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Heartbreak Hits Denver

HEARTBREAK HITS DENVER - Rocky Mountain News. June 14th, 2010.

Heartbreak has washed over the city of Denver after their Semi Final elimination from the 2010 NLL Playoffs on June 13th. The series between the Nuggets and Kevin Garnett's Jazz took seven games to reveal a winner, with the Jazz prevailing, winning game seven 109 - 102. The Nuggets were widely regarded as a genuine title contender around the league, and were expected to make it to the finals.

At the final press conference of the series the GM of the Nuggets, Nick, had the following comments:...

"It never feels good to mis-hit a target. We had set a goal, and it was to win the 2010 title. This season felt like we've had the strongest team we've had in my career; the team that had the best chance of 'winning it all' than in previous years, and our goals were set accordingly. The bar had never been set so high than we set it this season, and somewhere along the way our expectations must have gotten the better of us, because we've failed to achieve what we wanted. So it's a tough process to come up short, but hey, we'll just have to take it as a learning experience and begin rebuilding for a new campaign next season."

Looking over the series stats, Denver were superior in the points, rebounds, steals and blocks categories, but did not match Utah's efficiency, coming up short in the FG%, 3p% and TOs categories.

Devin Harris did not play efficiently, with a field goal percentage of 37%, and 2.9 TO's.

Kobe Bryant played well with 22ppg on 49%, however he didn't quite meet 'supserstar par'. One is left with a bit of an underwhelming impression when Kobe Bryant isn't scoring closer to 30 points per game.

Kevin Garnett starred for the Jazz in the series, with 24ppg, 11.6 rpg and 1.9 bpg.

One bright spot for the Denver was the play of Dwight Howard, who was a monster in this series. Dwight had a field day against 6'6" Chuck Hayes, with averages of 23ppg (64%FG), 13rpg and 3bpg. Dwight possessions were expensive however with 3.1 turnovers per game in the series.

"In hindsight i might've adjusted the match-ups for game 7, if it were played again. Turnovers were the problem for us in this series, and that may have been one advantage to using Chuck Hayes in the post, he forced Dwight to turnover the ball more than usual with his 76 steal rating. So perhaps putting Andray Blatche, who's a better ball handler, on Chuck, and sliding Dwight down to PF to play slow down Garnett, maybe that would've worked better. But we'll never know, and i take full responsibility for my decision making.

Full credit to the Jazz though. Craig is a savvy gm AND coach and deserves success in this league, so congratulations to him and Utah. And you know what? The past 2 seasons i have been eliminated by the eventual champions (Toronto in '09, Portland in '08), so perhaps history could repeat itself again?.............

Hmmmmm, interesting. Imagine Jazz winning the title. Could they do it?

So what now for Denver? I guess we'll now take an early vacation and begin pondering our plan of attack for next season. With a new game engine on the way, it changes everything i know about how my players play. Everything changes from here. So perhaps we can use the early exit to our advantage and start gathering some nba2k gameplay wisdom!"

The Nuggets finished the 2009/10 season with a 55-27 record, finished in #1 place of the Western Conference standings, and #3 in the league overall, and were eliminated in the Semi Finals of the playoffs.

They finished the 2008/09 season with a 57-25 record, finished in #1 place in the West, and #1 in the league overall, won the Western Conf. championship, and were eliminated in the Finals.

Amongst the shattered dreams, it's worth pointing out that the Nuggets have been a pretty successful team over the past 2 years.

What will the 2010/11 season entail?

Hope will be rebuilt. :)

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