DENVER -- Not surprisingly, new Nuggets coach Michael Cooper
will emphasize defense.
One of the best defenders ever to play in the NBA took over for
fired Jeff Bzdelik on Tuesday and said everything Denver does --
running, scoring, winning -- has to come from playing better
defense.
"Defense, to me, wins championships. Offense wins games,"
Cooper said, sounding a theme he repeated often during his
introductory news conference.
The Nuggets allow 97.42 points per game, 17th in the league. And
while the new interim coach wants to tighten things up everywhere
on defense, he singled out Denver's star, Carmelo Anthony, as one
who might need the biggest lesson.
"Carmelo is a gifted athlete, but it's getting him to play on
both ends of the floor," Cooper said. "I keep telling him that
there are other things than just shooting the basketball. I told
him Michael Jordan didn't really become Michael Jordan until he
started making all those first-team, all-defense teams."
In his 12 years with the Los Angeles Lakers, Cooper made eight
NBA all-defensive teams. Five times, he made the first team and
once he was named Defensive Player of the Year.
Anthony said Cooper told him this year's Nuggets remind him of
the 1980 Lakers who won the first of five championships during
their "Showtime" era in the 1980s.
"We know what kind of person he is," Anthony said. "Coach
Coop has the swagger. He walks with swagger."
Cooper began coaching in 1994, serving as a Lakers assistant for
Magic Johnson, then for Del Harris.
Hoping to become familiar with every facet of the game, he took
a variety of jobs after that: Assistant to Lakers general manager
Jerry West, color commentator for high school and college
basketball, and head coach for the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks.
Cooper was coaching the Sparks (he went 116-31 and won two
league championships) when the Nuggets started looking for an
assistant after last season. General manager Kiki Vandeweghe
offered Cooper a three-year contract to come to Denver. The
contract raised eyebrows because it was two years longer than
Bzdelik's.
Vandeweghe said he had to give Cooper a long-term deal to lure
him, and he didn't hire the former Lakers star with intentions of
making him head coach.
"I made it very clear to everyone on the inside, the coaching
staff, management, and everyone understood the exact situation,"
he said.
Vandeweghe said a big reason for making the change was that the
team needed to hear a new voice. Bzdelik never played in the NBA.
That, plus his contract situation and tenuous relationship with
Vandeweghe likely put him at a disadvantage in the locker room.
Cooper thinks players would naturally lend more weight to
coaching served up by former players.
"That's just the nature of the beast," he said. "When I was a
player, I always wanted to listen to Dr. J, and Wilt and Jerry West
to get any little piece that will help you."
Both Anthony and Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin agreed that
Cooper commands respect.
"We'll see how Coop goes about it, if he changes some things,"
Martin said. "But we've just got to go out and play."