The 8,831 spectators who saw the Denver Nuggets’ 156-142 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 2, 1987 at McNichols Sports Arena never could have imagined it at the time, but they were getting a sneak peek at the future of NBA basketball.
Nuggets fans were well accustomed to high scores. Under head coach Doug Moe, Denver had played at the league’s fastest pace and led the league in scoring each full season since Moe replaced Donnie Walsh on the bench 32 games into the 1980-81 season. Moe’s very first full season, 1981-82, produced an average score of 126.48 points per game, a league record that still stands.
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The difference in the eighth game of the Nuggets’ 1987-88 season was subtle but significant. Michael Adams, 5-foot-10 and one of the quickest point guards in the league, replaced 6-5 Otis Smith in Moe’s starting lineup. Fat Lever slid from point guard to big guard.
Moe’s pre-game instruction to Adams was simple and specific.
“Doug came up to me after shootaround and said, ‘Mike, I’m going to put you in the starting lineup, and all I want you to do is push the ball and to start the game, I want you to shoot the 3,’” Adams recalled recently. “My eyes lit up but I wanted to make sure I heard him right and he said, ‘Yeah, start the game out, we’re going to push it up and if you’ve got the 3, shoot it. We’re going to open the game up.’”
Adams followed Moe’s advice to the letter, stopping at the 3-point line on Denver’s first possession, swishing a 3-pointer. He would finish with 15 points and nine assists in 37 minutes, going 2-for-2 from long range, Denver’s only shots from beyond the arc.
It was a tiny preview of what NBA fans now see in nearly every game and some of the smartest coaches in league history believe Moe deserves recognition as the godfather of today’s style of play.
“In the 1970s and ‘80s Doug Moe established a pace-and-space game that was decades ahead of its time,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said during ceremonies in 2018 at which Moe was presented the National Basketball Coaches Association’s Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. “Congratulations to a true visionary on this special recognition of innovation and accomplishment.”
Moe acknowledges similarities between the running game his Nuggets employed and today’s push-and-pop game, but also sees variations.
“I agree somewhat, except now it’s all pick-and-rolls,” says Moe, at 81 still as feisty as ever. “But it’s definitely fast paced, so from the pace standpoint, yeah, we were one of the ones that started it. But now I see so much pick and roll and we never ran pick and roll. It’s hard to say that we played exactly like they play now, from that standpoint.”
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Moe called his attack “the passing game,” a variation on the offense used at North Carolina, where Moe and his good friend, Larry Brown, played for Frank McGuire and Dean Smith.
“The passing game evolved with Coach Smith, from the standpoint that Larry and I would always be talking to him about moving, passing, cutting,” said Moe, who grew up in Brooklyn and honed his game on the playgrounds and in church leagues, where he played under assumed names so he could maintain eligibility to play for Erasmus Hall High School. “Coach Smith liked the passing game but he had more rules in his passing game. But that’s where it evolved from.”
A star in the early days of the American Basketball Association – he led the league in points scored (1,884) in its inaugural season, though Connie Hawkins had a higher scoring average (26.8) than Moe’s 24.2 points per game – Moe got into coaching in 1972, when Brown made Moe Brown’s lone assistant with the Carolina Cougars after getting his first coaching job. The two went to Denver in 1974 and coached the Nuggets to the 1976 ABA Finals. It was the last season of an upstart league that introduced the 3-point shot and featured several teams that played at a furious pace, including the Nuggets.
When four ABA teams merged the NBA in 1976, the Spurs made Moe their head coach. Though committed to a fast pace – the Spurs led the NBA in scoring in his three full seasons as head coach, averaging 115.0, 114.5 and 119.3 points per game – he hadn’t yet unleashed his entirely freelance passing game.
“We still ran some sets in San Antonio,” Moe said. “The full passing game, completely freelance, came when I took over coaching the Nuggets.”
There were guidelines for the passing game but no hard-and-fast rules. Moe preferred the point guard to lead the fast break and preferred a first pass to a wing player, after which the guard should cut through the defense to the opposite side of the court.
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“The biggest rule is to really push so you don’t let the defenses get set – and use Mike Adams as an example of that. When he was coming down as the point guard, he would hit the side and cut through. We had him cutting through so the defense couldn’t set up and stay set by our guys standing around. And then we’d swing it, to get it started and not let the defense really set up,” Moe said. “It was always one of the rules that the guard was to cut through.
“Say, Mike would hit Alex (English) on the wing, then he was supposed to cut through. That was the start of it and then everything else was freelance. And we would work on it in pre-season and let them get comfortable playing like that, and then it was just repetition.”
English was a skinny 6-foot-7 and “sneaky fast,” his long, loping strides typically getting him down court ahead of his defender. The freelance portion of Moe’s attack often became one pass to the 6-7 English, followed by an English drive to the basket or a pull-up on the right baseline for one of the sweetest jumpers of the era. The Hall of Fame forward from University of South Carolina scored at least 2,000 points in eight consecutive seasons and led all NBA scorers in points scored in the 1980s. He freely credits More’s passing game offense for much of his scoring prowess.
Adams was the fastest of the point guards who played under Moe and the best 3-point shooter, even though he was a “throw-in” addition to a 1987 trade consummated just four days before Denver’s regular season opener. Moe credits his assistant coach, Allan Bristow, for insisting that Adams be part of a trade that sent Darrell Walker and Mark Alarie from Denver to Washington for high-scoring forward Jay Vincent and backup point guard Adams.
“Alan told me he had seen me in a preseason game and thought my game was perfect for how (the Nuggets) played,” Adams said. “He knew the Bullets were probably going to cut me because they had Muggsy (Bogues), their first-round pick, and Ennis Whatley at point guard. I had some success for the Bullets but I was coming off the bench there. But I was shooting the three a little bit and I guess Alan saw that, too.
“I knew I was a throw-in to the Jay Vincent deal so I started out coming off the bench in Denver, too. I think they really wanted Muggsy, but ended up getting me. Turned out that was a surprise blessing for both parties. I came off the bench at first and I had some good games and some not-so-good games and I wasn’t even sure I was going to stay on the team. Then Doug came to me and gave me that first start and that worked out pretty good for everybody.”
It took Adams about 30 games to really feel free to shoot the 3-ball any time he was open, but in the second half of the season became one of the league’s first true volume 3-point shooters. He launched 284 triples in the final 41 regular season games; 169 in the final 22, an average of 7.68 per game.
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“Doug told me every time I’m open for the three, shoot it, and my confidence just grew, and I think that’s how that took off,” Adams said. “Doug gave me the green light, the first coach in the league who said, ‘I believe in you and your ability to shoot the three and just go ahead and shoot it, without hesitation.’ “
By the time the Nuggets matched up against the Lakers at the Los Angeles Forum on March 25, 1988, Adams already had established an NBA record by making at least one 3-pointer in 28 straight games, a streak he would extend through the end of the regular season. The Nuggets came into The Forum on a nice run, with a 41-26 record that gave them reason to believe the franchise’s second 50-win season was possible.
What happened in a dramatic Denver win that night became the favorite moment of Adams’ 11-year NBA career, more so than the career-high 54 points he scored in a Denver loss to the Bucks in 1990-91.
With the score tied at 118, L.A.’s superstar center, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar missed on an attempted sky hook with four seconds remaining but Denver’s Bill Hanzlik was called for a foul. Abdul-Jabbar missed his first free throw, then made the second. Denver called a time out to advance the ball to the front court and give Moe a chance to draw up a play.
As Moe instructed his players, Jack Nicholson, actor and Lakers superfan, leaned in from his nearby seat in attempt to eavesdrop.
When the Nuggets huddle broke, Nicholson and Moe shared a brief discussion, both men laughing hard.
“What happened was, Doug set up a play that was supposed to be me going back door and Jay Vincent was throwing it in, with Fat Lever going to the corner,” Adams said. “But Jay didn’t throw the pass and called another time out. This time, Doug said, ‘Mike, just go get it. You’re going to have to score this for us.’”
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This time, Adams got free to take the pass.
“I went right to the ball and got it,” Adams said. “Wes Matthews was guarding me and I went straight right and pulled up inside the key area and that was the game winner.”
Afterwards, Moe delighted in describing his interaction with Nicholson and his pal, music producer Lou Adler.
“I told them, ‘The game’s over. We’re going to win. The little fella’s going to score two,’” Moe told reporters in the hallway outside the Nuggets locker room.
Adams made Moe look like a clairvoyant. His game winner gave him 32 points, on 12-of-22 shooting. He added nine assists and six steals in Denver’s 120-119 victory.
“Is he something, or what?” Moe said. “That little guy has changed our team.”
And by giving Adams the green light to shoot from long range whenever open in his run-and-gun offense, Moe changed the thinking of coaches everywhere to what might be possible with a pace and space offense that also optimized skilled 3-point shooters.
“He’s one of the greatest coaches in NBA history,” Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley said for a documentary about Moe’s career that was produced by Altitude Sports, the Nuggets’ TV network and shown after Moe received the Chuck Daly Award. “He doesn’t look like a coach, act like a coach or talk like a coach; he was an in-your-face kind of guy. He was honest.
“He won’t want to hear this, coming from me, and probably want to throw up: He was a genius.”
Moe deflects such praise but is happy to accept a modicum of credit for today’s style of play, which he says he enjoys. He marvels at the skill level of today’s players and is incredulous at the number of players who shoot the long ball with requisite accuracy.
“They’re now looking for the three and passing up twos,” he said. “The whole thing for a guy to penetrate is to get another guy a 3-pointer. So, they’ve expanded that to get all sorts of threes. And so many players can shoot it, and from so far out and have it still be a good shot. It’s expanded beyond anything I would have thought.
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“Now, everything is based, basically, on look for the 3-ball first.”
How would the player who scored more under Moe than anyone fare in today’s game?
“Alex could always find his shots and I’m sure he would still find them if he was playing now,” he said of English. “No, he didn’t take a lot of threes, but you remember that baseline 20-footer that was almost automatic? Don’t you think he would have been smart enough to back that up to the corner for that short three?
“He would have worked hard to get that shot down so I have no doubt he would have been fine in today’s game.”
English has said he never had more fun than when he played for Moe. Don’t doubt he would have had even more fun playing for Moe in the analytics-driven game for which Moe was a progenitor.
(Photo: Scott Cunningham / NBAE via Getty Images)
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