ve been caught off-guard when I have to do it.
“But it’s a process. Being a great defensive team is paying attention to the little details — not wasting fouls, knowing when you’re in the bonus, knowing when to be aggressive and when to pull back. It’s just the little things, things we still need to get a lot better at.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
Milwaukee at Denver
7 p.m. tonight, ALT, KTNI 101.5 FM
Spotlight on Richard Jefferson: The former New Jersey Net wasn’t happy about his offseason trade to Milwaukee, but that hasn’t kept him from making the most of it. The forward is averaging 18.7 points and 5.7 rebounds and is shooting 44.4 percent from 3-point range.
Nuggets: The Nuggets are 5-1 since acquiring guard Chauncey Billups, who on Monday was named the Western Conference player of the week. Last week, the guard averaged 21.5 points and 5.8 assists in four games. . . . Nene, who is averaging 14.7 points this season, is shooting a career-high 64.1 percent from the field and 74.4 percent from the free-throw line. He leads the NBA in field-goal percentage. . . . Last Thursday’s flagrant-two foul called on Denver’s Kenyon Martin has been downgraded to a flagrant-one foul by the NBA. This is significant because now Martin has only one flagrant “point,” compared with the two he originally had for the play. If a player accumulates five points, he is suspended for one game. . . . Guard Chucky Atkins (knee) is out for tonight’s game, as is forward Chris Andersen (rib). Center Steven Hunter (knee surgery) is out 12 weeks.
Bucks: High-scoring guard Michael Redd (ankle) is questionable for tonight’s game. He has missed the Bucks’ last seven games. . . . Milwaukee has lost four of its last six games. . . . Guard Ramon Sessions has been an unexpected surprise for the Bucks. The former Nevada star is averaging 15.9 points and 5.3 assists this season in a reserve role.
Chris Dempsey and Benjamin Hochman, The Denver Post
