NBA: DALLAS MAVERICKS, DENVER
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NBA: IN any NBA game, there will be hazards, and the job of a coach and his team is to limit them. When one of those hazards is Dallas Mavericks forward, Dirk Nowitzki, suddenly on a roll from playing barely above mediocrity, the task can be uphill all the way, ending, as it had on Wednesday, Mavericks 105, Nuggets, 95.
NBA: IN any NBA game, there will be hazards, and the job of a coach and his team is to limit them. When one of those hazards is Dallas Mavericks forward, Dirk Nowitzki, suddenly on a roll from playing barely above mediocrity, the task can be uphill all the way, ending, as it had on Wednesday, Mavericks 105, Nuggets, 95.
The Mav’s Nowitzki scored 25 points against a Denver Nuggets team that pushed and pulled weakly not just against him but also versus Dallas
Mostly the Nuggets were lax on defense against the Mav’s outside kills and the Mav’s shots inside the paint---the Nuggets ended the game with 38 rebounds, the Mavericks, 46. Also, key Nuggets players were unable to contribute: forward Danilo Gallinari and center Timofey Mozgov were sidelined from ankle sprains. Gallinari is, to date, the Nuggets top shooter, averaging 17 points per game, with 30 steals to his credit. Mozgov’s the Nuggets block artist---25, as of Tuesday.
Wednesday’s Nuggets loss could be construed as understandable because of the absence of Gallinari and Mozgov, and that it’s a grueling 66-game season loaded with back-to-back challenges. The Nuggets were challenged by the Mav’s after playing three games straight, losing to the L.A. Lakers, Portland and Houston, the team’s first three-game losing streak of the year, a debilitating fallback from the team’s 13 wins since January 1, which included six consecutive victories (five on the road).
Last year, the Mav’s became the NBA’s championship team. By beating them during opening day of the current season, 115-93, the Denver Philadelphia
On entering the versus Mav’s game on Wednesday, the Nuggets appeared to be the better franchise, and it still seems that way, for example, before Wednesday night the Nuggets at 15-10 were not only in second place of the Western Conference’s Northwest Division and tied with the L.A. Clippers for third place in the WC; they had proved to be more of an across-the-roster/teamwork-oriented franchise than the Mav’s, that is, the Mav’s have been more of an organization that relies upon a super star, Nowitzki, now averaging 17.2 points per game (for the Nowitzki of last season, sub-par). A stark reflection of this fact about the Nuggets is the wide spread of assists performed by them, and that this year the Denver team is 8-1 among all games whenever 25 or more of their assists have occurred, while the Mav’s assists haven’t been the extra-zing for their winning record.
Moreover, the Nuggets have had nine players with double-digit assists, two of them having accrued “triple-digit” assists, the Mav’s having eight players with more than 10 each but no player having hit the triple-digit mark. As to total number of Nuggets assists, by Wednesday the team accrued 584, the Mav’s, 527.
Also prior to Wednesday, six Nuggets players had double-digit ppg averages, last year’s championship team had four, with the current Nuggets total ppg being 104, the Mav’s, 93.
With regard to total number of successful field goals for the NBA season thus far, the Nuggets, by Wednesday, had 952, the Mav’s, 884. And, until Wednesday, the Mav’s were ahead of the Nuggets re. three-pointers by only a single digit---170 against the Nuggets having 169. However, 54 of the Mav’s successful three-pointers were Nowitzki’s. Regarding defensive rebounds, the Nuggets had 827 before Wednesday night’s game, the Mav’s, 815.
So, from a comparison of current Nuggets data with that of the Mavericks (an NBA championship team not doing as well as last year but still above the margin and in playoff contention) there's evidence that the Nuggets are among the season’s top teams, that the Nuggets recent four-game drop could be at the curve of a fast U-turn back up. Too bad a crimped NBA season couldn’t, like the shortened NFL year, include a Bye week.
END/ml
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