Friday, November 30, 2012

Game Preview: Denver Nuggets at Los Angeles Lakers



The Lakers are back in action tonight after having a long couple of days to think about their horrid offensive performance against the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night at the Staples Center. Tonight, they’ll play their Western Conference Quarterfinal opponents from last season, the revamped Denver Nuggets, who return largely unchanged except for their participation in the massive four-team trade during the offseason by the Lakers, Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers and Orlando Magic; the Nuggets sent defensive and three point specialist Aaron Afflalo and stretch four and strictly a scorer Al Harrington in return for swingman Andre Iguodala. Personally, I think the Nuggets got a great deal out of this, acquiring a player who has had experience being “the man” and has pretty extensive postseason experience for a team who is largely inexperienced in that aspect.


Los Angeles (7-8) dumped Denver (8-8) out of the opening round of last spring’s postseason, winning 96-87 in Game 7 at Staples Center as Kobe Bryant averaged 29.1 points in the series and Steve Blake had an enormous 19 points and 3 assists in the final game, having replaced a largely ineffective Ramon Sessions.

The Superstar guard isn’t far off that pace this season, leading the NBA with 27.7 points per game. He’s averaging 31.8 over the past four games, but the Lakers have dropped three of them to fall to 2-3 under Coach Mike D’Antoni.

They failed to capitalize on another big night by Bryant in Tuesday’s 79-77 home loss to Indiana, giving up the decisive basket with 0.1 seconds to play. Bryant overcame the flu to pour in 40 points, but he committed 10 turnovers while Los Angeles shot a season-low 31.6 percent from the field and missed 20 of 43 from the line. 


The Lakers have been the most polarizing team so far this season. The Lakers have had games where they look completely horrid on the fundamentals of the game; Tuesday night was an excellent example as the Lakers missed more free throws than they made (23 missed) and continued to turn the ball over at an alarming rate, turning it over 19 times to increase the season average to 17.20. On the other hand, there are nights like last Saturday in Dallas, where the Lakers looked like the best team in the league scoring with balance, playing hard on defense, and not turning the ball over at such a high rate.

The leaders for the Lakers so far: Bryant in scoring with 27.7, Dwight Howard in rebounds with 10.5, Bryant in assists with 4.9, Bryant in steals with 1.5 and Howard in blocks with 2.8. So far, this has largely been a two man team with Howard being second in scoring with 17.9 and clearly being the second option behind Bryant. Surprisingly, Pau Gasol seems to have taken a backseat to Metta World Peace, but it seems unintentional because Gasol still has more shots taken and free throws taken than World Peace, yet he’s averaging 13.1 points per game to World Peace’s 13.3; this speaks more of Gasol’s struggles within D’Antoni’s offense than World Peace’s best start to the season since the 2008-2009 season.

For Denver, Iguodala leads the team with 15.7 points per game, Ty Lawson in assists with 7.6, Kenneth Faried in rebounds with 11.1, Lawson in steals with 2.1 and Kosta Koufos with 1.7 blocks per game. This is a very balanced team that could be a sleeper in the West. Lawson and Andre Miller could be the best one-two punch at the point guard position in the league, not to mention the size this team has in the middle with Koufos, Timofey Mozgov and JaVale McGee all being over 7 feet tall. This without mentioning the talented Wilson Chandler coming off of the bench for Danilo Gallinari, and Denver suddenly becomes a very dangerous and deep team.

In Laker injury news: Steve Blake will be out for another 2 weeks after an MRI on Wednesday revealed that he still has an abdominal strain. Steve Nash will also be sidelined for at least another week as his leg fracture appears to be healing at a snail’s pace. In the meantime, Darius Morris and Chris Duhon will continue to fill in at the point guard slot.
Starting Lineups:
Position
Nuggets
Lakers
Point Guard
Ty Lawson
Darius Morris
Shooting Guard
Andre Iguodala
Kobe Bryant
Small Forward
Danilo Galinari
Metta World Peace
Power Forward
Kenneth Faried
Pau Gasol
Center
Kosta Koufos
Dwight Howard