Kiszla: How should cute, little Nuggets fight back against big, haughty Lakers? One sharp elbow at a time.

We are sen­simil­la mel­low and soft as jel­lo here in Col­orado, so I would nev­er sug­gest the Nuggets begin an NBA play­off game with a hock­ey fight.

But if Nuggets for­ward Paul Mill­sap, whose most notable ath­let­ic abil­i­ty at age 35 is raw man strength, doesn’t knock Lak­ers star Antho­ny Davis or L.A. knuck­le­head Dwight Howard to the floor with a hard foul before half­time of Game 2 in this play­off series, what are the Nuggets pay­ing Mill­sap $30 mil­lion for?

The Lak­ers regard our cute, lit­tle team from the Rocky Moun­tains as so weak of body and timid of spir­it that they can flus­ter cen­ter Niko­la Jokic by apply­ing mus­cle and sweep Den­ver out of the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals.

“As soon as I step on the floor, I’m going to let (Jokic) know I’m there,” Lak­ers cen­ter Dwight Howard vowed after thor­ough­ly flus­ter­ing Jok­er in Game 1, which left Den­ver beg­ging for mer­cy from the ref­er­ees dur­ing a 126–114 loss not near­ly as close as the score might indicate.

Soft? Yeah, that story’s get­ting old for those of us in Col­orado. But from the cheap seats, you can hear NBA gray­beards such as Charles Barkley and Chris Web­ber chor­tle that the Nuggets arms aren’t long enough to box with Lak­ers super­star LeBron James. Know what? Sir Charles just might prove to be correct.

“The first game of a series, you always try to feel out and see what the oth­er team comes with,” Nuggets for­ward Michael Porter Jr. said Saturday.

The Lak­ers swung a ham­mer. How does Den­ver respond?

OK, I ful­ly acknowl­edge this is not your father’s rough-and-tum­ble NBA. Bill Laim­beer isn’t walk­ing through that door with elbows sharp­ened to a stilet­to point. But there’s noth­ing sub­tle about the Lak­ers’ strat­e­gy here. They think it’s pos­si­ble to bul­ly Jokic and the Nuggets.

And that’s not all.

Howard, whose career has been defined by being a goof­ball a lit­tle thick between the ears, wants to do more than bruise Jokic’s body. Howard wants to mess with Big Honey’s head.

When asked direct­ly about his obvi­ous intent to push around Jokic by Kyle Goon, a fine Lak­ers reporter work­ing inside the NBA bub­ble for the same media com­pa­ny that employs me, Howard sug­gest­ed his idea of fun and games had only just begun.

“Since we’re stay­ing at the same hotel, I might meet (Jokic) right out­side his room and let him know: ‘For the rest of the series, I’m going to be right there, locked on you,’” said Howard, who clowned the Nuggets by try­ing to inter­rupt a Den­ver team hud­dle on the floor dur­ing the series opener.

The back­up Lak­ers cen­ter also expressed sin­cere appre­ci­a­tion for Jokic’s skillset, so I’m pret­ty sure he was jok­ing about that stalk­ing part.

But I’m dead seri­ous about the Nuggets stand­ing up for them­selves or pack­ing for home. Millsap’s most mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing a post­sea­son in which he’s aver­aged a mea­ger 8.1 points and 4.2 rebounds was when he stood up to Mar­cus Mor­ris and told the Clip­pers that Den­ver was no longer going to take any more guff from them dur­ing Round 2 of the playoffs.

I hope Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one saved a video of Howard’s com­ments and for­ward­ed it to our bud­dy Kiki Van­deweghe in the league office. Maybe the smartest way to protest the 37–28 free-throw dis­par­i­ty, built large­ly in the sec­ond quar­ter of Game 1, would be to point out the Lak­ers aren’t even try­ing to hide their intent to knock Jok­er off his game with phys­i­cal play.

“We allowed that sec­ond quar­ter free-throw dis­crep­an­cy to real­ly take root and get us to lose our focus. We can’t let that hap­pen,” Mal­one said. “We’re going to have enough of a hard time beat­ing the five (L.A.) guys on the floor. We can’t wor­ry about play­ing five against eight, and the ref­er­ees are part of it.”

If Mill­sap can’t throw his weight around, Mal­one should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er remov­ing the vet­er­an for­ward from the start­ing line­up in favor of Tor­rey Craig, whose length and defen­sive tenac­i­ty at least give Den­ver some­body on the floor with a chance to slow down a run­away King James dur­ing his out­ta-my-way for­ays into the lane.

I’m not advo­cat­ing bas­ket­brawl. But if James gets to low­er his shoul­der with impuni­ty on dri­ves to the cup, then how can any­one com­plain if Mill­sap or Mason Plum­lee employ a lit­tle rough stuff of their own?

With great opti­mism and near cer­tain­ty, I’ll offer a Barkley guar-an-tee the refs give a more favor­able whis­tle to Den­ver in Game 2. But that being said, the more aggres­sive team usu­al­ly makes more trips to the free-throw line.

The Nuggets aren’t soft, but every NBA ros­ter has its flaws. Den­ver could use a lit­tle more meat and mean on its bones. Wouldn’t some­body like tough Clip­pers big man Mon­tre­zl Har­rell look good pro­tect­ing Jokic’s back right about now (or next sea­son, for that matter)?

Rather than beg the refs for respect, how should Nuggets bat­tle back against the Lakers?

One, sharp elbow at the time.

Let’s rock it old school.

(Vis­it­ed 1 times, 1 vis­its today)



Tags: suchen suche search tag anzeigen besucherzahl brows­er design domain inhalt jahr karpfen kon­to prob­lem inhalt schal­ten mod­ell­bahn spiele­max spiel tag web­seite preise werbung 

Ein Reichsmarschall von Adolf Hitler hatte auch Märklin Modelleisenbahn Modelle > read more

Schreibe einen Kommentar