Denver Post sports writer Christopher Dempsey posts his Nuggets Mailbag every other Thursday during the regular season.
for the Nuggets Mailbag.
Just how far are the Kroenkes willing to let the Nuggets fall before ? He’s obviously in way over his head. His rotations are suspect, his play-calling is minimal and his fire from the bench is non-existent. If my track record at my job were as poor as his, I would have been replaced years ago.
— Blake Wright, Colorado Springs
Blake – You definitely got your wish as he was fired this week, but my personal opinion on this won’t change.
Brian Shaw was a good and smart coach, and I think ultimately will be a successful coach in the league whenever his next opportunity comes up. His play-calling was fine. The Nuggets got good, wide-open looks at the rim a lot under Shaw. Ty Lawson has had the best assist seasons in his career under Shaw. And that doesn’t happen if the offense and play-calling are failing the players.
In general, I’m not going to kill him on his rotations when players were constantly in and out of the lineup for two years due to injuries. Not one day in two seasons did he have the fully healthy and “in rhythm” projected lineup he thought he might when he took the job, which was to be Lawson, Randy Foye, Danilo Gallinari, Kenneth Faried and JaVale McGee. Not one day. So the mixing and matching started from the first game of his first season and basically never ended.
And while some of those decisions could have been better, he was still a new coach learning the personnel and already having to make adjustments with different personnel on the fly. You can’t show me a new head coach with a constantly injured team making the right decisions on that stuff 100 percent of the time.
Now, what Shaw is going to have to work on is his ego management — and I’m talking of his players, not himself. In every situation he coached before coming to Denver, he had no-nonsense players. They approached every day on the job with the professionalism and hard work expected of players at this level. What he got in Denver was a locker room with too many individuals who had to be continually ridden to do the right thing. And then his brutally honest words didn’t sit well with those guys.
But of all the lessons he learned in all of his years as an assistant, he never got to work on that because he never had to. From the Los Angeles Lakers teams to the Indiana Pacers teams, those guys were always focused, always ready to pay attention in film study and practices, always willing to sacrifice going to the club the night before a game in order to get a good night’s sleep and be ready for the next challenge on the NBA schedule. So what he’ll take away from this is a need to figure out how better to manage a locker room like that and get those players on the right track without turning them off. Then, the X’s and O’s portion will take care of itself.
Hey, Christopher. What do you think of ? I am not impressed. Thanks.
— Mike T., Boulder
Hi, Mike. I think the Nuggets did well at the trade deadline, getting a first-round pick from Portland and then shipping JaVale McGee to Philadelphia, which wiped $12 million of salary off their books. To do big things, you have to start with the transactions that seem mundane to the lay fan. But when the assets are all in place, they can be used in conjunction with players to do things like move up in the draft, trade for a high-profile player from another roster, etc.
“Blowing up” the roster at the trade deadline was never a realistic expectation. The Nuggets were never going to do that. There are many opportunities to move players and picks over the course of the NBA calendar, and the next one is right around the NBA draft. So we’ll see what happens then.
What the Nuggets are attempting to do — reshape the roster and now also hire a head coach — takes months to accomplish if it’s being done the right way.
Hey, Christopher. Throwback jerseys — any plans this season for the Nuggets? Thanks.
— Tim, Denver
Tim – None the rest of this season. Next season, we’ll see. Also, the NBA is mandating that all teams have a sleeved uniform of some sort in place over the next couple of years. Expect to see the Nuggets with their version soon.
If a draft pick is protected and in the protection range, does that mean the team that gave up a player for that pick ultimately gets nothing?
— Jim, Denver
Jim – No, it doesn’t. That pick then moves to the next season’s draft. And keeps pushing forward (in years), until it is conveyed. And usually the protections relax over the span of a few years. So, a pick could be protected 1-14 this year, then 1-10 next year, then 1-5 the year after that, then unprotected. Or, some picks are protected to a certain point (in years), and then become two second-round picks that must be conveyed to the team that traded for them.
It all depends on the protections on the pick, and the rules for that pick over the course of the next few seasons. But eventually, the team that traded for it will get to use it. The question is when.
What’s going on with the shootarounds? Are the Nuggets still planning those around Ty Lawson’s social calendar?
— Pete, Denver
Pete – In fact the Nuggets voted to reinstate morning shootarounds last weekend. But I suspect they would have been reset anyway under . So, they’re back to the traditional morning shootaround, which is what most players’ bodies are used to anyway. They get used to the routine of getting up, having shootaround, going home to get a nap and then coming in to play at night. Now, that routine is restored.
The Nuggets have plenty of talent on the team. Most of these players won 57 games two years ago. It seems to me this is all on the coaches. What do you think?
— Jim MacAllister, Gunnison
Jim – It certainly isn’t true now that the roster is comprised mostly of players from that season, but I’ll even grant you the opening-day roster for this team to make the point.
Seven players — Arron Afflalo, Jusuf Nurkic, Nate Robinson, J.J. Hickson, Darrell Arthur, Randy Foye and Alonzo Gee — were, in fact, not on the roster when the team won 57 games two years ago. And throw in Timofey Mozgov, who was barely played that season, and it makes a full eight players who had nothing to do with that season.
That’s the vast majority of the players on the roster, so, no, the Nuggets’ lack of success this year isn’t pinned directly on the coaches in full. A lack of player performance, for a variety of reasons, has just as big a hand in the collapse this season as anything else.
Denver Post sports writer Christopher Dempsey posts his Nuggets Mailbag every other Thursday during the regular season. for the Nuggets Mailbag.
