Game 64: Denver Nuggets @ Dallas Mavericks 8:30 PM ET

[Mickey8]

I don't have an issue Jokic being benched last night , but Malone should be persistent, if he wants to prove the point, he shouldn't start Jokic tonight , that wont help the team at all.

[NuggetsWY]

I have not been saying much lately but your guy's argument is just going to go around in circles as there are portions that are right on both sides.

Malone is back trying to call plays every possession and we all know that does not work.

His rotations still suck, and he loses almost every timeout and half time. He is not a good coach.

Part of the issue is Millsap, he is not moving enough without the ball, and hr has been a ball stopper, he needs to work harder to go back to playing off the ball like he used too.

Having Millsap and Plumlee both clogging the paint is taking away from Murray and Jokic's games they are not getting the clear lanes to pass or drive. With Millsap moving off the ball more that would help considerably as him standing in the low post is killing half the court for cutters. Plumlee had started playing the old Faried role, but that seems to have went out the window with his injury.

All that being said the poss poor effort from Jokic and Murray is inexcusable and should have resulted in a benching. Maybe they will learn from it. Also I hate to say if but I think they got the half ads effort against bad teams from some of the vets last year, and that needs to be fixed now.

I said last year that we should have traded some of the veta and see what we had with the young guys, then when we didn't I said that we are a year away from signing a big time free agent and having them make a big difference, and they signed Millsap and kept the vets. We can argue for the next 6 months on whether it is coaching or the players themselves that have changed by Millsap coming back, but either way it is pretty obvious this team needed more seasoning before they took that step. Yet the front office spent everything last summer and now this team is in a bind. We can only hope they figure it out.

Great analysis - Malone is a terrible control freak that just doesn't win the timeouts and such. We play much better when they stuff a gag in his mouth. --- I wonder if part of the Millsap-issue is that Malone calls the plays? Would Millsap play differently if Malone stopped calling plays? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The Hawks played a style with a lot of ISO and the Nuggets tend to be rather bad at ISO.

What we do know is the Nuggets' best offense is Jokic with the ball and lots of movement. This year, even with Murray, Harris, whomever, even they are not running and cutting like last year. I'm going to lay that on Malone as well. Whatever he's teaching, it is either not good or not being heard.

Your last paragraph regarding trading veterans before - is exactly spot-on. Malone wanted his veterans and he got them and now his young players have clearly learned some bad habits and bad attitudes.

So what do you think about the Avalanche?