NBA:  Denver Nuggets, Playoff-bound  

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NBA:    FOUR years ago, I asked then Denver Nuggets star forward, Carmelo Anthony, to reveal his dominant basketball wish. The answer: help a franchise get to the playoffs, reach the finals and become an NBA championship team. Well, one could say that Anthony helped the Denver Nuggets get to the playoffs this season and the last “by not showing up,” by urging a trade that took him, and then Denver guard, Chauncey Billups, to New York, the Nuggets having to remake hastily with newcomers Danilo Gallinari, Al Harrington, Wilson Chandler, Kenneth Faried, Kosta Koufos, Andre Miller and others, while putting new pressure on guards Ty Lawson and Arron Afflalo, meanwhile the dependable center/forward Kenyon Martin and reserve guard J.R. Smith were off to China during  an NBA lockout that forced up a 66-game 2011/2012 NBA season.

Not four years ago, nor long before that, have the Nuggets been a Hollywood tale, coming from the lowest tier to where they’d be waving victory banners. Most commendably, they are a team that has been to the playoffs “nine years straight”---there’s consistency in that, yes? What does beg highlighting is that the Nuggets have always played hard under circumstances that usually take other teams out of the running for post-season entry, e.g., best players injured when needed the most, relied-upon head coach George Karl struck with cancer and away from the NBA for more than a month, Anthony and Billups off to the Knicks.

Yet in the many years that the Nuggets have made the playoffs, none were easy slide-ins. The Nuggets have been, no, they are, a team that progresses a game or two forward, next goes three back, soon startles with a stretch of wins against leading franchises but goes back to losing, scrambling forward again to achieve enough wins to make it under the wire and be seeded for that first playoff round.

This year, the Nuggets big and meaningful leap began with a Nuggets 101-86 win against the Houston Rockets on April 16, lockboxed for the playoffs on April 21 with a 118-107 victory against the Phoenix Suns, then confirmation of the team’s drive and skills shown with a back-to-back 101-74 win versus the Orlando Magic, on April 22. Of note is that the three pivotal wins were vs. teams that have been on par with, or ahead of, the Nuggets since the current season began, the message being that the Nuggets won’t be shoved aside easily during the playoff’s first round.

It did not look good for the Nuggets, however, when the team’s March and early April losses indicated a level of defense that the team seemed unable to reach. The defense needed for a playoff berth seemed to be eluding them, and that is what Nuggets head coach, George Karl, probably began stressing at the expense of his players positioning themselves to block and taking some rebounds. Karl must have wanted the Nuggets players to put the kind of pressure on that would keep their opponents from actualizing pre-planned plays, therefore from shooting until improvising in that last second allowed by the shot clock, because that is what has been happening enough times per quarter, evident in the mere 74 points attained by the Magic, April 22.

As the Nuggets defense has matured, there’s been no drawback in the Nuggets aggressive offense. The Nuggets have maintained their total points-per-game average, now 103.7, ahead of all teams that the franchise has confronted this year when the latter are totaled as an aggregate. Seven Nuggets players have ppg averages in double digits, led by Lawson’s 16.3, Afflalo next with 15.2.

With the recent addition of JaVale McGee (he has an unusually hefty number of blocks to his credit) and Lawson having accrued 78 steals this year, there’s indication that the Nuggets defense can stay above-the-margin, sending the team into round two of the playoffs, perhaps beyond that. On Wednesday, April 25, the Nuggets will face the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team expected to be the hottest challenge for the year’s Western Conference title, a win taking the victor to the NBA finals---Wednesday’s vs. Thunder game is the Nuggets last chance to determine what could be their more difficult moments during the 2011/12 post-season.

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