No offense. No, really, no offense. . .
By Troy Fabrizio
The national commentators on ESPN and TNT are convinced. Your Denver Nuggets struggle because they can't play defense. George Karl seems to think that is the case as well. We see him in interviews before games telling reporters the team is starting to get the hang of this defense thing. 
Defense, defense, defense. Looking at basic statistics, it's hard to argue the point. Denver is 4th in the league in scoring average and 20th in the league in points per game allowed. Open and shut case, right? The defense struggles and the Denver Nuggets lose basketball games. It sounds like an easy thing to fix. Put a little more effort into the D, maybe play Diawarra some more minutes and the Nuggets become a 60 win team. The only problem is that everything you read and hear about the Nuggets horrible defense is wrong. They don't lose basketball games because of poor defense. They are actually one of the most dominant defenses in the NBA. I'm sure I lost some of the readers with that statement. For those of you who are still around, I'll explain myself. There is a tool statisticians use called pace factor. A team with a slow pace like the Spurs is going to give up fewer points than a fast paced team like the Nuggets do even if they played with the same players. A faster pace equals more possessions given up per game. More possessions per game equals more points. The same thing applies on offense. You can score 135 points a game and be a horrible offensive team. (remember the Westhead era?) A quick glance at pace factor shows us that the Nuggets are the fastest pace team in the league by a mile. Their pace factor if 104.2 is over two points higher than the second fastest pace team in the league. Only seven NBA teams have a pace over 100. The Spurs are the slowest pace team in the league at 91.4. What that means is the Nuggets get and give up a lot of possessions per game. They fly up and down the court and play entertaining basketball. They score a lot of points and give up a lot. 
What does this tell us about the problems with the Nuggets? The Nuggets are second in the league in points given up per 100 possessions. Only the Celtics rank better. They are 5th in the league in FG% allowed. They lead the league in blocked shots, steals and forced turnovers. They don't rebound as well as they should and some of the extra possessions are the result of offensive boards allowed. Even with that factored in the Nuggets are a top five defensive team. The problem is our supposed dominant offense. It ranks 15th in the league in offensive efficiency. 15th. The Milwaukee Bucks are better than the Nuggets. The Memphis Grizzlies are a better offensive team than the Denver Nuggets. The Detroit Pistons and the New Orleans Hornets? Much better offensive teams than the Denver Nuggets. Two of the top 15 offensive players in the league and the Nuggets are an average offensive team. Despite what the local media, the national know it alls and even the coach of the Nuggets think, their problems continue to be on the offensive side of the ball. If this team plays solid, efficient offensive basketball, they'll be tough for anyone to beat. If they don't, we are staring at yet another first round exit and may as well give the Jazz the division crown now.
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