So much for resting the starters tonight. Both the Nuggets and the Thunder went full-tilt at one another pretty much the entire 48 minutes, and neither side ever got much of a lead. And at the end of it all — this was the last regular-season game for Oklahoma City — Denver was on top, 106-101.

Just about every Denver player proved to be an offensive threat: seven of the nine Nuggets who saw action scored in double figures, with Ty Lawson team-high at 25. The biggest problem for OKC, though, seemed to be rookie power forward Kenneth Faried, who put together a double-double (13 points, 10 rebounds, six offensive) and generally made life miserable for the Thunder. Denver outrebounded OKC, 42-37, and managed to hold on to the rock better, turning it over 10 times, while the Thunder fumbled it away on 18 occasions.

On the other hand, the Thunder technically shot better by five percentage points, though here’s your telltale statistic: OKC went 39-79, Denver 40-90. Eleven more shots. The Nuggets also put up 30 free throws, though only 16 dropped. (OKC was 13-15 from the stripe.) And as usual, Batman and Robin had the fancy lines: Russell Westbrook scored 30, Kevin Durant 32. For those paying attention to this sort of thing, this gives KD 1850 points in 66 games, an average of 28.030. For Kobe Bryant to grab the scoring title, he’ll need at least 38 points against the Kings tomorrow. (Then again, last Lakers-Kings game, on March 2, Kobe got, um, 38 points.) And James Harden was cleared to play, but Scott Brooks decided otherwise.

So that’s the season: 47-19, and 2-1 against the Nuggets, who currently occupy the 6th seed, a hair ahead of Dallas. (Both have one game left.) It will probably be Thunder-Mavs in the first round. Fasten your seat belts.

Normally, one does not simply walk into the Pepsi Center. The Thunder were up four after the first quarter, and then went on a 10-0 run — and then totally fell to pieces, as Denver dominated the rest of the half and went into the locker room up one. (“To pieces”? How often does Scott Brooks get T’d up?) Whatever Brooks said at halftime, though, it worked: OKC took the third quarter, 28-14, and held the Nuggets at bay for the last twelve minutes to walk away with a 103-90 win.

This game marked the return, albeit limited, of Thabo Sefolosha, who put in twelve minutes and sank a trey. (Interestingly, Daequan Cook, rotated back to the bench, had a pretty decent night: 11 points in 16 minutes, including three trademark treys.) The scoring stalwarts were up to snuff: Kevin Durant 24, Russell Westbrook 23, James Harden 18. And, significantly, no one played over 35 minutes, an important consideration with the Spurs due in tomorrow night.

Denver didn’t do a whole lot wrong, but they didn’t throw up a whole lot of defense either: they blocked only two shots all night. Come to think of it, they didn’t throw up a whole lot of offense either: they made four 3-pointers in the first half, and only one in the second, while seventeen fell harmlessly away from the cylinder. Andre Miller was the Nuggets’ top scorer, with 17 off the bench, and while rookie forward Kenneth Faried acquitted himself well (8 points, 9 rebounds), he’s a long way from being Nenê.

For the season, the Thunder are now 2-0 against Denver, with the rubber game to come at the literal end of the season (25 April, at the ‘Peake.) This weekend, though, there’s San Antonio to deal with, and the question of whether the Trail Blazers get a fired-coach bounce when they come to town Sunday.

Runs, runs, runs. For 48 minutes, no matter who took the lead, the opponent came back with a run; at one point the Thunder put together a 20-0 sequence. It was tied after three at 83; with a minute left it was tied at 106. The Nuggets promptly went on a 5-0 run in seemingly no time at all; Kevin Durant put together a 5-0 run of his own, and regulation expired at 111-111.

Maybe KD wasn’t counting, maybe he was. I don’t know. I tend to think he knows everything going on. Either way, the last two points he scored were his 50th and 51st, and they put the Thunder up 124-118 in what Royce Brown said may have been “the best regular-season game in Oklahoma City history.”

Still, the Nuggets have to wonder what the heck they have to do to win in this building. They had seven players in double figures, led by Arron Afflalo with a respectable 27 and sixth man Andre Miller with 21 and 10 assists. Nor was that their only double-double: Al Harrington had 11 points and 11 boards. Denver was plus-7 on the boards and plus-6 on assists, and got seemingly several thousand points in the paint.

But then there was Durant and his 51 points, a career high. And there was Russell Westbrook with 40, one assist short of a double-double. And there was Serge Ibaka with his first-ever triple-double, 14 points, 15 rebounds and 11 blocks. If you’re gonna have career highs, this was the night to have them.

Four games in five nights, one down. The Hornets will be here tomorrow. Hope everyone gets some rest.

And we hope the Nuggets enjoy their trip home. We’re quite sure that the Thunder will enjoy not going back with them, having dispatched Denver for the last time. And we’re also quite sure that we’re having palpitations of some sort, because OKC was down by nine with a little over four minutes left yet pulled out a 100-97 win. This sort of thing can cause cardiac incidents.

Then again, there’s plenty of heart to go around. The Thunder couldn’t buy a bucket most of the night — abominable 36.6 percent shooting, 25 percent from beyond the arc — but defense won this one. (Telltale statistic: Serge Ibaka scored only one point, but pulled down eight rebounds — and blocked nine shots.) On the other hand, Kevin Durant, who’d scored 25 through three quarters, added 16 more in the fourth. And if Russell Westbrook is still having problems with his shot — he went 3-15 tonight, though he cashed seven of 10 freebies for 14 points — well, there were second-chance points to be had by his teammates. (The Thunder gathered 51 rebounds, 16 off the offensive glass, versus 38 and 4 for Denver.)

George Karl had grumbled something earlier in the week about having to take on a couple of All-Stars with a team full of 7/10 players. It did mean that everyone who played delivered to the extent possible: five Nuggets landed in double figures, but Arron Afflalo was team-high with a mere 15. What’s more, Kendrick Perkins, not usually an offensive powerhouse, outscored Nenê, 11-8, though each had nine rebounds.

Now the bad news: in the second round, we have to play a team that won the season series. The Spurs shut OKC out, 3-0; the Thunder managed to beat Memphis once in four tries. At the moment, Les Griz lead that series, 3-2. If we play them, at least we’ll start at home. (The Spurs, as the #1 seed, would have home-court advantage should they advance.) Still: it’s the second round. Was it only two years ago that this team just managed to avoid losing 60 games?

But as Phil Jackson, or Scarlett O’Hara, might have said, we’ll think about that tomorrow.

Okay, it’s not going to be a sweep. Think of it as an opportunity to put away the Nuggets in front of the home crowd. Then again, my own prediction for this series: “Thunder in 6, but the two they’re gonna lose will be seriously ugly.” This one definitely lacked prettiness, especially starting late in the third quarter with OKC up two, followed by an 11-0 Denver run. The Thunder would whittle that nine-point lead down to two — three times — but the Nuggets picked up the win, 104-101, forcing a Game 5 on Wednesday.

And three times in those waning moments Russell Westbrook put up a Hail Mary from beyond the arc. Mary, however, was at the Grizzlies/Spurs game, and heard him not, most especially on that buzzer-beater for the tie. Westbrook still finished with 30, but he went 0-7 on treys. (Which means that the rest of the team was a highly-respectable 7-12.) The Thunder shot a bit better — 44.3 to 38.6 percent — and Kevin Durant, who had more luck from distance, brought down 31 points, but this game was close enough that almost every single miscue, and there were plenty of them, could earn part of the blame.

Meanwhile, Ty Lawson was rolling up 27 points, Danilo Gallinari was coming out of his shell, and J. R. Smith was summoned for spot shooting. (Smith led all bench players with 15.) The Nuggets put up 44 from the foul line; 13 went astray, which is actually a little better than they’d been doing. (Thunder went 24-31, which wasn’t.) But the numbers matter less than the execution, and tonight, Denver did it just a little bit better.

Thunder in six? If they fall apart Wednesday night. Let’s hope not.

Through the first nine and a half minutes of the fourth quarter, the Denver Nuggets had scored a total of seven points on 2-15 shooting, prompting radio guy Matt Pinto to ask if maybe George Karl was missing Carmelo Anthony right about now. The Nuggets picked up the pace after that, and pulled to within one with 14.6 seconds left on J. R. Smith’s second trey in a row. Serge Ibaka dunked four seconds later; once again, Smith got the call, and this time James Harden got the swat. Oklahoma City 97, Denver 94, and if Karl’s wondering anything, it’s how come he’s lost five times to this team in three weeks.

A few hints from the box score: Denver shot 37.2 percent, were outrebounded 49-43, missed 15 points at the foul line, and nobody scored more than 15 anywhere. The return of Arron Afflalo should have helped, and indeed he sank his first three shots, but he wound up 4-12 for the night. Even getting the Thunder into foul trouble early on didn’t make much difference.

Not that OKC made it all look easy. The Thunder shot even worse — 36.2 percent — and missed three of four foul shots in the last minute. But Ibaka had a night like you wouldn’t believe: 22 points, 16 rebounds, and four blocks, nearly overshadowing Kevin Durant (26 points and three blocks) and Russell Westbrook (23 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists). Still, you ask any of those guys, and they’ll tell you Harden was the one who came up big.

So it’s 3-0. If you thought things were crazy tonight, just wait until Monday, when the Nuggets have to go for broke.

You could tell things were going to be furious on the floor tonight: Kendrick Perkins pounded Wilson Chandler to the tune of a Flagrant-1, and George Karl got T’d up, all within the first few minutes. The Thunder were up 31-15 after the first quarter and ran the lead to as much as twenty-six in the second before the Nuggets started to mount a counterattack, and while Denver was fairly efficient at finding holes in the Thunder defense, the Thunder offense was maintaining a double-digit lead. With 2:10 left and OKC up by nineteen, Karl knew he was licked. Oklahoma City 106, Denver 89, and we’re off to climb the mountain for Game 3.

The plan for Game 1 — stand back and give the ball to Russell Westbrook and/or Kevin Durant — clearly wasn’t going to work a second time. This time around, the Thunder had five in double figures, Serge Ibaka landing the night’s only double-double (12 points, 12 boards), Durant and Westbrook combining for a modest 44 instead of 72, and Perk reeling in 11 boards before fouling out with four minutes left. And speaking of boards, Denver hardly got any; OKC outrebounded the Nuggets, 54-31. Robert Vaden, called up from the 66ers, didn’t see any playing time, but hey, he got to see a real NBA playoff game.

So did the Nuggets, and they were not liking it much. They executed where they could, Ty Lawson flashed to a quick twenty, and Nenê was, well, Nenê, but they left nine points at the stripe and shot only 39 percent. And unlike the case in the first game, neither J. R. Smith nor Chris Andersen was much of a factor: Raymond Felton and Al Harrington got almost all the bench points, and only Harrington got even a single rebound.

Still, there was anxiety before the game, especially when NewsOK stuck this on a story:

Migod, you’d almost think KD was dying or something.

Statistic I’d seen at TrueHoop (and mentioned at game’s end by radio guy Matt Pinto): “How important is Game 1 of this series? George Karl is 0-10 in any best-of-seven series in which his team loses Game 1.”

And someone asked me the other day what I thought would happen with this playoff series. Said I, the Thunder win it in six, but those two losses will be ugly.

Well, there was a bit of ugliness in those last two shots Russell Westbrook put up, but they both went down, and they turned a one-point deficit into a three-point Thunder lead, to which the Nuggets had one response: they fouled Kevin Durant, who sank two free throws to extend the lead to five. Danilo Gallinari drew a foul coming back and brought Denver back to within three, but by then there were only six seconds left and the Nuggets were out of timeouts. Denver fouled, of course, and Westbrook hit one of two at the stripe to put it out of reach, 107-103, giving George Karl a healthy start toward 0-11.

Not that the Nuggets were really out of this one: they led early, sometimes by double figures, though the Thunder had closed to within one by halftime. Measures of closeness: Denver hit 39-77 from the floor, Oklahoma City 38-77; OKC had 37 rebounds, Denver 34; OKC suffered 11 turnovers, Denver gave up 11; scoring in the fourth quarter was 21-21. Nenê, who departed for a few moments with a reported knee contusion, came back to finish a 22-point performance; Gallinari added 18 more. The Ty Lawson/Raymond Felton combine served up 13 assists and 22 points.

But then there was Westbrook, who ran the point most of the night for OKC, finishing with 31. And there was Durant, who finished with 41 and nine rebounds, both game-high. Then again, these guys are All-Stars, and that’s what All-Stars do in the playoffs. (Eric Maynor added 12 points in less than twelve minutes.)

The series resumes Wednesday at the House With No Name.

You wouldn’t have thought it would have gone that way if you’d sat through the first four minutes and watched Denver run — well, amble, actually — to an 8-0 lead. And the first quarter ended with a blah 17-17 tie. But the Thunder second unit opened up a lead, and “Hey, aren’t we the division champs or something?” began to take hold. OKC was up six at the half, eleven after three, and won it 104-89, taking the season series 3-1.

The answer tonight, as it was at the Pepsi Center earlier this week, was interior defense: in neither game could the Nuggets garner more than eight points in the paint. Forced to rely on dialing long-distance, Denver put up 18 attempts from beyond the arc, but only five went down. And 18 times they gave up the ball, handing the Thunder an ungodly number of points.

Still, Denver showed plenty of moxie. The Nuggets’ starting frontcourt — Nenê, Kenyon Martin and Danilo Gallinari — were good for 49 points and 31 rebounds. And Raymond Felton (17 points) was good enough to make you wonder how it is that Ty Lawson is starting. On the other hand, Al Harrington rang up six fouls in less than 13 minutes, an indication of how frustrated Denver must have been; the 40.3 shooting percentage is another.

The Thunder shot 46.3 percent and outrebounded Denver 46-40. And that second-period burst was engineered by Daequan Cook (8 points) and James Harden (14). Kevin Durant got a statistically-average 28 on 9-21 shooting; he was, shall we say, Not In The Zone. The line you want to see, though, is Russell Westbrook’s: 17 points (7-15), six steals, eight assists, and only two turnovers. (Eric Maynor didn’t score, but he didn’t give up the ball at all.) Then there’s +22 Nick Collison, with two points but eight boards.

Three games left: Sunday at Los Angeles against the Lakers, Monday at Sacramento against the team potentially known as the Anaheim Royals, and the finale at home against the Bucks. Playoffs start the following weekend, and right now, it looks like Thunder vs. Nuggets.

After the debacles in Portland and Los Angeles, I was prepared for the Thunder to show up at the Pepsi Center with all the strength of an uncapped, stale Diet Coke. And indeed, there were long stretches when Mentos could wander onto the premises undisturbed. But Oklahoma City put together a 15-0 run early in the fourth quarter, and while the Nuggets fought back to within four several times in the last minute, clutch free throws put it out of Denver’s reach, 101-94.

Ty Lawson did what he could: he racked up 28 points, a career high, while doing a creditable impression of The Flash. The Nuggets’ frontcourt — Nenê, Kenyon Martin and Danilo Gallinari — combined for 38 points and 21 rebounds. But the Denver bench tended to lose ground against the OKC reserves, led by Eric Maynor (10 points) and James Harden (13).

And the Thunder were in a rebounding mood, pulling down 50 boards. Kendrick Perkins had 14 of them. (Before you ask: he took no foul shots.) Serge Ibaka had 11 more. And the Durant/Westbrook Axis was working pretty well, garnering 50 points.

Is this a preview of the first round of the playoffs? Considering that OKC is a fairly-solid fourth in the conference, and that Denver has a two-game lead for fifth, it’s at least a reasonable possibility. It may become more so when the Nuggets come to the Your Name Here Arena Friday night. But before that, there’s a rematch with the Clippers on Wednesday.

Radio guy Matt Pinto was showing signs of strain towards the end of this game, and so were the tattered remains of the Thunder defense, which couldn’t stop the Nuggets from closing things out in Denver, 112-107, evening the season series at 1-1.

Perhaps the most heartening thing about this game, even though it was a loss, is the idea that Carmelo Anthony, who’s been the subject of absolutely insane levels of speculation of late — should he stay or should he go? — apparently decided to quit paying attention to the press; the apparently undistracted ‘Melo dropped in 35 points and hauled in seven rebounds. Chauncey Billups and Nene added sixteen each; Denver shot a creditable 51.2 percent, though they were a blah 4-16 from beyond the arc.

If 4-16 is blah, though, what is 3-15? Oklahoma City still can’t buy a long ball, and while the Thunder did manage to outrebound the Nuggets, 46-39, Kevin Durant had an off night (22 points, 6-18 from the floor), and while Russell Westbrook did his best to hold up his end (28 points, 10 assists), nobody else’s line really shone, except maybe Serge Ibaka’s (16 points, 9 rebounds).

Back to the Quarter-Mile-High City for one game — Saturday against the Knicks, who thrashed the Thunder at the Garden earlier this season — and then Monday in New Orleans.

So I figured that, extension or no extension, Carmelo Anthony is still a Nugget, and the rest of the team would extend themselves to fill in the gap while he’s away — and indeed, that’s the way the game unfolded early on, with Denver dominating the proceedings. The Thunder began fighting back in the second quarter; by the end of the third, they were up three, 88-85, and Kevin Durant had already knocked down 40 points. Kid Delicious was quieter in the fourth — he finished with 44 — but Oklahoma City held serve and then some, sending the Nuggets away with a 114-106 lump of coal.

Still, Denver didn’t give anything away. Chauncey Billups had a season-high 30 points, Nene had the night’s only double-double — 21 points, 12 rebounds — and Ty Lawson came up with 19 off the bench. Besides which, the Nuggets shot over 50 percent, which the Thunder didn’t. But they turned the ball over 17 times.

And tonight, OKC was taking care of the ball: they gave up only eight turnovers. Durant had five of them, but then he seemingly always had the ball. Jeff Green’s inner sharpshooter apparently had the night off, so James Harden took up the slack, putting up 21 points; between Harden and Durant, the Thunder, usually not a factor from beyond the arc, managed to hit six of 17 from international waters. More important, though, was forcible removal of the ball from Denver players: the Thunder pulled off 10 steals and blocked eight shots. And Nenad Krstić was back; he didn’t exactly keep Nene out of the lane, but then neither did anyone else.

Three more home games at the Expensive To Heat Arena: the Mavericks on Monday, the Nets on Wednesday, and the Hawks on Friday.

One thing about the Nuggets: they let the ball do the talking. (As the phrase goes: Ball Don’t Lie.) And the ball had a lot to say at the Pepsi Center: it was Denver 130, OKC 115, in a preseason contest with unexpected lineups — neither Russell Westbrook nor Kevin Durant appeared for the Thunder, and Chris “Birdman” Andersen and Kenyon Martin failed to materialize for the Nuggets.

Your standard hoop pundit has probably already picked Denver to finish behind at least two teams in the Northwest during the regular season — Oklahoma City, probably, and either Utah or Portland — which seems to me to be a bit dismissive. Maybe they figure Carmelo Anthony will be dealt in a few days. I don’t know. I figure it will be like last year, with everyone but Minnesota in the mix, but I have no more credentials than your standard hoop pundit.

In the meantime, the Thunder have had more injuries in this preseason than they had all last season. Better now than during the regular 82, I suppose, especially since we have to play at the Pepsi Center for two of them. And let’s hope the Good Jeff Green, who had 29 tonight, shows up for both.

The last half of the fourth quarter, the Thunder couldn’t buy a bucket. They couldn’t even borrow one. And so it was that the Denver Nuggets put together a 22-5 run over the last seven minutes and odd to grab the win at Oklahoma City, 98-94.

The Thunder shot a couple of ticks better than the Nuggets, but were hopeless (1-14) on the long ball, and Denver controlled the boards, 50-41. Chauncey Billups was fearsome, scoring 31, and Carmelo Anthony was, well, Carmelo Anthony, logging a double-double (24 points, 11 boards). Fortunately, sharpshooter sixth man J. R. Smith wasn’t making any treys, or it would have been a lot worse than it was.

Perhaps everyone was worn out. Kevin Durant put in nearly 45 minutes; he managed 33 points, but he was only 9-21 from the floor. (On the upside, he did reel in 11 rebounds.) Jeff Green doubled up — 11 points, 10 boards — and Russell Westbrook dropped in 21 points. But total production in the fourth quarter was a mere 14 points, with not so much as a single field goal in the last nine minutes.

The playoff shuffle: the Nuggets surge to second, the Jazz (who lost to Houston) drop to fifth, and the Spurs, playing at Phoenix, remain in sixth. Whether the Thunder drops to eighth depends on whether Portland can dispatch the Clippers later tonight. (Assume they can.)

Next game: the Suns, on Friday. Still not getting any easier.

When garbage time starts in the third quarter, something is dreadfully askew. Denver led 61-52 at the half, not quite enough to declare victory and empty the bench, but the Thunder managed a mere twelve points in the next twelve minutes, and at one point trailed by 41. This wasn’t a blowout; it was a full-fledged implosion, to the tune of 119-90, and the Thunder pretty much did it to themselves. We’re talking 32.5 percent shooting and 26 turnovers, and only 46 points from the starters. (Remember when Kevin Durant, all by himself, had 39? That was last night.)

In fact, KD and James Harden tied for team high, with 19; Serge Ibaka, who played 27 minutes — more than Durant, Jeff Green or Russell Westbrook — put together the only double-double, with 15 points and 13 boards. Etan Thomas played most of the fourth quarter; Antonio Anderson, currently on a 10-day contract, got his first NBA minutes and first two points.

The Nuggets were pretty much what you’d expect: Carmelo Anthony scored like crazy (30 points), Kenyon Martin reeled in the misses (13 boards), and Nene was a looming presence at seemingly every turn. Denver shot 50.6 percent and scored 50 points in the paint, versus 18 for OKC.

What’s scary, of course, is that Denver right now holds the third seed in the West, OKC the sixth. If those positions hold, it’s Nuggets vs. Thunder in the first round. And if the Thunder have another night like this, don’t even think about a second round.

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.

Just try that at the Pepsi Center in Denver. The Thunder, despite a late run, never quite caught up with the Nuggets after falling behind in the second quarter; the final was 102-93.

George Karl only played eight tonight, and he really didn’t need any more; Carmelo Anthony burnished his No. 1 Scorer credentials with a 31-point performance, and the Nuggets’ bench weapons, J. R. Smith and Chris Andersen, had 19 and 15 respectively. The Birdman also had 11 rebounds to get another punch in his double-double card. The Nuggets did not shoot particularly well, at 40 percent, but they got 34 of 40 from the charity stripe.

The percentages, in fact, were pretty even: the Thunder shot 39.2 percent and 26 of 31 free throws. OKC got one more board: 41-40. The Thunder had seven steals and blocked nine shots; the Nuggets had 10 steals and seven blocks. Kevin Durant actually snuck up slightly on ‘Melo, with 32 points (and ten boards); Jeff Green was held to 8, but Nick Collison, off the bench, was good for 14. I’m starting to wonder if the major factor for the Thunder is “How’s Jeff?”

He’d better be good for Wednesday night against the Mavericks. The Pistons will be in town Friday, after which there’s a quick flight to Houston for the third go-round with the Rockets. At 12-11, the Thunder really need to win at least two of these.

Thunder radio guy Matt Pinto questioned the sheer number of fouls called on Oklahoma City at the Pepsi Center, noting that Denver put up 36 free throws, making 30. On the other hand, you have to figure that if there was that much going on, the Thunder had to be getting physical, something they haven’t been doing consistently, and in the end they were simply overrun, the Nuggets earning a sweep of the four-game series with a 122-112 win.

Then again, OKC made 25 of 29 from the stripe, .862 versus .833, so there was plenty of banging around on both sides. Rebounds were even at 40; the Nuggets shot a little better (53.8 percent to 47.1). What Denver really did well was to force turnovers: they got 13 blocks (seven by Chris “Birdman” Andersen) and 11 steals, versus 6 and 9 for the Thunder.

As always, the major threats were Carmelo Anthony (31 points) and Nene (23 points, 10 boards). Chauncey Billups rang up 18 points, 16 in the third quarter when the Nuggets started pulling away; both J. R. Smith and Linas Kleiza managed double figures from off the bench. From beyond the arc, Denver hit six of 17.

Kevin Durant put together a 31-point night, with Jeff Green adding 24 and Nenad Krstić 17. Russell Westbrook got his ninth double-double, 14 points and 11 assists. OKC made 5 of 12 treys.

Overall, a decent showing, but still an L, the 57th of the year. There’s one home game left, against the Bobcats; the team finishes with a three-game road trip.

The last two meetings with the Nuggets ended the same way: Carmelo Anthony delivering a buzzer-beater to slap down a hopeful Oklahoma City squad in the last second or two. Not this time: the slapping was administered in the first quarter, after which Denver had a 31-19 lead, and the Thunder never quite caught up. The Nuggets, with seven of eight players in double figures, dispatched the visitors from Soonerland, 112-99.

Rebounds were even at 43, but the Thunder weren’t making shots — they wound up at 40.2 percent, versus 50 even for Denver — and the Nuggets passed around the ball seemingly with immunity, recording 33 assists. (Anthony Carter, the one Nugget who didn’t score in double figures, had 12 of those dimes.) ‘Melo led all scorers with 22, though Linus Kleiza might have caught up if there’d been enough time; he was on fire in the fourth quarter and finished with 20. And Renaldo Balkman, replacing Kenyon Martin for the moment, balanced 14 points and 14 rebounds.

Jeff Green finished at 19; Earl Watson had 18 off the bench, a season high. Thabo Sefolosha contributed 14 points and 9 boards. The seldom-seen Robert Swift scored 10, his season high; Malik Rose, now averaging over 20 minutes a game, scored 10. (Nick Collison, we’re told, is suffering a groin injury.) The Thunder shone at the charity stripe, making 30 of 32 free throws.

One more on this road trip, at Phoenix. There are three home games next week: San Antonio, Chicago and Utah.

Didn’t we just see this in January? Carmelo Anthony gets the last bucket of the game, and the Nuggets slide by, 114-113. And they did it this time without Chauncey Billups, which proves pretty persuasively that Denver has serious depth: J. R. Smith scored 22, including four treys, from off the bench, and Chris “Birdman” Andersen rolled up 12 points and seven boards before fouling out. They hardly needed ‘Melo to knock down 32, but he did, with 11 assists to boot, and Nenê was, well, Nenê, with 20.

Like that earlier game, this one was winnable: the Thunder racked up 70 first-half points, good for an 11-point lead, but Denver ratcheted up the defense in the second half, and the usual OKC sixteen turnovers led to suboptimal results. Still, the Three Musketeers shone: Kevin Durant had 31, Jeff Green 24 and Russell Westbrook 20. And Joe Smith was back to snag some timely boards: he got six in less than 14 minutes. Both Earl Watson and Nick Collison were in double figures.

And yet: ‘Melo. As clutch players go, he’s up there with the clutch-est.

The Blazers will be here Friday.