It is not often you can compare the Cubs favorably to anybody on the subject of championships, but this is just one of the Nuggets’ many little-known distinctions.
Long as their championship drought is, the Cubs, at least, have an antecedent. It’s 101 years ago, but it’s there.
As the Nuggets move toward the end of their 42nd season, there is no antecedent. You can go back to the Civil War. To medieval times. To the brontosaurus.
No championship. Not as the Rockets. Not as the Nuggets. Not as the Flintstones. Not in the ABA. Not in the NBA. Not ever.
Two NBA teams have gone longer without a title — Sacramento and Atlanta — but each has one back there eventually, although you have to go Rochester and St. Louis, respectively, to find them. Among the teams that have never won a pro basketball title, the Nuggets rank first in seniority if you count the ABA years.
So it is only fitting that the first challenge in their latest reach for the unreachable star is a play as old as their drought. Older, actually.
In four games this season between the Nuggets and New Orleans Hornets, their first-round playoff opponent, the Hornets ran the venerable pick-and-roll an average of 48 times per game.
That’s a lot of pick-and-rolls. Roughly one every other possession. The Hornets run it so often because they have the best point guard in basketball in Chris Paul.
“He has the ball the whole time, the whole shot clock,” Nuggets point guard Chauncey Billups said. “Either he’s going to shoot it or the guy he’s going to pass it to is going to shoot it most times. So you’re not going to stop a guy like that. You want to change up defenses on him, show him a lot of different defenders, make him work on the other end and just try to wear him down as best you can.”
Paul will run the pick-and-roll with his center. He will run it with his power forward. He will run it with his small forward. He will run it with the national anthem singer if he or she doesn’t get off the floor fast enough. He will run it as a pick-and-roll or a pick-and-pop. If the defense goes to sleep, he’ll run it as a pick-and-dunk.
More than any other X or O in this series, how the Nuggets defend this basic play will determine whether they make the second round of the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.
There are several ways to defend the pick-and-roll. The most effective is to force your way over the screen, sticking to the ballhandler like body art on Chris Andersen. Unfortunately, in today’s NBA, if you disrupt the ballhandler’s aura by doing this, you are likely to be called for a personal foul.
Another way is to go under the screen, leaving the ball- handler with a wide-open jump shot. This is how Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf liked to play the pick-and-roll.
Next is the switch, where the defenders exchange assignments, sometimes creating amusing size mismatches.
Finally, there’s the trap, where the defenders gang up on the ballhandler and hope not to leave a passing lane for the guy they left wide open.
The Nuggets will try them all in the series.
“It’s impossible to defend 48 pick-and-rolls the same way,” coach George Karl said. “They come in so many different packages and different angles. Some of it you’re going to have to switch.
“We have a Plan A ready. Our basic philosophy is when we can get to this we want to get to this. Will Plan A be the plan for all seven games? Probably not. We have three schemes ready for Game 1. I would say if it lasts to Game 7, we might have two of them thrown away and two more put in. Hopefully, one of them will be real effective.
“Making him think is, I think, the best way to phrase it.”
The Nuggets bring several assets to the task. In Billups, Anthony Carter, Dahntay Jones and J.R. Smith, Karl has plenty of bodies to throw at Paul. In Kenyon Martin, Nene and Andersen, he has big men quick enough to switch out or trap.
If you love the intricacies of NBA playoff basketball, this is the game within the game to watch. If the old play prevails, so does the old drought.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com
