Game Preview: Los Angeles Clippers 3/7/13

     This match up seems to be a budding rivalry. The Clippers have two of my personal 10 least favorite players on their team; the overrated, whine if you don't get every call, act like you're a tough guy, Blake Griffin, and the, manipulate your body to create contact and always get the call, Chris Paul. Needless to say, I can't wait for this one to start and hope the Nuggets can pull it out! Here are the keys to the game.

#1. Feed Off The Crowd: The Pepsi Center is going to be rocking tonight! The Nuggets play great at home (11 strait home wins) and will hopefully find extra energy from the crowd tonight.

#2. Come Out Strong: The last thing the Nuggets need tonight is to start out cold and have to dig themselves out of a deep hole. The Clippers are going to start out hyped up for this game, so you have to ride the storm and match their intensity.

#3 Foul Smartly: There's no doubt that there are going to be some terrible calls against the Nuggets tonight, as is the case whenever you play against superstars. The key is for them to minimize their "stupid" fouls and not let bad calls get to them.

Key Match up: Ty VS The Fish (AKA Chris Paul)
This was hard to choose  as there are plenty of good match ups in this game. I feel that whoever controls the pace of the game will win, so naturally the two pace setters will be the best match up.

Today is the day to go out and show on national TV who the real Lob City is.


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Game Preview: Sacramento Kings 3/5/13

The day after a win at home, the Denver Nuggets (39-22) travel to Sacramento to take on the Kings (21-40). The Nuggets have seven straight wins against the Kings, and have won the first two meetings this year by 25 and 28. Here are today's keys to the game.

#1. Get Loose: Playing an away game as the second of a back to back is tough. The Nuggets need to get their legs quickly and come out strong against a team that, over the last couple of games, have been very hot offensively.

#2. Dominate the boards: The Nuggets have out rebounded the Kings 103-82 in their two wins this season. They need to keep this trend going.

#3. Find Danilo's Lost Confidence: Either Danilo has not been playing at 100%, or he has lost confidence in his driving game. If the latter is true, this game would be great to get him going again, as the Kings aren't known for their defense.

Key Match up: Ty VS Isaiah:
Not often will you see Ty play against someone who is shorter than him, as he will today. Isaiah Thomas is at 5-9 while Lawson is at 5-11. Should be fun to watch the little men go at each other, gives us normal people of normal height hope...

These are the kinds of games the Nuggets need to win to gain their fans' trust, let's see if they can get it done tonight. 


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Game Preview: Atlanta Hawks 3/4/13

Coming off a huge win against the Thunder, the Denver Nuggets (38-22) look to protect their home court (25-3) once again as they face off against the Atlanta Hawks (33-25) at 7:00 pm MST. It should be interesting to watch how the Nuggets respond to the big win, and to see if they can keep their great play at home going. Here are the keys to tonight's game.

RUN!: The Hawks played last night in not only a physically, but mentally draining game against the Lakers in which they lost by not getting a shot off on their last possession. It's needless to say that the Nuggets pace will play a huge factor in whether or not they win tonight.

Force Bad Shots: The Hawks shoot the ball very well, they shoot 46.3% from the field and 38.2% from the 3 point line. The Nuggets seem to give up a ton of open three point shots to teams, they will have to clean this up in order to win soundly tonight.

Get Gallo Going: This might be a good game for Danilo to get some of his confidence back that he loses so easily with injuries. The Nuggets really need to get Danilo going if they want to make a run in the last stretch of the season.

Key Match up: The Benches
Coming off of a back to back, it's likely that we will see more of Atlanta's bench. The Nuggets have the huge advantage in bench scoring (39.9 vs 29.5 ppg).  If the Nuggets bench delivers, chalk this up for a win.

The Nuggets have a hard time on the road, so games like this are a must win.

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Game Preview: Portland Trail Blazers 2/27/13

     The Nuggets (36-22) travel to Portland tonight to take on the Trail Blazers (26-30) at 8:30 pm MST. While the Trail Blazers have a loosing record, they are a good home team (18-9). This should be a good test for the Nuggets to see if they can start gaining some confidence in away games. Here are the keys to the game.

#1. Chase off the 3 point line: The Trail Blazers score 25% of their points from the 3 point line, something the Nuggets have been bad at guarding this year.

#2. Stop LaMarcus: The Nuggets don't really have a player that matches up well with LaMarcus Aldridge, so he will score some points. What the Nuggets do need to do is make it hard on him, giving him no easy points, and force him to have a bad shooting %.

#3. Play Like You're At Home: Wouldn't it be great if the Nuggets did this all year? This is a great game to start the trend of playing great defense away from home.

Key Match up: Lawson VS Lillard
I'm excited to see how Lawson plays against the rookie, he should be able to get by Lillard on the offensive end as Lillard isn't known for his defense.

The playoffs are almost here and the Nuggets really need to start winning these types of games to get the playoff seed they want.

Game Review: Los Angeles Lakers 2/25/13

Result:
Den: 119
LAL: 108

Now let's look at the keys to the game.

#1. Manimal And Minimal Passed: Even though Lawson didn't start out well, (started 1 for 7 from the field) the Nuggets didn't need either of their tone setters to get them up for this game, as the whole team played great from start to finish.

#2. Hit The Boards Passed: The Nuggets beat the Lakers in the battle for the boards 44-36 and offensive boards 8-13

#3. Energy: Passed Wow, did the Nuggets pass this! I don't think I've seen the Nuggets play this close to a complete game (all but the beginning of the fourth) the whole season. The Nuggets did all the little things with a fast pace that led to scoring 33 fast break points while only giving up 3, WOW.

Key Match up: Iggy VS The Black Mamba Passed: 
Iggy, with the help of the other Nuggets wings (and Andre Miller) did a pretty good job on Kobe. Even though Kobe did score 29, Kobe's going to get his, but he seemed pretty frustrated the whole night. Maybe because Javale owned him in the paint?

The Positives: 
#1. Everything: There are way too many positives to just pick out three. The pace was great, every player who played did well, I mean the Nuggets did everything great!

The Negatives:
#1. Inconsistency: It took me forever to think of a negative, and I only could think of one: (other then the terrible reffing) Inconsistency. The Nuggets would be sitting in 4th or 3rd right now if they would play the way they did yesterday every night. The Nuggets have shown how well they can play, now we expect it every time they hit the court.

Summery: This was an awesome win and hopefully a game that can build some momentum going into Portland tomorrow.

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Game Preview: Los Angeles Lakers 2/25/13

     The hot Lakers (28-29, 7-3 in their last 10 games) will pay a visit to Denver (35-22) to try to even up the season series at 2-2, while our Nuggets will try to make it 3-1. This is a different Lakers team than the first 3 games the Nuggets have played them. Dwight Howard is finally starting to get his legs, and the whole team is starting to gel. Here are the keys for the Nuggets to win this game and the season series against the Lakers!

#1. Manimal And Minimal: The Nuggets two tone setters both need to have a great night. Ty needs to set the tone offensively, driving to the basket with the intent to score, and if nothings there, pass it out. Kenneth needs to do what he does best and work hard on the offencive boards and frustrate an easily irritable Howard.

#2. Hit The Boards: In the two wins the Nuggets have against the Lakers so far, they were able to do well getting second chance opportunities. There's nothing more frustrating then getting a stop on defence, only to let the other team get the offensive board and a new 24.

#3. Energy: Playing with energy not only means flying out on the fastbreak, it means playing with defencive intensity every possession, boxing out, setting a good-hard screen, diving on the floor for the loose ball and many other small things. If the Nuggets do these small things, they should be able to wear out a much older Lakers team by the fourth quarter.

Key Match up: Iggy VS The Black Mamba
I'm not looking for Andre Iguodala to score as much as Kobe, or even to stop Kobe from scoring, I'm just asking for Iggy to make it hard on Kobe. Andre knows Kobe well from their Olympic gold metal run this off season, maybe Andre knows a couple of tricks to get in Kobe's mind, we will see!

The game is less then two hours away! Wouldn't it be great to have the bragging rights on these guys \/ this year? Let's hope that in four and a half hours we have this right!

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5 Reasons That It's Great To Be A Nuggets Fan

    In a season that started with very high expectations, and has been filled with ups and downs, it's easy to get down on our Nuggets. Whether you're frustrated with Karl's coaching, tired of a player, or annoyed that it seems the same teams are always the only ones competing for a championship in the league, here are 5 reasons to keep you watching the Nuggets.

#1. Youth: The Nuggets are the fourth youngest team with the average age of 24.7 (only behind the Cavaliers, Hornets, and Rockets). Being the 4th youngest team would suggest that they should only improve from here, which is exciting considering the Nuggets are currently 5th place in the West.

#2. Masai Ujiri: I'm becoming more and more of a Masai fan by the day. While in hindsight, you might not be the biggest fan of the Iggy trade at this point, let's look at the biggest decision Masai has made with the Nuggets; the Carmelo trade. Let's look at all we received and what we gave up in that trade now.
Gave up: Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter and Renaldo Balkman. None of these players have made much of any impact at all other then Anthony up to this point. 
Received: Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Timofey Mozgov, Andre Miller, Jordan Hamilon (from Felton trade) Quincy Miller, 2 2013 second-round picks, and a 2014 first-round draft pick.
Looking back, all I can say is, wow we really made the best of that trade.

#3. Budding Young Stars: The Nuggets have two of the league's best young players; Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari. It should be fun to continue to watch these two players develop and get better year in and year out.

#4. Flexability: One of the Nuggets biggest problems is a great one to have, they simply have too much talent to play it all. The Nuggets have so many young, skilled players that draw a lot of trade value. If there is a "superstar" available this off season, and the Nuggets want to go in that direction, they could potentially put a strong trade offer together. 

#5. Athleticism: In my opinion, this Nuggets team is in the top 3 funnest teams to watch in the league. With finishers like Corey Brewer, Wilson Chandler, Kennith Faried, Andre Iguodala, JaVale McGee and a lob passer like Andre Miller, this year's Nuggets have become a fan favorite team to watch around the NBA world. 

All in all, this is one of the greatest times to be a Nuggets fan in the team's history. We are truly lucky to be Nuggets fans in 2013! I can't wait to see what the future holds for this young team.


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