Nuggets head coach Michael Malone, with guard Emmanuel Mudiay. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
PHOENIX — Nuggets coach Michael Malone’s comments prior to Saturday night’s game against the Suns.
On prepping for back-to-backs: Obviously you don’t have a chance to get in the gym and go through their stuff live, like you do most days. But we still take our time. We get in a ballroom, we watch film, we walk through their plays and hopefully not so much about them, but we also have to adhere to our principles and what we do. It’s always a challenge to go on the road on a back-to-back, and you go against a team like this that plays so fast with their pace of play and fast break points. And they have two guards that put a tremendous amount of pressure on you. But we try to prepare them as best as possible, and a lot of it is mental — don’t go into the game feeling ‘oh, I’m tired, we played last night.’ We have to find a way to fight through that and bring some energy.
Can Nuggets play at Suns pace? I think we always want to look to run, but we don’t want to get caught up in a rat race, either. They have two guys that are great at pushing the ball, and I think they are second in the league in pace of play right now. I think we are probably around 12th or 13th at the moment. But if we get stops, we definitely want to attack and score before they get set. But we don’t want to be running up and down just to run up and down. We want to be doing so with discipline and efficiency as much as possible.
Any similarities between Phoenix and Portland? Both of those teams have scoring backcourts. You look at (C.J.) McCollum and (Damian) Lillard in Portland, and now you have Brandon Knight and Eric Bledsoe, who account for close to 45 percent of their team’s offense. It starts with them. They put so much pressure on you, and you have a great rolling big man in Tyson Chandler. They’re shooting the ball from the 3-point line very well, over 40 percent in their last five games.
So, There are similarities, but hopefully if we come into the game with a defensive mindset… I told our team today, one thing that we can bring with us on the road is our defense. Our defense must travel, and we have to be able to do that tonight to be able to slow them up. Because if they come out, they are going to try and blow our doors off right away. We have to be ready for that and hopefully get back and make them play in the half court.
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