Ty Lawson Is Down. Are The Denver Nuggets Out?

Change.  Makes you wanna hustle.

Lyrics from an old Donald Byrd jam that I thought about when the Nuggets watched Ty Lawson walk to the locker room stooped over at the waist.  One of the greatest challenges of coaching is balancing winning with growing, realizing the necessity for a fair balance of both.

Ty may be down for a while now with a cracked rib.  Some of the damage might be a by-product of the players own ignorance and the coaches uncertainty of how to handle it.  Brian Shaw is a good coach but a great guy.  He could stand to be a little more bad.

When the season began, he played almost everybody in an effort to get to know his players.  They lost with it that approach and then they won with it.  When they started to lose again because players (Andre Miller) complained of inconsistent minutes, he tightened the roster and let key guys play key minutes like key guys do on great teams.  The problem with that idea is that he is now asking Ty "I need to eat better this year" Lawson to make his body do things that he is not disciplined to accomplish with success.

Kevin Durant is only partly Kevin Durant because God blessed him with the talent to be Kevin Durant.  If Kevin Durant only worked as hard on his game and his body as Ty Lawson does he would be Rudy Gay.  Legends are who they are because they match legendary ability with world class work ethic.  The Denver Nuggets try with Ty, but it is clear that they do not have the leader in Lawson to demand excellence of others.

A few years ago, Jeremy Lin launched his way unto the scene when a flailing New York Knicks team pushed him into the line up.  Lin had nothing to lose and everything to gain. For the Nuggets, a window has opened for a two headed monster (Fournier and Miller) to emerge in the Nugget back court.

Randy Foye has stepped up a couple of times in the pinch to ease the pain of losing Lawson, but his shooting is sorely sacrificed when he plays point.  Evan Fournier has shown the capacity to do the job, but he gets inside of his own head at times.  The Magic Johnson alternative to this problem is proving to be Quincy Miller.  Miller can push the rock, create off of the dribble and knock down the 3 if you lose him in the shuffle.  He plays the way Fournier used to play before he realized that his services are so vitally needed.  Together, the window to their growth and our future may have just opened wide.

Shaw will also need to alter the short bench experiment because he is insisting on a style of defense that demands an altered line up from night to night.  Injuries have already forced his hand, but guys like Anthony Randolph and Jordan Hamilton, who have had to cool their heels could stand to get those extra minutes right now as Denver continues the 4 game road trip tonight playing game 3 of 4 against the Indiana Pacers.

This will be an ugly affair if the Nuggets do not come out with the kind of energy that Indiana plays with.  It could get ugly if they do bring energy, but without it, the Pacers will punish the Nuggets for the defeat they suffered in Denver a few weeks back.

Denver is quite the enigma right now.  The flashes of brilliance are so apparent that it makes them a hard team to blink at.  Stretches of crappy play makes them downright painful for an eyes wide open fan to witness. Conventional wisdom has said to give up on this team and on a run at the playoffs, but the fans and the players fight on. They have plenty of youth and talent to grow into a respectable team, but the injuries could cause the front office guys to get an itchy trigger finger.

The trade deadline is February 20th.  Between now and then, keep your ears towards the
Pepsi center and listen for a loud bang.