NBA: Denver Nuggets Lose Game Seven of First Playoff Round // MLB: The Colorado
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NBA: THOUGH finishing three of four during a seven game/first round playoff series vs. the Los Angeles Lakers, the Denver Nuggets remained an NBA franchise deserving much praise and lots of respect. Not many professional basketball teams can rise up from the short end of a three-games-to-one situation, forcing a seventh challenge. No serious sports fan will define the Nuggets only by its seventh game loss to the Lakers, 96-87, on Saturday night.
Except for game one of the vs. Lakers series, the Nuggets kept performing above-the-margin, and in games five and six they excelled at speed-over-power offense and at jump-high/block-and-rebound/in-your-face defense. Yes, game seven saw the Nuggets offense unable to evade the machinations of the Lakers bigs (Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace) for a greater shooting percentage, and though the Nuggets recovered from a 16 point deficit to command a lead in the third quarter the Lakers offense managed to escape the Nuggets just enough for shots that widened a point spread in their favor---still, winning four of the seven games wasn’t a cool breeze for the Lakers (had the game another five minutes to go, who knows?).
Noteworthy, of course, is that the Nuggets finished the regular season 38-28 and got to the post-season, this as a young team, its players starting with insufficient experience of each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities, eight of whom managed to maintain double-digit points-per-game averages throughout the season. The Nuggets team-wide ppg average exceeded 109 points, around 10 points higher than that held by almost all opposing teams. In 39 of its games played since December 26, 2011, the Nuggets scored 100 or more points during each. Too, in the regular season the Nuggets managed to beat nearly every Western Conference team that held either first or second place of a division, and the Nuggets defeated several Eastern Conference teams in that category, as well.
Odds are that Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson will shine even brighter next season from lessons learned during the playoffs, and no longer a rookie Kenneth Faried will probably rise a rung or two upon the skills ladder for the same reason. If Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari, guard Arron Afflalo and forward Al Harrington play as well next season as they had during most of their 2011/12 appearances, the Nuggets will probably purchase a leading spot within the NBA-West before the All Star break . . . In no way are the Nuggets a team to be written off for the 2012-2013 season.
MLB: A ballclub falling back from first to second place, from somewhere near .600 to, say, .540, won’t be listed as a losing team, not as a franchise that hovers over an abyss. Yet a team that has held third place and has remained at the margin, that is, at around .500, and then suddenly falls to under .400 and is next to last in its division, well, that team is thought to be near a zone from which recovery may be impossible. As April ended, the Colorado Rockies were “at the margin,” they could boast about some big wins; they showed the stuff of teams that rise upward steadily, that glow with some post-season possibilities. Then by mid-May, ugh! Fourth place in the National League-West, the team’s average starting this week .394, 13 wins against 21 losses. Last night’s 3-2 Rockies loss to the San Francisco Giants became the team’s 12th loss of its past 15 games. How could this be? Is it the pitching rotation’s slowdowns that resulted in a starter/bull pen 5.67 ERA recorded by around May 9? Is it the middle of the line-up failing to offset weaknesses from the mound with extra base hits and home runs? Neither the Rockies pitching nor its slugging have seemed to be in synch since May began.
Rooting out the now unseen, the reasons for a fallback, is never easy, not even for a ballclub manager as experienced and as effective as is Rockies field boss, Jim Tracy. It’s hard to know if the Rockies current below-the-margin pitching is as good as it can get because many of the team’s hurlers haven’t shown themselves to be much better at any time in their brief career with the Rockies, while the team’s preferred hitters have showed often enough that they have the bounce-back for those extra base hits and home runs that have helped to pull the Rockies above .500 in the past. Who has peaked, and who has fallen, who can come back stronger, be more skillful? Meanwhile, until the flaws can be identified and fixed, it’s best to kick butt vs. the enemy that is identifiable, “Despair,” which has to be ignored, for the MLB season is still young---there’s time for repair, for restoration. “Despair” is that bat with a hole in it, it’s the ball that immobilizes the hand and the glove.
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