Kleiza & Company (The Nuggets) Win Big Over Lakers 113-86

You are in your 11th year of an all-Laker basketball all-star career. You are considered by many to be the best guard in basketball, an athlete so skilled, and so much in control of your performance, that you are almost always the most important player on your team and you can sometimes change by yourself the flow and the momentum of a game. You almost never have a truly poor outing, at either end of the court. Last year, you won the scoring title with little problem, with 35.4 ppg versus Allen Iverson at 33.0 ppg. This year, you have only Melo ahead of you in points scored per game, by a trivial amount. Unlike Melo, you are a reliable three point shooter and you can easily pick the best scoring opportunity and get the ball to the right player at the right time. Melo is a forward and forwards pass less than guards. But Melo is more choosy about who he will pass to. Unlike you, Melo worries about an open or cutting player putting up a brick in many a split second, thus missing a few assist opportunities from time to time. You look for the scoring opportunity, whereas Melo looks for the player most likely to make a shot, so Melo's view of the game is a little more complicated than yours, and sometimes a little too difficult to operate well against a great opponent.

Also unlike Melo, you have had many years experience guarding many of the best players in the League, and you have disrupted them enough to help the Lakers set the pace and the tone in countless playoff games. Melo may never win a Championship unless he learns how to explode in a game as you have learned to, unless he learns how to spot likely scores from unlikely players, and unless he can get close to your level of drive and determination to hustle and defend, which won you 9 seasons of many more wins than losses and three NBA Championships. Fans could argue all night whether you or Allen Iverson is the best guard of the past decade, but you would get far more votes, because of all your rings and because of the huge Southern California market you play for.

Great players sometimes do peculiar things, because they operate at a level few ever reach, and sometimes the adrenalin, the exhilaration, and the constant pressure of performing at that level lead you to do things that do not make sense to ordinary mortals or to folks just watching on the boob tube. So the elbow thing is trivial and understandable. Everything awkward, as the Nuggets learned earlier this season by getting the fines and the suspensions that were supposed to end all fines and suspensions, is made more awkward by the bumbling dictators at League Central.

You are, of course, Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant, came to Denver battered by injuries and desperately inserting key fowards back into their lineup as soon as possible, which was this game. It may have been too soon for their own good. The Lakers have now lost 7 straight games, a Coach Phil Jackson record, and they have lost 13 of the last 16. Now the Lakers have to play again tomorrow night with their not fully healed up squad, though one can imagine Kobe Bryant getting 40 or more against the Trailblazers, allowing the Lakers to win a close one with a 4th quarter surge.

Luke Walton and Lamar Odom were returned to action for this game against the Nuggets who, the word is out, can be beaten at any time by any decent team if you slow down A.I. and Melo by double covering and by fouling them as a last resort to slow down the tempo, by forcing turnovers, by burying alot of threes with the many open looks you will get, and by charging the hoop if anyone other than Camby is guarding it. SF Lamar Odom, one of the better small forwards, sustained a left shoulder separation injury on March 2 and was cleared to practice 10 days later. Since January 28, Luke Walton, who is supposed to back up Odom at SF, has been dealing with the sprained right ankle from hell.

Odom and Walton are the indispensable Kobe balancers and with those two out, Kobe has become a little unbalanced, especially according to one of the chief assistants of League Dictator David Stern, a guy whose very name sparks hate at the Players Union, Stu Jackson. Jackson has been suspending and fining Kobe over and over again as Kobe has been getting a little too creative with his arm motions.

The Laker centers, Andrew Bynum and Kwame Brown, are both young and have not yet learned how to exactly position themselves and how to hustle for easy second chance clean up scores, as Okur, Duncan, Yao Ming, and Stoudemire have. So when both Odom and Walton were out, the Lakers were practically all Kobe all the time and, of course, as the other greatest guard of the decade, A.I., will tell you, a team can not depend on just one player to get most of the scoring every game. It's just too much to put on one player's shoulders, no matter how great that player is.

Aside from Odom and Walton, much of the rest of the front court roster for the Lakers remains sidelined with serious injuries. FC Chris Mihm, who was supposed to be the wise veteran of the front court, had surgery on his badly damaged right ankle last summer and his recovery was anticipated, but the injury proved to be even worse than was thought. So he had additional surgery in November and is now out for the season. Then Vladimir Radmanovic, who is supposed to start at PF, sufferred a separated shoulder while snowboarding in Utah during the all-star break, a risky non-professional sport that earned Radmanovic a fine for violating his contract. Radmanovic is out until about the end of the regular season. Then on Tuesday of this week, just about the only front court Laker not yet having injury problems, Brian Cook, who is supposed to back up Radmanovic at PF, sprained his ankle in practice and did not make the trip to Denver.

Now you know why the Lakers have been falling; it has nothing to do with Kobe Bryant.

So the Lakers had two small forwards rushed back after injuries, to cover for two power forwards still out injured. Just about everyone has been beating up on these devastated Lakers lately, and even the Nuggets, who haven't really beat up on anyone this season, buried the Lakers in the second half and won the game to become a winning team again, at 32-31, by the score of 113-86. Allen Iverson's shots were not falling, Melo was off a little, Nene didn't get the ball much, Najera was not shooting as usual, Reggie Evans was benched, Yakhouba Diawara was benched, DerMarr Johson was extremely benched, and J.R. Smith was almost benched.

That leaves Camby, Blake, and Kleiza, so the Nuggets lost the game because there is no way all of these three could possibly have nice shooting games on the same night, right? Wrong. All three did have good nights offensively, with Kleiza by far the best. With the Nuggets shooting this season, there is an occasional feast to break the famine. Kleiza had his best career game ever for the second time in 5 days. After scoring 24 points on 8/11 shooting on Sunday at the Kings, he scored 29 points on 10/13 shooting in this one. For the two games combined, Kleiza made 9/13 3-pointers, thus more than making up for the absence of J.R. Smith. Now George "Scrooge" Karl, who gave Kleiza only 16 minutes on Tuesday, has no choice but to make sure Kleiza plays at least 24 minutes per game for at least the next two weeks, or else that will be a reason to fire him at the end of the season.

The Western Conference is "big shot country" and many young players who play in the West go through a three-point shooting trial by fire. Rookie Diawara failed his trial this year and DerMarr Johnson failed early in the season and ended up in Karl's doghouse, from which it is almost impossible to get out. But now Kleiza, the backup who has the least doghouse time this season, has succeeded, and the West has another newly minted three point shooter. Watch out West, if Melo ever learns how to shoot threes, or J.R. comes back to full strength, the Nuggets may finally have enough three point shooting to compete in big shot country.

Aside from Kleiza's individual success, the massive imbalance of the Nuggets between A.I., Melo, and Camby on the one hand and everyone else on the other hand has now been treated by a heavy dose of Kleiza. The Nuggets were two teams separated by a grand canyon but for now there is much more unity, because Kleiza is a member of the greater squad and also of the lessor squad at the same time. Now that A.I., Melo, and Camby have learned that it is possible to get alot of help from somebody else on the roster, the next thing that needs to fall into place is for George Karl to calm down and loosen up enough to give every one of the large crew on the bench adequate opportunities to get off it, because Denver isn't going to be able to beat the top teams of the West with that many players sitting on the bench for the entire 48 minutes.

Najera played for 21 minutes and was 2/2 for 4 points, and he had 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and a steal. Nene played for 23 minutes and was 3/4 and 2/4 from the line for 8 points, and he had 4 rebounds and a steal.

Steve Blake played for 30 minutes and was 5/8, 3/4 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 15 points, and he also had 3 assists, a steal, and a block.

Kleiza played for 36 minutes and was 10/13, 5/6 on 3's, and 4/5 from the line for 29 points, and he also had 6 rebounds, an assist, and a steal. If this keeps up, the Nuggets will have to play the Lithuania national anthem at the home playoff games along with the American anthem. It better be a catchy tune.

Marcus Camby played for 33 minutes and he was 5/10 and 1/3 from the line for 11 points, and he also had 14 rebounds, 3 steals, and an assist. Ok, so our center doesn't score as many points as Yao Ming, but he leads the NBA in blocks, and gets alot more blocks and steals than Yao. So there you go.

A.I. played for 40 minutes and was 4/15 and 6/6 from the line for 14 points, and he had the 13 assists and a steal.

Melo played for 36 minutes and was 10/20, 0/2 on 3's, and 6/8 from the line for 26 points, and he added 8 rebounds, 5 assists, and a steal.

The next game is Saturday, March 17 in Denver to play the Suns at 8 pm mountain time.

Karl's Tight Ship Sails Past Blazers 107-99

They say every dog has it's day, meaning even the wrong strategy works on occasion. Captain George "Scrooge" Karl has been running a tighter and tighter ship over the past few weeks, as the turnovers and losses to winning teams have piled up and the Nuggets have looked more and more hopeless while losing almost all their games against the good teams. He now usually plays just 7 or 8 players in a game, with everyone Karl thinks might do more harm than good gathering rust on the bench. Although such a strategy will and has generally failed against the top teams of the West, who can simply ramp up the pressure with their great shooters and their defensive skills, and wear out the overworked small group of Nuggets carrying the load for the team, in a home game against a young and rebuilding team such as the Trailblazers, such a conservative, limited strategy might work.

In this particular game, the strategy did work, as the Nuggets lead the whole way and played to not lose more than to win against a team where such a basic and limited approach was possible. The Nuggets hustled on defense a little and controlled the extremely poor shooting Blazers in the first half, and had a commanding 55-37 lead at the half. After the Blazers regrouped at the intermission and came out ready to hit some shots, they went to work to try to get themselves back in the game. Zach Randolph, a 25 year old PF who plays like a SF and who has a decent jump shot, came alive after a miserable first half, and he was assisted by a large number of other Blazers. When SF Ime Udoka buried a 3 with 15 seconds left in the 3rd quarter, the Nuggets large half time lead had been reduced to 4, and fans and George Karl himself wondered if the playing to not blow it strategy might itself result in a loss.

However, as in the win over the Kings on Sunday, and as in other recent wins against losing teams, the Nuggets bent in the second half but they did not break. A.I. drove to the hoop and drew a foul with 1 second left in the 3rd. After he made the first free throw, he missed the second, but Nene grabbed the ball and instantly hoisted a turnaround jumper that went in. The officials had to check whether the shot had left Nene's hands in time before time ran out, and luckily it had by a fraction of a second. So it was 78-71 Nuggets after 3 quarters.

Iverson's jumper to start the 4th quarter made it 80-71 Nuggets, and the playing not to lose strategy was back in business. Iverson took command of preserving the win, which he understood to be a must win given the Nugget's tough schedule the rest of the way. The shrewd veteran Iverson has correctly concluded that he can handle making sure wins against losing teams are preserved if he hustles, but he is still waiting for something big to break, such as Melo to explode for 40 or more points, or George Karl finally having enough courage to put in, and enough coaching skill to motivate, players who are now rusting on the bench, when the Nuggets play a really good team and have to have more bodies. The Suns are coming to town this Saturday, so maybe something big will break then. One can always hope.

With Iverson, who had 10 assists, running things, Randolph and the Blazers were unable to get any closer than 6 points behind in the 4th, and the Nuggets won the game 107-99 and evened their win-loss record at 31-31 with 20 games left in the season. The Nuggets held their turnovers to 15, which is not bad for them, and they had just 17 personal fouls while the Blazers had 24. Each team had 12 steals.

Now Denver can become a winning team again, barely, if they can defeat the injury battered Lakers on Thursday. If they do, both the Nuggets and the Lakers will be one game over .500.

PF LaMarcus Aldridge had a career high 17 rebounds for the Blazers, as well as 24 points on 11/17 shooting. Aldridge also had 4 of the 8 blocks that Portland had. Zach Randolph finished with 26 points on 10/27 shooting.

Marcus Camby had 7 blocks and has now made rebounding look almost as fun as scoring to the other Nuggets. Every Nugget who played had at least 4 rebounds; Camby led with 10 and Melo had 8.

The Nuggets, apparently, have been down that rough "lose your poise and the game slips away" road so many times, that they knew enough to get off that road this time before they actually lost. A.I. is an expert on this subject, since he has played his whole career on teams with no depth and questionable coaching, which are teams that don't have enough fuel to play four solid quarters and are always in danger of losing even when leading in the second half. A.I.'s aggressive drives to the hoop, his ability to draw fouls and make all his free throws, and recently his key rebounding during those times when the other team is chipping and chipping away at the lead, have not only preserved wins for the Nuggets, but have taught other Nuggets including Melo how you preserve a lead, or at least how to preserve a game if you lose most of your lead. Iverson is showing that can bend without breaking; you don't have to lose when you run low on gas. A.I. is now George Karl's unofficial coaching assistant; he picks up where the limitations of the coaching staff leave off.

In this game there was no Reggie Evans around to turn the ball over several times to various Blazers, leading to fast break Blazer scores. There was no Diawara to miss a bunch of 3-point shots, and perhaps also to get too many shooting fouls. And there was no desperate DerMarr Johnson to hoist up a jumper at every opportunity, to try to earn more playing time. Tonight, the Nuggets didn't need the offensive rebounding of Evans, the defense of Diawara, or the potential 3-point shooting of Johnson, so they didn't need to risk their mistakes, either. Johnson was not needed in this one because the Blazers, like the Nuggets, are not a good 3-point shooting team, and they made only 4/10 of them.

The Blazers squad, a work in progress, was unable to put enough pressure on the overworked Nuggets, at either end of the court, to either wear them out completely or to force them to lose their poise and concentration. If a team can wear out or apply alot of pressure in a 4th quarter on the Nuggets, the Nuggets have a tendency to go into a free fall, where the turnovers pile up quickly, the top scorers are out of gas or unable to shake double coverage, and so the worst shooters on the team end up taking and missing way too many of the shots. You might think of these free falls as "everything falls apart time". This is one way the Nuggets have been losing their games against winning teams. Earlier in the season, these everything falls apart times were how they lost more than 10 games, most of them in Denver, despite 4th quarter leads.

So Coach George "Scrooge" Karl has become more and more defensive and conservative in how he manages these hard to manage Nuggets, which makes it very unlikely that the Nuggets will lose to a losing team, such as the Trailblazers, but also very unlikely that they will beat a winning team that has what it takes to wear out and disrupt the Nugget's players who are are playing too many minutes. I guess you can't be completely negative about such a strategy, because I myself realized a few days ago that the Nugget's turnovers and unbalanced offense were getting so bad that the team might completely collapse and start losing to the losing teams as well as to the winning teams.

With Karl's current strategy, you have a kind of triage for a wounded team. At least we can say that the blood is no longer gushing out and the patient is stabilised. So now Nuggets fans are waiting to find out if Karl and the other coaches can come up with a way, when the Nuggets are playing a winning team, and especially one of the top teams in the West, to make full use of and get top performance out of players such as J.R. Smith, who returned a little quicker than expected from the knee injury and the surgery, rebounding specialist Reggie Evans, and potential open shot makers DerMarr Johnson and Yakhouba Diawara. We are wondering whether Mr. Karl, who deserves some sympathy given how complicated all the suspensions, trades, injuries, and player inconsistencies have made managing the Nuggets this season, will be able to come out of his defensive crouch, and finally pull a strategy out of his sleeve that has at least one chance in hell of producing some wins against teams like the Jazz, the Spurs, the Suns, and the Mavericks. Because a duck and cover strategy will take you only so far.

Despite his career game two days ago, Kleiza had his minutes cut back to 16, and was 2/3 and 0/1 on 3's for 4 points, and he had 6 rebounds. Najera played 27 minutes and was 3/4 and 0/1 on 3's for 6 points, and he had 4 rebounds, 3 steals, and an assist.

Steve Blake played 29 minutes and was 3/7, 0/2 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he had 5 assists and 5 rebounds.

J.R. Smith returned from a knee injury and surgery and played for 14 minutes. He was 1/6 and 1/3 on 3's for 3 points, and he had a rebound and a steal.

Nene played 30 minutes and was 5/10 and 2/3 from the line for 12 points, and he had 6 rebounds, a block, and a steal. Among his shots, Nene hit 2 out of 4 jumpers.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 6/12 and 2/2 from the line for 14 points, and he added 10 rebounds, 7 blocks, 2 assists, and a steal. Camby hit 3 of 8 attempted jump shots.

Melo played for 39 minutes and was 10/22 and 9/12 from the line for 29 points, and he also had 8 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal. In this game Melo went to the hoop often, and took only 6 midrange jumpers. He missed 5 of those.

A.I. played virtually the whole game and was 8/20, 1/1 on 3's, and 14/16 from the line for 31 points, and he also had 10 assists, 5 steals, 6 rebounds, and a block.

The next game will be Thursday, March 15 in Denver to play the Lakers at 8:30 pm mountain time. This is a late start cable television game.

A.I., Melo, Camby, & Kleiza Lead Nuggets Over Kings 113-101

Balance is one of the most important concepts in basketball. Unlike in baseball, where the pitcher or else someone who has alot of hits (especially home runs) is frequently the most important player in a particular game, and unlike in football, where the quarterback, a great running back, or a great receiver is usually the most important player in a particular game, in basketball there isn't usually really just one most important player. You need a Dennis Rodman and a Scottie Pippen to go along with a Michael Jordan, and other Bulls to handle the rebounding when Rodman is on the bench or when Jordan is double covered. You needed a Dwyane Wade to go along with Shaquille O'Neal, and other Heat to help out on defense and other duties, and, before that, you needed a Kobe Bryant to go along with a Shaquille O'Neal, and other Lakers to bury threes, get a few steals, and so forth.

And you need more balance: you have to have someone able to hit shots besides the every day scorers that everyone, including the defenders of the opposite team, know about. You need someone to surprise the other team by making a bunch of shots, which will disrupt the flow of it's game and cause them to turn it over more. You need more than two rebounders, and you need more than two passers who know who is in position to score and can make the correct split second decision on where to pass the ball. To be a great team, you need at least a pair of all-stars who balance each other and then you also need the two of them to be balanced out in any game with at least two other players who are just as important to winning, even though they are not all stars and even though they don't usually have a large number of points, rebounds, or assists.

And you need more balance: you need to play defense as well as offense, and here it's not the number of players or points which is important, but the hustle, the intensity, and the intelligence to know what the player with the ball is going to do that determine whether you will get the necessary defense. If you have good scoring, you can get away with less defense than if you have less than good scoring. If you have 4-5 players shooting close to or over 50%, you can cheap out on defense and still win, and the Nuggets were able to do this a few times back in November and December.

But "cheaping out" on defense obviously is a luxury you do not usually have, and when you do it, it's a leading indicator that you are going to lose a whole lot of games down the road. No team is smart enough to know what their shooting production is going to look like at the end of a game while they are playing it, so cheaping out on defense is never an acceptable strategy, because you can't know in advance whether you can get away with it, and because you will become lazy and unskilled defensively, and therefore unable to play good defense when you have to play good defense to have a chance in a future game. The Nuggets have been guilty over and over again of trying to get by on the cheap on defense. I hope the Nuggets have finally learned this lesson the hard way, but it is too early to say. At least they have been playing some decent defense on ocassion over the last month, including in this game, but even some recent games have been, well, total cheap-outs.

Over the last two months, the Nuggets have been one of the most unbalanced teams in the NBA, with games being hopelessly out of reach when no one other than A.I., Melo, and Nene at the hoop were able to hit the broad side of a barn. Najera by nature, and Diawara and Evans, due to miserable results, have in certain games been almost unwilling even to get open so that they might get the ball to take a shot, particularly since Coach George "Scrooge" Karl commonly benches any non-starter for 1 to 3 games if they miss 6 shots or more and/or shoot under 25%. Karl ramps up the pressure with his "you miss a bunch buddy and you don't get anouther try for awhile" approach, to the point where certain players decide to mostly stand around in games rather than get open for their favorite shot.

For the Nuggets to win, it doesn't have to be the same two stepping up in every game; it can be any two other than A.I., Melo, and Nene. But seemingly loaded up with a large crew of rim clangers, the Nuggets have been getting only one, or even no scorers to go along with the three reliable scorers, and have been losing right and left as a result. George Karl's seemingly insane roster moves can be partly, though not completely, explained by his trying to find someone, anyone, who can somehow get the ball in the hoop more than once or twice during a game. So the Nuggets have been a hurting puppy, needing only two scorers to go along with Melo, A.I., and Nene, but getting only one or none.

The motivation thing that George Karl and others discussed this past week works as well in one direction as the other. Everyone usually focus on how the best players on a team can or should motivate the other players to play better. But it works the other way, too. If Kleiza plays close to this good, than A.I., Melo, and Camby can become more motivated to make the extra shot, the extra rebound, the extra pick, the extra block, and so forth to allow the Nuggets to have a shot against teams like the Mavs or the Suns. But if there is no Kleiza, nor anyone else playing almost as or as well as Kleiza played today, then the Nuggets offense becomes so unbalanced and limited that there is no possible way the Nuggets can compete with teams like the Suns and the Mavericks, as we have seen.

And before we leave the Kleiza explosion, I want to say that I will be looking around the internet to see if those who have agreed with George "Scrooge" Karl that Melo has not done enough to raise the performance of his teammates give Melo his due credit for how well Kleiza shot the ball in today's game. If I don't see these folks giving Melo credit for Kleiza's shots, then what happened to their point about Melo? Did they know what they were talking about?

Although the Nuggets played their trademark riverboat gambling, high risk and high turnover style of play, which is the only style they can play, apparently, they nontheless earned a solid win against the Kings, 113-101. For the game, the Nuggets doubled up the Kings in the paint, 52-26. The Kings, who were led by PG Mike Bibby's 34 points on 12/20 shooting, had their sites on the Nugget's playoff ticket. The Nuggets won at Arco Arena no less, marking the first win for the Nuggets in Sacramento since Moses parted the waters. Well, actually it was not that long; it was the first win there since January 1997.

Linas Kleiza, Camby, and A.I. led the Nuggets to a 59-45 lead at the half. But this being the Nuggets, the Kings believed that they had the Nuggets right where they wanted them, and they knew the game was theirs as long as they came out strong after the intermission and caused the Nuggets to completely lose their composure and to start playing like a high school team again. But it didn't work this time. The Nuggets bent under the onslaught of three Bibby 3-pointers in one minute early in the 3rd quarter, but key rebounding from Iverson and Camby, and drives to the hoop by Iverson and Melo, prevented the Nuggets from breaking as they have so often earlier this season with that kind of a lead. For once, having the lead was not a disadvantage for the Nuggets.

The Kings reduced the Nuggets lead to 5, at 71-66 with 4:43 left in the third, but a full team effort by the Nuggets on the boards and even on defense ended the uprising, so that the Nuggets led 83-73 at the end of the 3rd. The balanced and oh so rare Denver team effort continued in the 4th, and the Nuggets built up a 20 point lead by half way through the 4th. Kleiza did some more damage, and then Melo came alive to get 10 points in the quarter, so that he finished with 29 points, just enough to hold off, for now, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, and Gilbert Arenas in the race for top scorer.

How did the Nuggets pull this magic trick off? They did it by playing some defense, by forcing some turnovers of their own to compensate for all of theirs, and by having balance magically appear out of a hat. All of a sudden, Marcus Camby, who has been trying to improve his jump shot all season, with mostly mediocre results, made 3 of 5 of them, and finished with 16 points on 8/13 shooting overall. But the real magic trick of the night, the one that left basketball observers and especially Nuggets and Kings fans in shock, was the explosion of Linas Kleiza, who, it has been said, has been hitting 3's like crazy in practice but clanging the rim so much on midrange jumpers during real games that he has been afraid to take many 3-point shots during real games.

Linas Kleiza looks older, but is actually only 21 years old. He is a 6'8", 245 lb power forward, who was born in Lithuania, USSR, and he came to the U.S. in 2002 to play a season of high school basketball in Maryland and then two years of college basketball at Missouri. Kleiza was taken with the 27th overall pick of the 2005 NBA Draft by the Portland Trail Blazers and traded to Denver on draft day.

Now in just his second season in the League, Kleiza has seen his overall shot accuracy fall apart this year, because he didn't even attempt 3-pointers last year for some unknown reason. But aside from having his accuracy average automatically fall due to adding the 3-point shot to his arsenal, his accuracy on shots other than 3-pointers has gone down from last year to this, from 47% to 41%, which, inside the arc, has put him at the rim-clanging level that so many Nuggets players have been at this year. But on three-point shooting, which is the new Kleiza game, he is at .345, which means he is making 8 or 9 threes for every 10 made by the best 3-point shooters, such as Kyle Korver, Steve Nash, Luther Head, and Leandro Barbosa. He's getting there.

So that is some information regarding that strange man who pulled what was by far the best game of his career out of a hat and gave the Nuggets what they needed to win this game against the Kings and thwart, at least for now their scheme to steal the Nugget's playoff berth. This was Kleiza's second great game in the last couple of weeks; he had another great game on February 28 in Denver against the Magic. Although 2 games is hardly anything for a Nugget's fan to get very juiced up about, at least poor Coach George "Scrooge" Karl knows who to start at power forward for awhile. At least I hope he knows.

Najera played for 27 minutes and was 3/10 for 6 points, and he also had 9 rebounds, 6 of them offensive, and a steal. Blake played 33 minutes and was 1/6, and 0/2 on 3's for 2 points, and he had 6 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals.

Nene played for 30 minutes and was 4/7 and 1/1 from the line for 9 points, and he had 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 assists.

Kleiza played 33 minutes and was 8/11, 4/7 on 3's, and 4/4 from the line for 24 points, and he had 8 rebounds and an assist.

Camby played 33 minutes and was 8/13 for 16 points, and he added 10 rebounds, 6 assists, and 4 blocks.

A.I. played 36 minutes and was 8/17, 1/3 on 3's, and 7/9 from the line for 24 points, and he also had 7 assists, 6 rebounds, and 4 steals. It was unusual but very telling to see A.I. get a whole bunch of rebounds. A.I. has been on this "lose this game and you are likely to miss the playoffs" bus before, and he knows a must win when he sees one.

Melo played 38 minutes and was 11/24, 0/1 on 3's, and 7/8 from the line for 29 points, and he added 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals. After a rough 1st quarter, he gradually steadied himself to avoid a second straight bad game in a row, so we can say that Kiyan has cost the Nuggets, at the most, one game so far, and probably none because Kleiza was only 4/13 in that game. Watch it though, Kiyan, the Nugget's fans are keeping close tabs on your antics.

The next game will be Tuesday, March 13 in Denver against the Trailblazers, at 7 pm mountain time.