Battered and bruised, inside and out, the Nuggets will show us tonight just how much adversity they can handle.
Wednesday night was for pride. Had they been closed out of the playoffs at home, in five games, they would have been back to where they started in Carmelo Anthony’s first postseason adventure six years ago.
Five years later, they were on the doorstep of the NBA Finals. A year after that, based on everything it has seen so far, the world expects them to bow out in Game 6 tonight in Utah and limp home to lick their many wounds:
• Nene is out with a hyperextended knee and Johan “Frenchy” Petro is now their center.
• Chris Andersen is dragging one leg around like it’s luggage at the airport.
• Kenyon Martin is playing gamely on a wounded knee.
• And, of course, they are without their head coach, one of about a dozen men in the world, give or take, with the experience to match up with Utah’s Jerry Sloan in the playoff chess game.
The first three issues are really one issue, the big issue, the one the front office elected not to address last season or last summer or this season at the trading deadline. It ignored an obvious lack of depth up front, gambling that the team’s three big men could stay healthy. It lost the bet.
The flare-up in one of Martin’s two microfractured knees near the end of the regular season began the Nuggets’ slide, along with the beginning of coach George Karl’s debilitating cancer treatments.
Andersen is still playing, but aside from Game 5, when he was stoked by the home crowd, he hasn’t gotten much done. And Nene, after playing 82 regular-season games for the first time in his career, won’t be on the floor tonight — hence, Frenchy.
The deal I proposed in this space back in December — J.R. Smith for a big — was rejected internally because Nuggets brass continued to believe in Smith, the self-absorbed streak shooter who was either the pot or the kettle when he used Twitter to decry selfishness after Game 4. The world laughed out loud, and Smith blamed “twitter goons.”
In the midst of chaos, the Nuggets have five players certain to give a professional effort tonight: Anthony, Martin, Chauncey Billups, Arron Afflalo and Ty Lawson. Six, if you count Frenchy, who might, although it could be hard to tell.
Even with two of its starters out, the Jazz has been the better team in the series for two reasons: It has played together, and it has strong leadership from the bench.
This is not a shot at the Nuggets’ assistant coaches trying to fill in for Karl. They have done everything they can, but it’s a bit like Joey Graham stepping in for Melo.
Karl has done this a long time. He has matched wits with the Sloans of the world over and over. He enjoys it. He loves to talk about the between-game tinkering, the adjustments to their adjustments to your adjustments. With Karl coaching, the Nuggets beat the Jazz three out of four during the regular season.
You can imagine some of the moves he might be making to slow down Deron Williams, who has done pretty much what he has wanted. Maybe trapping him to force the ball out of his hands. Maybe giving more minutes to Lawson, the only Nuggets guard who can stay in front of him. Maybe playing Lawson and Billups together in the backcourt more.
Adrian Dantley is doing the best he can. It is not his fault he had never been a head coach before, not his fault his on-the-job training is coming under the klieg lights of the playoffs. At least Petro, a substitute in a similar situation, has a reasonably fair matchup in Kyrylo Fesenko, another understudy forced on stage when the Jazz starter, Mehmet Okur, went down in Game 1.
Dantley has no such luck. Sloan is a veteran coach with an iron grip on his team. It does what he tells it to do, and, through practice, it does it very well.
Even Karl could never claim that of the willful Nuggets, but after much tussling he reached a point where he, Billups, Melo and Martin were on the same page.
Without the head coach, it has mostly been every man for himself. Afflalo has been better than Smith, but Smith still gets the lion’s share of the minutes at shooting guard as Dantley prays for one of those hot shooting streaks.
And so it has been left mainly to Melo and Billups to carry the team against Williams and Carlos Boozer, two of the best in the business.
In this war of attrition, beating the Jazz in its own gym will be all about mental toughness. Tonight could be this roster’s last chance to prove it has some.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
