Love beats the demon

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 105 - Lakers 79
Just as it had on opening night, a silky snow fell on Denver as the Nuggets prepared for a formative foe in the first half of the ESPN double-header. Just as before, people donned scarfs, boots, gloves, hats and shivers to match their blue and gold. But this was not that night. On this night the snowflakes landed and withered, and the Nuggets didn't overrun a fading division rival, they knocked the champs on their asses.
The Nuggets shot better from everywhere on the floor. They piled up 9 more assists. They blocked the ball, stole it, hit the break and turned a heavyweight bout into a fifth round knock-out that could have been called before Bertha Lynn even went into make-up. Lakers defenders (of which there were none in uniform) said that because Pau Gasol was out, because it was a back-to-back (a theory that is nonsense, considering that the Lakers destroyed the Suns the night before in LA and rested their starters for much of the second half), because the moon was high and LA is just trying to lull the Nugs into a false confidence. Well I call BS.
The Lakers, and Kobe in particular, taught the Nuggets a lesson in the spring: go for the throat, tear it out and don't stop until the blood's turned cold. By holding LA to 8 third quarter points and 23 in the second half overall, as well as keeping Kobe scoreless after halftime, the Nuggets played with the kind of defense that carried them last year, the kind that I've been pining for in this young season. They played with the kind of one-mind, blanket D that walls out the perimeter and becomes a blender blade of arms and shoulders blocking shots and rebounding if you dare drive inside.
This game was Exhibit A for why the Nuggets are a true contender this year: after so many seasons together, Nene, Kenyon, JR, Melo and Bird know each other's reactions, strengths, flaws and unique skills and they parlay this security into a kind of familial on-court comfort that makes them far more valuable than their individual parts. Throw in Chauncey's leadership and a rookie that exploits the Lakers humongous flaw (defending quick, small guards) and you have a brutal, beautiful beat down, the kind of sublime slam-dunk shaming that sends a shiver and a message to the big, bad bosses of the west:
We haven't forgotten the spring. We won't let that happen again. We aren't afraid of you. We aren't awed by you. We are better and brighter and braver than you and we are coming for your crown. This game wasn't an overwhelming emotional release (that will only happen if they can get their hands on the gold ball), it was a firm jaw, iron stare, and strong punch. It was the Denver Nuggets family standing tall as one and saying "we struggle and fight to survive to thrive to feel alive."

I always thought I was fly like I had a pigeon on my back

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 102 - Bucks 108
Look, it would be fun to make poetry and alliteration and nonsense of all of these, but sometimes you're team is just tired and it's the last game in a long road trip and you're playing the night after a thriller in another city and who the fuck are the Milwaukee Bucks anyways?
And that's basically how the Nugs lost this game. You can't say they were unprepared because so far this season no one was been ready for the Bucks and their rookie point guard/all-world baller Brandon Jennings. Denver spit and scraped to stay close in this game (and damn near tied it many, many times in the fourth if not for some bad breaks, a great sign for their future that a team so tired refuses to die quietly under any circumstances), but Jennings came up huge in the fourth and put the win away for the suddenly strutting Bucks. So, in honor of his great performance, and the even better one that he would have few nights later when he would drop 55 on the Warriors, consider this post a links dump for some of the fantastic dialogue around the b-ball internet these past few days (also, don't be afraid to check out some of these blogs on their own. They are much more consistent, mature and rasoned than I am, proof that fanatacism is one of the quickest roads to madness). Because we all know the Nugs are the leads over here, but it's nice to know some of the other actors.

-FreeDarko tries to figure out, in multiple posts, where Brandon's first month of work compares to other feats of delightfully unexpected brilliance

-The Baseline tracks his ascent from cautionary tale to the feet of the elite

-Ooh, video!

When your bulldog barks and your canary sings

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 90 - Bulls 89
It's good to be king.
Even if just for this night, these few fought for fleeting seconds, that thin little little half-second fresh off of maybe and knee deep in history. Melo rolled into his friend Mike's house and Chauncey squashed the soiree by stealing the scene in a shocking, staggered squeaker. Riding in on a two game-losing streak, the Nugs were hardly reeling, but they had definitely slowed their early season roll. The Bulls were hardly at a standstill, either, having won 4 of their first 6 and three in a row before this Chi city showdown.
The wrinkle for the Nugs was the welcome return of their weird wonder, JR Smith. JR, who seems to view quiet days as ideological failures, played possum with the press by telling them the morning of the game to address him by his given name, Earl Smith the third (in an odd twist the nickname JR means "Junior", a bizarre mistake and minor indictment of his family as a cocoon of his idiosyncrasies). After the game JR told the media that he had been overwhelmed with tweets and texts telling him to think twice. He returned to JR. The whole thing lasted 8 hours. Also, in the off-season he did this. Moving on.
This was the kind of NBA game that both invigorates and infuriates me. Not many people would argue with you that the Bulls are better than the Nuggets, but with Denver stumbling and sucking air as their exhausting road trip rode on, the young Bulls had a prime opportunity to win this one they way they win best: hustle and heart. These are the kinds of games where neither team has the spirit to blow it open, but they damn sure have the will to hang in there. Every time the Nuggets would execute better and wedge together a lead, the Bulls would turn up the heat and feed off the energy of their crowd, reaching up to grab the Nugs by their shirt tails and throwing them onto the ground.
For every strength, a weakness. Carmelo, the leading scorer in the league, was grabbed, goaded and guarded by Luol Deng into playing his worst game of the season (he still had 20, a success to 96% of the rest of the league). Chauncey struggled to stop the speed and skill of the slippery Derrick Rose. Joakim Noah took advantage of the injured K-Mart and the underwhelming Nene to bash the boards and bang out the nitty-gritty plays that can't be quantified until the end of the season when you realize you won ten more games than you had any right to.
The fourth quarter was raucous and wrenching. The Nugs began with a five-point lead and they stretched it to seven, but that was where it stopped. The Bulls keyed their D and busted a few buckets to pull within 2 in the final minute. When Rose tied it at 87 with :30 ticks left the crowd exploded while the Nuggets shriveled. Or so it would seem.
Proving that for the great scorers the only shot that matters is the next one, Carmelo came into this situation packed with pressure and gave it a peck on the lips. He nailed a 14-foot, off-balance jumper over Deng's (exceptionally) long arms and skipped up the court with his chin out. Rose responded by drawing a foul on Chauncey and knotting it up on free throws, but Smoove used the last ten-seconds to draw a foul on Hinrich and get to the line to win it. Makes the first, misses the second, time runs out. Game over.
Except it wasn't.
Noah grabbed the rebound and called time with 3/10 of a second remaining. Set up for a miracle, the Bulls had a chance to manufacture a miracle, while the Nugs needed to do only one thing to win: make whoever was taking the shot hesitate, just for the slightest moment, because that was all that was needed. That moment came, but it had nothing to do with the Nugs. Brad Miller got he ball right inside the three point line and hit a rainbow shot that made the Chi celebrate like it found a pot of gold. But in pivoting his shoulders (and having big fingertips) Miller held the shot for just one moment too long.
After an interminable replay review, during which the Bulls celebrated "like they had just made the Sweet 16" (to quote Chauncey), a sweet little solution of common sense and luck won out, the fans sulked, the Bulls groaned, and the Nugs got back some of their swag, lost in the South but seen again as they stole a win and tore off into the night like bandits.

Is it destruction that you're required to feel?/ Like somebody wants you, someone that's more for real?

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 88 - Heat 96/Nuggets 100 - Hawks 125
Now!
OK, so 82-0 isn't in the cards for anybody, ever. But as the Nuggets went all in with some awful hands last weekend, it was apparent that this is a team struggling and staggering to find the suffocating defensive identity that salvaged last season. Just as the Broncos were attacked from above by the Ravens a few days earlier, the Nuggets had their undefeated bubble burst in a quick 24-hour window and their undefeated beginning was doused with a dose of cold bathwater.
Though the way that the Nuggets lost these first two games was indicitive of sure to be season-long size struggles, the truth is that they were undeniably injured and inured. As soon a Kenyon Martin went out early in the Miami game the defense on the inside was softer then the air that lingered with the absence of JR Smith. The injury took a game that was tied at 33 and sucked the air out of the Nuggets, leading to a backdraft that fueled a Heat explosion that left the starters on the bench in the fourth quarter, burning.
It is a credit to the Nuggets that in the Hawks game, without Kenyon, they played big, aggressive and determined. They fell behind early and never quite clawed their way back into it, but they broke off every damn fingernail. What the Nuggets picked up this weekend was not the beginning of a queasy feeling, but a reality check. Now they remember how they won last year: with defense and heart compensating for size and strength. Now they remember how it feels to lose to someone else's best. Now they remember that a hot start is sweet but a hot finish is the sweetest, and if the Nuggets wand a reminder of what hubris gets you, they need think no further than the cold and soggy mess they've been left in each of the last five springs.
The time is now, but nobody is winning a ring this week. Relax, fellas. And remember.

Dudes actin' like they street when they barely sidewalk

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 111 - Pacers 93/Nuggets 122 - Nets 94
I alluded to this last week but I will say it again: there is a sea change afoot in the NBA and the wary, wavy waters are causing everyone to stumble a little bit. How else to explain an overwhelmed, underage Thunder team pushing the defending champs to the brink of a mammoth upset? The monsters of the Magic losing to the passive and pencil-thin Pistons? The MVP-heavy Cavs losing 3 of their first 4 (Wait, that one's easy. Their offense was designed by following the pawprints of a dog chasing birds on a beach. Case closed)?
The point that I am trying to make is that the NBA, while hardly possessed by parity, is starting to even out. I don't know if it's early season jitters, diminishing of talent on benches, or just some scrubs throwing their best shot at Goliath, and connecting more often than usual. But the fact is that a lot of teams that were expected to dominate aren't (San Antonio, Portland, Cleveland). Conversely, a lot of teams that were supposed to sink from the start are looking downright frisky (T-Wolves, Thunder, Rockets).
So how does this distinction disparity relate to the Nuggets? Well, after five games the Nugs could be deceptively described as a powerhouse. They have beaten four bad teams by double digits and stolen a thriller from a good team by three scant points. Melo looks most valuable, and the bench looks strong and spry, like it came from a park that had just been renovated. But two of these teams (Memphis and Indiana) hung around much longer than they should have, gripping onto the game despite being short-handed. The interior defense has been passive and phony, practically afraid to come outside and play. Melo's dropping buckets like raindrops, but the rest of the team is suffering severe drought, waiting for hurricane JR to get things wet.
So this is where we are in these, the nascent stages of an exhaustingly long season: we don't really know where we are. Nobody does. And yes the Nugs are undefeated. But for the most part they are also untested. And, as there always are, there are problems in the post, if not in the mailbox already. Just waiting for someone to open the top and reach inside, anytime, maybe even...

I wish for you a hundred years of success but it's my time

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 133 - Grizzlies 123
And so begins the MVP talk.
In 114 minutes of gametime Carmelo Anthony has scored 113 points. He is averaging 37/8/5. He leads the team in steals. He is doing the right things. He is saying the right things. He is the right thing. This is the kind of best behavior that gets your toddler his own mascot.
Just as the Broncos snuck in to become the surprise team of early NFL season, the Nuggets have used an overwhelming offensive arsenal and timely dfensive plays to jump out to a pleasing 3-0. Granted, there are problems. Giving up this many points to the Grizzlies (specifically 40 in an atrocious first quarter that made it look like the Nugs thought they wouldn't need to sweat on the sabbath) shows that the interior defense will be the season-long struggle everyone expected. There just isn't enough size, not until Bird gets stronger or Nene plays bigger. The Nugs also showed an underacheiving propensity in these first few, allowing a terrible Jazz team to hang around all night long before finally realizing how easy it would be to put them away (take my word for it, the Jazz are awful. They can't fit Boozer and Millsap together, D-Will is their only offense, and all of the preseasomn predictions that they would win the division were obviously made with only reputation in mind).
Still, the Nugs are in good shape. The Lakers have already lost, showing that with Gasol out they easily regress to the post-Shaq KB-Show. The Blazers are still waiting for their constantly bubbling chemistry to simmer down. The Spurs look old and oversold. There is room in the West for the Nuggets to start a fire that no one can put out, and if you ask me, smoke is already rising in the mountains.
So hang tight to that atrocious caricature of a cartoon, Kiyan. Your daddy's going to take us for a hell of a ride.

My jewels, blue and yellow/ The type of shit that makes 'em call you Carmelo

Scattered Ashes

Nuggets 97 - Trailblazers 94
For whatever reason, Carmelo made his opening statement of the first week backwards. Wednesday night we had the exclamation point, the dramatically decisive dunk that still has the northern rim at the Pepsi Center trembling. In this game, we got the monologue that deserved that dunk.
Like the "Always be closing" speech from Glengarry Glen Ross, the Melo issued a direct invective to the Trailblazers, aggressively and authoritatively asserting his absolute autonomy on their asses. 41 points, 19 in the fourth quarter of a corset-tight, hold your breathe battle between two divisional foes. In so many of the Blazers games Brandon Roy is their edge, the one player that everyone knows and sees is the best player on the court. But whenever the Blazers get together with the Nugs, Carmelo reminds them that in this division there is one king, the best player on the defending Northwest champs. He may have scored more at times in the past, but in this game he was precise, patient and profoundly productive.
Melo led his team, setting an example for the rest of the Nugs (most of whom were struggling all night) and showing them that you don't always win like they did on Wednesday: running a bigger team out of the gym. Sometimes the NBA turns into the NFL and when there's nowhere to hide, the true winners reveal themselves. Using the noise of the home crowd as a war chant for a mile high massacre is a fine way to win, but revealing your best when the tightrope of a close fourth quarter is trembling and twitching, that's the time when teams learn how much champ they have in them.