I'm not sure that I should have expected or hoped for anything different, but for the second straight evening, the Nuggets took on one of the NBA's worst teams and it turned out about as expected. Minnesota didn't give in quite as easily as New Jersey did last night, which may account for their one victory on the year, but they just had absolutely no answer for anything Denver was throwing at them offensively or defensively. Maybe it's just me, but it seemed like from about the 8 minute mark of the 2nd Quarter to the 6 minute mark of the 4th Quarter the Nuggets were leading by 18-24 points and you could set your watch to a pass from Melo to Nene for a dunk about every 4 minutes. It's nice to get these two wins under our belt without any serious about the Nuggets ability and more importantly without any injuries, but here's to hoping for a little more excitement over the Holiday season and beyond. Here's a few addition observations from the game:
- Melo continues to be an incredibly efficient scorer with 22 points on 12 shots tonight.
- Arron Afflalo took a few questionable shots tonight, but still shows a knack for only shooting when absolutely necessary, something that Linas the Menace Kleiza could never figure out.
- Nene continues dunking! And Melo keeps feeding him the ball. These two are finally becoming the inside-outside combo people were looking for during Melo's rookie season.
- K-Mart has been remarkably consistent in effort and performance. I always hear groans whenever he shoots from the outside, but I think he's earned a couple heat-check shots per game with the energy he brings night in and night out.
- With Billups, Afflalo, Melo, Lawson, sometimes Nene and sometimes K-Mart, the Nugs have a ton of guys who can hit the mid-range jumper fairly consistently, which seems to be a weapon in both the half court and the fast break.
- Nice to see Chauncey hit some 3's, but I'm going to wait until he strings a few games like this together before I consider him out of his slump.
- I'm not sure why the Nuggets felt the need to take so many 3's in the 3rd Quarter, but at least they made them. If it weren't for the late run by the T-Wolves against the end of the Nug's bench, I would have thought it a bit unnecessary.
- Maybe it was because they got a whole quarter to play, but the Nuggets bench players just seemed out of control for most of the quarter.
- Lawson wasn't quite as effective as usual tonight, fortunately, there's not too many other guys in the league as quick as Jonny Flynn.
- No one player on the Nuggets is dominating on the glass, but the team managed to once again out-rebound their opponent by everybody chipping in a little bit with some boards.
Not much to learn from this game other than the fact that this is clearly not the immature Denver Nuggets of old. With Thanksgiving right around the corner and playing on the road in the second game of yet another back-to-back it would have been easy to come out relaxed in this one, but instead the Nuggets were relentless on defense from the start and pretty much dominated from that point until garbage time. It's looking more and more like the Clippers game was an abberation and instead of an omen of demise, it was "Just one of those games" where things aren't going your way. While the teams haven't been the upper-echelon so far, there's no question that the Nuggets have had a logistically extremely difficult schedule and should be proud to be going into Thanksgiving with a an 11-4 record.
Good night, Go Nugz and Happy Thanksgiving!
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