In the Scott Hastings tradition of fumbling for words he came up with "fundamentalized" as in "The Nuggets are being out fundamentalized".
To put it in the vernacular, the Nuggets suck at fundamentals.
To put it more eloquently, the Nuggets execution of the fundamentals of the game of basketball are sorely lacking and need improvement.
What are these lacking fundamentals? Each player seems to be sound in individual fundamentals such as dribbling, shooting and pivoting. They couldn't get to the NBA without these skills. Somehow they got through what little college ball they might have played on these skills alone, in fact it was their skills and athleticism that got them through so far. In the NBA it isn't enough because now you're going up against guys who have the same skills and athleticism. Most of these players haven't had to learn how to run a pick and roll, or how to defend a pick and roll or how to pass ("my college team always wanted me to shoot, not pass") or how to box out on a rebound (they always got plenty of rebounds before without boxing out).
For the next three days the Nuggets need to work on these fundamentals. They need to learn how to use a pick by rubbing their man off on the pick instead of just sort of going around the pick. The pick needs to learn to roll everytime. Marlowe calls so many plays a pick and roll when there is no roll and Hastings tries to point out that there wasn't any roll, but I think he gets tired of pointing that out. They need to do passing drills. They need to work on moving without the ball instead of standing around at the three point line hoping the ball will come their way so that they can be the hero that hits the three. They need to work on boxing out. They need to work on getting the ball to the point guard after the rebound (the way they did in the first quarter against Atlanta at home). Every point guard I ever played with at a higher level than sophomore high school level was trained to call for the ball when their bigs got the rebound yet the Nuggets guards don't seem to do that. Maybe they think it is below them.
The sad thing is that this probably won't happen. It doesn't look like it has ever happened in training camp where that sort of thing belongs. Playing with these fundamentals is a result of habit and you can't develop these habits in three days, but at least there should be the effort to train these things. I wonder what is going to happen these next three days?
