So far it looks the like the Obom and Ariza are the co-mvp's in this series. Odom for guarding the inbounds pass with his long arms and Ariza for stealing the pass...I don't think they could have taken the ball out on the baseline tonight, they need to practice the play all day tomorrow. I remember SVG taking the blame for Big Baby's winning bucket in the previous series and then taking the blame for the Lebron's winning bucket last night, but can't recall if George Karl took the blame for the two losses due to the throwaway passes. Why JR Smith took 12 threes is beyond me. You cannot blow 4th quarter 8pt leads to the Lakers and expect to win the series. The pressure on these inexperienced Nuggets might be too much for them to overcome
It's the assumption that CB's DEN teammates are so much better that irks me when last year with CB on the team, the situations were completely reversed not the Joe part.
Chauncey and Melo also took 7 threes apiece, which is way too much. They were 5 for 27 as a team from three-point land. LB must have been cringing as he watched Chauncey jack up that many threes. LB simply did not permit that kind of basketball, and it obviously was not effective tonight. Denver shot just under 40% from the floor and had their worst shooting night of the series.
The Nuggets are a very strong physical team, with a boatload of skills but not quite enough smarts to get it done. Too many mental errors, too many botched plays, too much bad execution. No way the Lakers should have won this game, but they played way smarter and didn't make stupid mistakes when it mattered.
and not to mention a coach who isn't a champ.... and from a post made within the last couple weeks hits to the point. One of the first games after the trade billiups had to ask for an out of bounds play to be drawn up because the team didn't have one.... maybe LB over coached everything, but you know that the team was prepared for anything that would be thrown at them.... Denver and LA change coaches and this would be a 4 game sweep and doubt any of the games would be close.
I think Chauncey is at his best when he is picking apart the defense with pinpoint passing, ensuring lots of ball movement, driving to the basket to score and draw fouls, and making no more than 2 to 4 three-point attempts (and those only when he has great looks).
I think I have seen 95% of the Nugs playoff games this year and I don't think I've seen Billups post up once. I hope Joe D has been watching this series and can see the impact that a dominant low post defender like the Birdman can have.
I'm just gonna accept that we gave up the wrong piece and that our teams just weren't good enough. Joe failed by not putting us over the edge for the fear of overpaying some guy.
Nuggets still flirt with disaster with the technical foul activity....They are possibly two Ariza steals away from being in the finals. I mean they still won tonight despite Melo was hobblin, but this game was still in doubt with a little more than 3 mins Martin, Smith and Melo were getting crunch time checks....I made Karl mad in his presser, but he offered no solution on to stop it. Smith and Birdman out played the entire Laker bench and some starters...
