NBA: Standings; Denver Nuggets

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. NBA: Standings; Denver Nuggets. . . // NBA: Standings---WITHIN the NBA Western Conference/Northwest Division last week, a first place 36-10 Oklahoma City Thunder held a three game lead over second place team, the Portland Trail Blazers, and the West’s Southwest Division’s 33-11 San Antonio Spurs owned a four game lead above the Houston Rockets, while the 32-15 Los Angeles Clippers purchased a five game edge atop the Golden State Warriors. That’s a total of 190 first and second place wins for the West. Meanwhile, inside the Eastern Conference/Atlantic Division the 23-21 Toronto Raptors led second place team, the Brooklyn Nets, by three, while the East’s Southwest Division’s 32-12 Miami Heat rose above the Atlanta Hawks by nine, and the East’s Central Division’s 34-9 Indiana Pacers stayed ahead of the Chicago Bulls with 12. This brought the total number of Eastern Conference wins to 144, putting the West ahead by 46 wins. Today, the positioning of these teams haven’t changed, that is, we now have the same teams in first and second place of their respective divisions, and while the total number of wins per conference has advanced some, when it comes to number of victories there is still the appearance of the West having the better first and second place teams by a wide margin. The West’s leading position regarding total division wins had the same story on Wednesday, in that the division leading the entire NBA was from the West, the West’s Southwest Division having 141 wins, while the second and third winning divisions were also from the West and still are, the West’s Northwest Division having 136 wins, and the West’s Pacific Division, 124 wins. Best division within the East on Wednesday was the East’s Southeast Division, with 117 wins, followed by the East’s Central Division’s 106 and the Atlantic Division’s 97. Total wins as of Wednesday reached 401 for the West, 320 for the East. But holding the East back were a single division, and one team, the Atlantic Division not having reached the three-digit win mark yet, and the Central Division’s Milwaukee Bucks having achieved only eight wins as of Wednesday. Noteworthy is that one of the East’s first place teams, the Pacers, today holds the greater lead within all of the NBA, 14 wins up on the Bulls, indicating likelihood of a comfortable NBA-2013/14 playoff slot. Sadly, except for the 29-20 Phoenix Suns, the 19-30 New York Knicks, and the 29-21 Dallas Mavericks, the remaining four third place teams within the full NBA are behind by 10 and more games, in worst shape the Eastern Central Division’s Detroit Pistons, behind by 17. . . // DENVER NUGGETS---BY defeating the Los Angeles Clippers, 116-115, on Monday, February 3, the day after the Denver Broncos fell to the Seattle Seahawks at the Super Bowl, the Denver Nuggets lifted city pride. The Nuggets also soothed Denver’s sports fans with January defeats of higher ranked NBA teams, the currently 40-11 Oklahoma City Thunder, 38-10 Indiana Pacers and the 29-20 Golden State Warriors. Earlier during the NBA-2013/14 season, the Nuggets put seven and five game winning streaks into the weave. They Nuggets are now 24-23, however, and 14 games behind the Western Conference’s Northwest division leading team, the Thunder, largely from a mercurial presence within the NBA season, e.g, the team’s winning streaks offset by an eight game losing streak (December 17 through January 1). Also, the Nuggets have rarely followed a single loss with a win. Nearly all of the team’s remaining losses are two or three in succession, this ironically from a team with five starters and a sixth man having double-digit ppg averages, guard Ty Lawson highest, 17.9. Moreover, the Nuggets field goal shooting percentage is around .451, and the Nuggets have a decent three-point shooting average, 360. So, it’s the win column inconsistency that can keep the Nuggets from finishing NBA-2013/14 as an above-the-margin franchise, if it cannot win 20 or more games of the 35 that the Nuggets must play before the current season ends, starting with tonight’s Nuggets/N.Y. Knicks match. Can they accomplish that? Yes, but odds based on recent past performances dictate need of hard and relentless scrambling for the W. In December, 2013, the Nuggets won five games and lost 10. In January, 2014, the Nuggets won eight and lost seven. To land above the margin and maintain winning team ranking, be it third or even fourth place within its division, the Nuggets now have to win a minimum of eight games in February, eight in March and four in April, or any other combination of 20 wins, this taking the team to 43 victories and so above .500, which at the end of a season is the dividing line between losing and winning franchises. END/ml