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.