Nuggets Take Down Lebron James While Lamenting The One That Got Away

Nugget haters are mounting their excuses right now trying to explain the reason that the hapless Nug's found a way to beat the Heat.

Don't worry.  I'll do it for you.  After all, the Nuggets were not the first but the second of the teams who beat the Miami Heat back to back on their home court.  In other words, the Heat had already lost at home and have lost several games recently.  If you are religious you understand the divine intent of King David, you also understand his victory over Goliath.  If you are not you might think that a scared kid got lucky with a rock and a slingshot. Nugget haters can easily subscribe to this miracle story as plausible cause.

Do the Nuggets have their backup team starting the game?
(.......excluding Ty Lawson of course)

I would make a few more excuses for the Nugget victory, but in reality there are none.  The Nuggets lost the start of the game and just about lost the end of it as well.  Correction, the Nuggets starters lost the start of the game against Miami and the bench had to save the day.

Is Evan Fournier a future all-star?

While JJ Hickson, Aaron Brooks, Quincy Miller, Dorrell
Arthur and Evan Fournier comprise the backup bunch,  
Fournier lead the way among the bench players and showed a reason for us all to send thank you cards to Masi Ujiri in Toronto who we credit with the foresight to draft Fournier.  As we look forward to the draft and hope for a play maker who can be an all-star caliber closer, Fournier could be the best gift from France since the statue of Liberty or Tony Parker, and will press Danilo Gallinari next season for the #1 Euro Nugget. 

 Brooks added 5 dimes versus Miami

Starters and finishers are hardly the same in basketball. This truth  relegates Timofey Mozgov to obscurity down the stretch of most games.  Against Miami, every other starter except Ty Lawson shared minutes with backups who performed better.

As it turns out, the key to this game would be free throws.  No matter how many statistics you dominate against a team like Miami, and the Nuggets dominated a few, you had better beat them well enough to avoid their closing ability.  The Nuggets did not do this at all and were forced to maintain a lead that they enjoyed through the greater portion of the game.

Now haters!  Listen up!  This is where you have to determine if the coach and team that you are criticizing is truly worthy of the critique you level.  Since the Nuggets get 3 new players from the cupboard next year, a coach with more skills in the kitchen, and his own seasoning (to add to the recipe), what we see now is merely a test kitchen if you will.

Have we seen enough of the Wilson Chandler experiment?
Is it time to let Quincy Miller start?

On this road trip, the Nuggets have learned that  there are simply no moral victories.  The loss to New Orleans was a painful Christmas gift that we either gave early this year or late from last year.

Either way it was a gift.

Winning back to back games on the road, including one over the defending champs is cool, but does it vindicate the losses and the voices of the haters? 
Fournier said it best.  

"This is no vindication. This is one win."

Ducks Score 6 goals in one period to beat Avalanche

Ty Lawson Is Down. Are The Denver Nuggets Out?

Change.  Makes you wanna hustle.

Lyrics from an old Donald Byrd jam that I thought about when the Nuggets watched Ty Lawson walk to the locker room stooped over at the waist.  One of the greatest challenges of coaching is balancing winning with growing, realizing the necessity for a fair balance of both.

Ty may be down for a while now with a cracked rib.  Some of the damage might be a by-product of the players own ignorance and the coaches uncertainty of how to handle it.  Brian Shaw is a good coach but a great guy.  He could stand to be a little more bad.

When the season began, he played almost everybody in an effort to get to know his players.  They lost with it that approach and then they won with it.  When they started to lose again because players (Andre Miller) complained of inconsistent minutes, he tightened the roster and let key guys play key minutes like key guys do on great teams.  The problem with that idea is that he is now asking Ty "I need to eat better this year" Lawson to make his body do things that he is not disciplined to accomplish with success.

Kevin Durant is only partly Kevin Durant because God blessed him with the talent to be Kevin Durant.  If Kevin Durant only worked as hard on his game and his body as Ty Lawson does he would be Rudy Gay.  Legends are who they are because they match legendary ability with world class work ethic.  The Denver Nuggets try with Ty, but it is clear that they do not have the leader in Lawson to demand excellence of others.

A few years ago, Jeremy Lin launched his way unto the scene when a flailing New York Knicks team pushed him into the line up.  Lin had nothing to lose and everything to gain. For the Nuggets, a window has opened for a two headed monster (Fournier and Miller) to emerge in the Nugget back court.

Randy Foye has stepped up a couple of times in the pinch to ease the pain of losing Lawson, but his shooting is sorely sacrificed when he plays point.  Evan Fournier has shown the capacity to do the job, but he gets inside of his own head at times.  The Magic Johnson alternative to this problem is proving to be Quincy Miller.  Miller can push the rock, create off of the dribble and knock down the 3 if you lose him in the shuffle.  He plays the way Fournier used to play before he realized that his services are so vitally needed.  Together, the window to their growth and our future may have just opened wide.

Shaw will also need to alter the short bench experiment because he is insisting on a style of defense that demands an altered line up from night to night.  Injuries have already forced his hand, but guys like Anthony Randolph and Jordan Hamilton, who have had to cool their heels could stand to get those extra minutes right now as Denver continues the 4 game road trip tonight playing game 3 of 4 against the Indiana Pacers.

This will be an ugly affair if the Nuggets do not come out with the kind of energy that Indiana plays with.  It could get ugly if they do bring energy, but without it, the Pacers will punish the Nuggets for the defeat they suffered in Denver a few weeks back.

Denver is quite the enigma right now.  The flashes of brilliance are so apparent that it makes them a hard team to blink at.  Stretches of crappy play makes them downright painful for an eyes wide open fan to witness. Conventional wisdom has said to give up on this team and on a run at the playoffs, but the fans and the players fight on. They have plenty of youth and talent to grow into a respectable team, but the injuries could cause the front office guys to get an itchy trigger finger.

The trade deadline is February 20th.  Between now and then, keep your ears towards the
Pepsi center and listen for a loud bang.