| 03 January 2010
(Denver-CO) How do you beat the Utah Jazz without one of the league’s top scorers and premier floor managers while still allowing them to win the rebounding battle and shoot over 50% from the field? Easy. Create 33 points off of 26 turnovers and listen to the boo birds sing!
If you go back an look at the Utah Jazz Schedule you find that they are typically very fundamentally sound with the basketball. But last night that was not the case as the Jazz were actually quite careless with the ball and recorded a season-high 26 turnovers which were the difference in last night’s, 105-95, Nuggets win in Utah. It seemed like every time the Jazz would try and mount a comeback they would yet again find a way to turnover the rock and each time the Nuggets were there to capitalize and keep them at bay. Denver never trailed after the first quarter and led by as many as 16 points in the third.
Nene was Denver’s top thief on the night with a career-high tying six steals. Many of Nene’s rips were punctuated with dunks after Big Brazil scampered the length of the floor with his bounty. Nene finished with 22 points, five rebounds (still not enough from a starting center playing 37 minutes), and three assists.
Ty Lawson continues to start in place of Chauncey Billups, who has missed five out of the last six games. Against the Jazz, the rookie may have had his finest outing as a professional. Lawson tied a career-high with 23 points and set a new benchmark for distribution with nine assists while also notching three steals and two rebounds. Ty was 9-14 from the field with many of his field goals coming at point blank range after making Utah All-Star Deron Williams look slow afoot on the perimeter and in transition. Williams, who turned the ball over three times, was visibly frustrated by Lawson’s tremendous speed and tried to counter by using his strength inside, but the collapsing defense by the Nuggets just frustrated him further as his team struggled offensively. Williams finished with 16 points and six assists.
Great individual performances by Lawson and Nene aside, this win can be directly attributed to a tremendous defensive effort by the Nuggets as a whole. Anytime a team can create 26 turnovers and capitalize on those miscues for 33 points you know that all five players on the floor at any given time were playing cohesively and aggressively. In fact, every Nuggetsexcept for Joey Graham and J.R. Smith who played last night had at least one steal and every single Jazz player who saw minutes was guilty of at least one turnover. If the Nuggets could play with the kind of energy and ferocity they showed against the Jazz, in Utah (a historically tough place to squeeze out victories), it proves that regardless of who is dressed to play if whoever comes out and gives a 100% effort good things are going to happen. The key for Denver is to take this lesson to heart and hopefully shake the bugaboo when they do not have their full compliment of starters available.
The player who has shown this kind of sustained effort the most as of late has been Kenyon Martin. Kenyon has bagged four straight double-doubles while averaging 13.2 points and 11.4 rebounds over his last five games. Martin has seven double-doubles on the season so far, which is two more than he had in 66 games all of last season, and his high mark for double-doubles in a season since becoming a Nugget is 20 set back in 04-05. He finished with a game-high twelve rebounds, twelve points, and three steals.
Contrary to Kenyon Martin’ sustained effort over the couple of weeks has been the erratic play of J.R. Smith. Since exploding for 41 points back on 12/23, J.R.’s shot selection has been poor and his conversion rate from behind the three-point line has been reflective of that. Smith was 10-17 from the land of plenty against the Hawks when he became the first player since the merger to score 40+ points off the bench on three separate occasions, but over his last four games combined he is 5-23 from range, including a dismal 1-8 last night against the Jazz. Even worse has been his free-throw shooting as of late which currently stands at 68% on the season. J.R. is 9-18 from the charity stripe over his last five games. How a player with such unlimited range and a hand in his face half the time can be such a poor shooter from 15 feet while everyone in the arena watches him is beyond me! One possible explanation is J.R. is still overlooking the finer points of the game in practice sessions while trying to rely too heavily on the strongest aspect of his game. In his defense, Smith still finished with 18 points and four assists off the bench against the Jazz. The love/hate relationship continues, I guess...
The Nuggets return home tonight to take on the Philadelphia 76ers in AI’s second trip back to Denver since the Nuggets traded him to the Pistons for Chauncey Billups just three games into last season. The Pistons won that game in Iverson’s homecoming to the Mile High City, but the Nuggets have already defeated Iverson as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies on November 1st and as a 76er on December 7th so far this season.
Go Nuggets!
| < Prev |
|---|
