Nuggets Season Preview: Denver Must Be On Guard to Go Far in 2009-10

What is the most important player on the court for a basketball team?

The point guard.

Luckily for the Nuggets, they landed veteran Chauncey Billups last offseason in a trade for Allen Iverson—a trade that has made the front office’s I.Q. look a mile high.

Billups, the home town leader of the Nuggets, has been no-nonsense since his days at George Washington High School, and his approach to the NBA game greatly helped Denver make a huge turnaround in 2008-09.

Billups has been largely credited, at times by head coach George Karl, for being the chief catalyst of the nuggets record-tying 54 wins in 2008-09; partly because he so easily adapts and accepts coaching. Karl changed Denver’s style from “fun and gun” to “defense first” last year, and Chauncey made it clear his first day back in town that the Nuggets would follow Karl’s coaching completely.

And Denver did follow Karl and Billups, all the way to the Western Conference Finals.

But Billups not only bought into Karl’s coaching, he worked as an on-court general as well. Chauncey is at his best in a leadership role; getting on teammates, including Carmelo Anthony, when they’re not giving enough effort, or directing traffic vocally and calling plays every time down the court.

At one point, just before the playoffs began, Billups got together with Karl and told him he believed the Nuggets needed another in-bounds play. Karl agreed, and acquired Billups’ play, which Denver used successfully in the playoffs.

And while leadership is key, Billups can still downright hoop with the best of them.

Chauncey earned his nickname “Mr. Big Shot” after years of clutch shooting in Detroit, and he continued those ways in Denver last season.

Billups is a very deft outside shooter, at 39 percent from the three-point line in his career, but he enjoys driving the lane to toss up a runner in the paint, too.

Also, Billups is Denver’s best passer, averaging 7.5 assists last year. And the way he accumulates the great assist numbers is by playing old-school point guard as a pass-first, team-oriented one who is more inclined to get teammates involved than balloon his own scoring numbers.

On the defensive end, Billups is a stud—at 6’3” and 202 pounds, he’s bigger than most point guards in the NBA. He showed how dominant he can be in last year’s playoffs against who many think is the No. 1 point guard, Chris Paul. CP3 was all but taken out of the series against Denver as he struggled to score in his normal explosive fashion.

Speaking of explosive, while Billups is the steady and consistent leader, starting shooting guard J.R. Smith is the athletic specimen, and oft-times human highlight reel.

Smith, a fifth-year NBA player, will be thrust into the starting five for the first time this season since his rookie year in New Orleans.

In 2008-09, Smith proved he’s worthy of more minutes by improving his game all around. Smith’s ball-handling and passing abilities are much enhanced, and while his turnovers were up (112-150), his assists were up (128-297) by a huge margin last year.

But J.R. “Swoosh”, as teammates affectionately call him, is most effective with the ball in his hands looking to shoot. He scored a career-high 45 points in a game last year, and regularly drops jaws and fills seats with butts at a high rate.

Smith has grown into an absolute three-point assassin, as he loves to catch and shoot from downtown all game long. His signature move after draining a three is to put up three fingers on each hand while skipping down court—a move that is usually gold for getting the Nuggets’ faithful out of their seats and into an uproar.

But that’s not the only cheering J.R. receives, as he regularly tears the roof off the Pepsi Center after driving ferociously to the hoop and throwing down an emphatic dunk.

J.R. can flat-out fly. He is a perennial slam dunk contest participant during All-Star weekend, and many recognize Smith’s dunking ability, which he uses to go up, up, and leap over even the tallest centers in the Association.

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