I just finished watching one of the worst 1st round series in NBA history.  Not only did the Denver Nuggets not show up for the second half of any game, they forgot to play in the first half a couple of times.  As a true fan, I still had a glimmer of hope coming into last night's game 5.  "Hey, if they can just win this one, then we come back home and tie it up, then we have all the momentum going into game 7!"  Alas, that didn't happen.  So I took a moment and reflected on where things went wrong.  How did the Clippers, of all teams beat the nuggets.  Was it Sam Cassell?  Nope.  Was it Elton Brand and his dominating inside play?  Nope, Camby shut him down after game 2.  Maybe Shaun Livingston or Chris Kaman?  No, and No.  I came to the conclusion that it was Earl Boykins, and a little George Karl. 

Let me start by saying that I used to love Earl.  I actually thought about naming my dog after him.  Until I found out she was a female.  But I liked him. His little legs running all over the court, quick like a little water bug.  He's definitely a fan of the ladies, every girl i've gone to a game with always says he looks so cute out there with all the big oafs.  "He's so little."  Truth is I used to agree, but this season I started to change my tune.  He started overdribbling, taking crazy shots.  He'd dribble into a corner and let 2 guys trap him.  In other words he was over aggressive.  Last season that worked, he energized the team, they ran and got dunks.  But this wasn't the same team.  It became obvious in game 1, that this was going to be a problem.  Not only was he destroying any offensive flow that they had, he couldn't guard anyone either.  This is where I blame George Karl.  Playoff basketball is about matchups, and you can't leave a 5'5" guy on the floor to guard a 6'8" player, period.  I don't care how much he can bench press (as we were told many times on tv).  Watching Shaun Livingston, of all people, back him in and shoot 7 foot jumpers over him got ridiculous.  How did Karl not see this.  You might be thinking, well nobody can guard him at the other end.  Normally, that might be true.  But with Earl, as soon as he'd beat one guy off the dribble he'd move over to the corner, or side and allow himself to get trapped.  Just bad basketball.

I didn't realize until the end of game 3, why Earl was so detrimental to the team.  He was starting to shoot better, and made less dumb decisions, but there was still something wrong.  Then it clicked, he's not getting the ball to his superstar (Carmelo) where he wants it.  I watched as possession after possession Anthony got the ball about 5 feet further out then he wanted it.  Now was that because of good post defense?  No, it was because Earl couldn't make the entry pass.  His short little arms couldn't get around Livingston or Mobley's long reach.  So he'd dribble around until Carmelo came closer to him.  It was then that I started wondering what happened to Howard Eisley.  You could see on Carmelo's face that he was frustrated by this.  It got so bad that while in the stands at Game 4, my fiancee actually said, "Would you quit complaining about Earl?"  So I did, but I realized that there wasn't a chance the Nuggets would win another game.  This organization has a lot of questions to answer this summer, let's hope that they don't think Earl Boykins is the answer to any of them.