Nuggets Learning The Trustworthiness of Success

If any Nugget fan gained a sense of hope from the toe to toe pug fest with the Heat, they should make sure they aren't drinking the pepsi (so to speak).  These Nuggets could be good, but have no confidence so they are rendered awful as a result.  It's a head game not a floor game thing.

Ty Lawson realized that he was touted for an All-Star bid somewhere in the middle of the 7-0 win streak?  When you are sharing the ball and guys are moving and cutting and working even when things don't go well, success comes.  Not always in wins, but the Nuggets may have succeeded without winning against the Heat and won but not succeeded during the streak..  The Nuggets had a chance to beat the defending champions.

In the process, you hope they took a picture of what worked and why it worked. You hope they took notes from the Heat about how to keep it close and trust each other to succeed in the end.  The Heat never cared how the Nuggets played because they expected to win when it mattered.  The Heat do not believe that any team is willing or able to do what they will do to win in the last minutes.

Brian Shaw has to clean off his gems to see which one's truly sparkle and which one's might be fools gold.  We thought Randy Foye was a false gem but he came alive against the Heat.  Foye actually penetrated and passed without massive turnovers, finishing at the bucket on a few nice drives.

Teams that share the ball never seem to pass too soon or kick it out too late. They always seem to place the pass in the shooting pocket. These Nuggets don't.  These Nuggets never even maintain a full quarter of any one style of play.  They remain fairly close in most games even though they always start out every game slowly.  The problem they keep experiencing is that when you chase from behind, you had better know how to close.

Closer's are important, but only when you expect to need one.  If you share the ball and trust in the confidence of each other you rarely need a closer in the end.  Wilson Chandler and Ty Lawson are both still too shy to rip hearts out at end of games, so we have to try another approach.

Tonight, the Nuggets play the Philadelphia 76'ers in Denver. Philly has a closer (Evan Turner), but little else.  The Heat game was a positive to the psyche which should counteract the negative impact of a long losing streak.  Both will conspire to make this game a close match late and another chance to demonstrate our floor game and our head game.