Nuggets blown out
Which sounds painful, now that I think about it. But the hardy crowd who half-filled the Ford tonight — officially, it was a sellout — enjoyed it immensely: with three and a half minutes to play, the Denver Nuggets, realizing they weren’t going to get their ninth straight win, hoisted a snow-colored flag, and the reserves played out the rest of the way as Oklahoma City routed the Nuggets, 101-84.
Carmelo Anthony sprained his ankle against the Hornets last weekend, and had missed the two preceding games, both of which Denver won, so there was reason to expect that the slack would be taken up. It wasn’t. After a seesaw first quarter, which ended with the Thunder up one, OKC would hold the Nuggets to 34 points in the second and third combined, taking a 19-point lead into the final frame. Denver coughed up the ball 23 times; the Thunder controlled the boards, 39-31; OKC got 54 points in the paint, versus 20 for the Nuggets.
Despite the absence of ‘Melo, the four regular Denver starters all landed in double figures, and streaky sixth man J. R. Smith knocked down five treys. (Smith had 18 points, one behind Chauncey Billups.) But the Nuggets were facing constant one-and-dones; they got only seven second-chance points all night. Denver put up only 67 shots, and sank only 27 of them, 40.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the Thunder were hitting at a 51.9-percent clip, and their scoring was more or less balanced apart from Kevin Durant’s 30: Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green, James “Jimbo Slice” Harden and Nick Collison all contributed double figures. And there are few joys in the NBA quite like knocking off your division leader in dramatic fashion; the season series is now even at 1-1.
The Warriors will be here Sunday. Expect a hell of a lot of scoring.
