Retrospective: The Melo/AI/Billups era

[Lala870]

So I never watched any games during this era in denver... The earliest i started watching denver games was around 2011/2012 and I never liked george karl.

Looking at how important talent is in this league what were some of the reasons a team with AI/Melo/Billups couldn't achieve post season success outside of the WCF appearance? Coaching? Refs? player issues? etc

I know the west was supposedly pretty stacked at the time but there seems to be more to it than that.

there's not a lot of articles or much online from this time period which is kind of interesting.

Thoughts?

[Maf]

I don't get much Melo/AI/Billups team cause those three never met together (AI was traded for Billups).

As a fan I was traded to Denver with AI and while I surely hoped they'd achieve more I loved that team so much. They were so exciting to watch. A lot of Nuggets seemed to at least dislike George Karl but he made Nuggets really exciting to watch (during regular season). And I believe the unfamous Brian Shaw debacle cleaned GK's image a lot.

Why they couldn't win more? Well, I believe what hurted them a lot was Nene, K-Mart and Camby used to had injury problems every season. Truth is while I won't say anything bad about Iverson he was declining a lot. And it's tough to win in PO's when your two starters don't play a lick of defense. Also to this day I'll say the third starter was terrible on defense and that was our DPOY (huge joke) Marcus Camby who had one good quality and that was blocking from behind. But he often chose to let his player drive to the basket and then block him. Which worked like three or four times a game but 10+ times didn't. Plus he fought for rebounds with his own teammates. Like I see now with DeAndre Jordan.

I don't believe players had really good chemistry but that is just my feeling, have no articles to support this. And while I believe Karl was very good coach he made some really strange decisions in play offs. Like having Kenyon guard Kobe... Or putting Camby on Francisco Elson...

[Wigginstime]

I watched nearly every game during this ERA. This was a horrible built NBA team for the following reasons:

1. Extremely injury prone bigs
The core of the Nuggets bigs (Nene, Marcus Camby, and Kenyon Martin) were never healthy at the same time. The Nuggets frequently found themselves in situations where players like Reggie Evans and Eduardo Najera were getting significant minutes due to injuries. This was a recipe for disaster.

2. George Karl Small Ball / 2 point guard lineups
Earl Boykins, Anthony Carter, Andre Miller, Allen Iverson, Earl Watson, Chucky Atkins, Steve Blake all on the Nuggets roster
Denver constantly stacked the team with lots of undersized guards and Geoge Karl loved small ball. The problem is none of these guys were good 3pt shooters. You can't ask Steve Blake to guard Kobe Bryant and not expected to get destroyed

3. Worst 3pt shooting in the league
From 2003 - 2008 the only 2 Nuggets primary players to consistently average above the league average 3pt shooting percentage were JR Smith and Kleiza.

4. Poor Defense
The Nuggets small ball guards were all horrible defensive players. Melo was a bad defensive player. The Nuggets backup bigs were all awful defensive players.

Why did the Nuggets win in 2009
3pt Shooting Improved: Billups drastically helped spread the floor with his 41% 3pt shooting. Melo significantly improved his 3pt shooting. JR Smith and Kleiza both shot well
No more small ball linups - this year the 2 spot was primary played by either JR Smith and Dahntay Jones (both 6'6").
Health Bigs - Kenyon Martin, Nene, & Birdman were all healthy for the playoffs
Better Defense - Billups, Jones, Kleiza, Kenyon, & Nene were all solid defensive players.

[NuggetsWY]

I just looked at Carmelo Anthony's last full year in Denver: 2009-2010.
He was All-NBA 2nd Team & an All-Star.
Unfortunately, he was basically the team.

Nene was the starting center and he was playing much softer and less assertive than he is today. He averaged 14 ppg with 8 rebounds and was a decent starter.

Chris Anderson was the only other center that saw any playing time and he was more of a PG and while he was a fan favorite and an excellent bench player, his biggest contributions were rebounds and blocks. He only scored 6 pts per game.

Kenyon Martin was our only decent PF and he only played in 58 games.

We truly had no backup SF so Karl used a lot of 3 guard lineups. Who were those guards?

Aaron Afflalo & J.R. Smith; which worked out well covering the backup SF slot and the SG slot.

Then there was Chauncy Billups and Ty Lawson at PG; another decent pair.

But that was basically the team and in my opinion, they just didn't have enough depth nor did they have the right players to play Anthony's style. On offense, he is a pure ISO guy and very good at it. Billups could adjust and that worked fine for Smith but Afflalo & Lawson work better in a team passing offense IMO. Plus when Martin was out injured, we only had two decent bigs and as stated above, Anderson never provided much offense.

All of that means that other teams could afford to double and even triple team Anthony. He was a decent passer but he was better at putting his head down and muscling through the double teams.

What they needed was more 3 pt shooting (as someone else pointed out). A long way of saying, the team around Anthony just wasn't deep enough nor correctly built.

(If you go back to Iverson's last year with Anthony, things looked even worse.