Instead of suffering through the Nuggets loss to the Spurs tonight I would have rather had my mortal enemy come over to my place, with a cinder block and had my brains beaten into the carpet. The Nuggets followed up their 36 point win against the Mavs with a 19-point loss at home to the Spurs. Huh? How does that happen against a team you’ve owned two previous times?
An interesting note to start with. Andrew texted me the following at 10:05 p.m., “Theme here is 80s night yet no 80s uniforms.”
Throwback uniforms were definitely missing from a throwback night, but what in the world were the Nuggets missing? Well, if you watched the game you’d know the obvious answer was their shots. The other obvious answers: desire, energy and aggressive effort.
Against Dallas the Nuggets were without Kenyon Martin, but they came out with a certain purpose and attitude and mentally willed themselves to victory. Dallas was never in the game because the Nuggets never allowed them to be. All of this was the opposite tonight.
The Nuggets, after the first quarter, just took themselves out of the game. The shooting was horrific, the attacking nature of the team was non-existent and mentally the Nuggets were just not focused. Hell, even the TNT announcers were screwing up left-and-right.
They call games like tonight “get away games” and teams can be distracted with their upcoming individual schedules rather than focusing on the task at hand. It sure appeared that Denver was physically at The Can, but mentally they were some place else.
With out a minute left to play in the first half, Melo shot his second free throw left handed. Melo was favoring his right arm the rest of the quarter, but the announcers didn’t even point out the fact that his wild miss was due to shooting with the wrong arm. That ass backwards shot sort of summed up the entire game.
The Spurs utilized a 15-4 run to start the second quarter and held Denver to just 16 points in the period. The Nuggets made a mini-run to start the third quarter (7-2), but Greg Popovich took a quick timeout and the Spurs came out with a 14-6 run of their own and put the game away from there.
If Andrew were writing this recap his Stiff of the Night would have to be every Nuggets except for Nene.
The good stat line:
–Nene went for 20 points and 9 rebounds on 8-9 shooting (4-5 from the free throw line) in 33 minutes.
The bad stat lines:
–45-32 … the Spurs rebounding advantage.
–3-19 … the Nuggets three-point shooting.
–27-36 … the Nuggets missed 9 free-throws on the night.
–23-70 … 32.3% shooting by Melo, Billups, Tacos Allen, Afflalo, Smith, Andersen and Lawson.
This loss leaves a bad taste in Nuggets Nation’s mouth and we’ll have to wait until after the All-Star festivities to see the team get back on track. Charles Barkley called this team Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the post-game show and the Nuggets have 29 games remaining to prove otherwise.
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Twitter: Nate_Timmons
Photo courtesy of AP Photos: David Zalubowski
