Denver Nuggets – Pace and Space

2018 NBA Playoff Tiebreak Scenarios: Last Day of the Season!

April 10, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

Wednesday night, the NBA tips off a slate of games to close out the regular season. The playoffs are finally upon us. And the standings, especially in the Western Conference? They’re still a hot mess, with every slot from 3 through 9 up for grabs. Only the Rockets and Warriors are locked into their seed; everyone else is fighting for position. Meanwhile, things are a bit quieter in the East, where the Raptors (1), Celtics (2), and Pacers (5) are locked into their seeds, while Philly and Cleveland are fighting for 3 and 4 and the Wizards, Heat, and Bucks …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Drubbed Nation

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

Last week, the Indiana Pacers went into Oakland and beat a depleted Golden State Warriors team 92-81. This week, the Warriors, with Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Kevin Durant all back, marched into Bankers Life Fieldhouse…and got destroyed 126-106. And besides Victor Oladipo doing this like he does every game… Dipo showing out as the Pacers sweep the season series with the Warriors 🔥 pic.twitter.com/TNxGea8dCi — Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 6, 2018 …Bojan Bogdanovic had 28 points on 11-of-13 shooting and 6-of-7 from three. The Pacers shot 50-of-93 (53.8 percent) from the field, 15-of-29 (51.7) percent from three, won the …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: For the West Is Wild And No Team Shall Die Softly

April 4, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

The Jazz, Spurs, Thunder, Timberwolves, Pelicans, Nuggets, and Clippers are locked in Mortal Kombat…er, mortal combat…for five spots in the playoffs available to the seven of them, even if the net result of all this is one team getting smacked by the Rockets and another by the Warriors in the second round of the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Eastern Conference just saw its five seed more or less locked in thanks to all this West madness, which brings us to our top story… A Rivalry As Old As the ABA The Indiana Pacers and Denver Nuggets met for the first time …

Analysis

Sorting Out 2018 NBA West Playoffs Tiebreakers, Part 2

March 29, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

We’ve got one major set of playoff scenarios left in the Western Conference. Part 1 of the West covered the current 3 through 8 seeds, but we’re going to keep things simple in the second part. Why? Well, besides the fact that we covered just about every plausible scenario involving the Thunder, Pelicans, Spurs, Timberwolves, and Jazz in one go? If we add in the Clippers and/or Nuggets, all the who-beats-whom just basically reverts back to stuff we’ve already covered. So with that in mind, we’re going to restrict this to… WEST 7 Through 10 (Minnesota, Utah, LA Clippers, and …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Never the Clippers’ Day

March 7, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

The Los Angeles Clippers have been the whipping boy of the 8 seed in the Western Conference. Fighting for their playoff lives, just when they get a chance to consolidate a position and move forward, they run face-first into Anthony Davis and his 41 points in the Pelicans’ 121-116 win at Staples Center. The Pelicans, left for dead after DeMarcus Cousins got hurt, have now won nine in a row to go to 37-26, just one game back of Portland (!) for the 3 seed out west. Davis went 17-of-31 from the field in this one, while Jrue Holiday scored …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Let All-Star Weekend Begin!

February 16, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

The time has at last come for that glorious celebration of basketball we call the All-Star break, where the Rising Stars go at it on Friday, the highest flyers and most spectacular practitioners of the good old-fashioned posterization go at it in the Dunk Contest on Saturday, and then the league tests the practical limits of the scoreboard as defense goes out the window for the actual All-Star Game on Sunday. But first, we’ve got some odds and ends to wrap up, namely games that managed to have playoff implications in both conferences, as three of the four participants in …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: Stirring The Western Conference Up

January 17, 2018January 16, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

It began with the New Orleans Pelicans, who rode into Boston, turned Anthony Davis loose, and sicced him on the Celtics to the tune of 45 points in a 116-113 overtime win. Davis had an astonishing eight offensive rebounds and 16 overall, going full Beast Mode alongside DeMarcus Cousins, who added 19 points and 15 boards of his own. The Celtics gave the game away. They played something resembling Rockets-style basketball, hitting 19 of 50 from beyond the arc out of a total of 101 field goal attempts, but they hit only 41.1 percent of their two-pointers to land at …

Analysis

The Denver Nuggets: The NBA Friday Champions

January 16, 2018 - by Fox Doucette

Statistical anomalies are as much a part of data as anything else. Just because something has a tiny chance of actually happening doesn’t mean it never happens; just ask anyone who’s ever won the lottery. But a lottery is, ultimately, a large sample size. Hundreds of millions of people buy tickets, so something that has a hundreds-of-millions-to-one chance must happen eventually, sometimes after a dry spell that pumps the jackpot up over a billion dollars. And indeed, when you hear that there were three winners splitting one of those billion-dollar jackpots, it’s little more than a small piece of statistical …

Highlights

NBA Breakfast Special: LiAngelo Ball’s Sunglass Hut

November 10, 2017November 10, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

Look, I’m just going to leave this here and go eat some breakfast. I’ll be right back. 😎😂 (sound on) pic.twitter.com/KGg8bB1AVi — NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) November 10, 2017 OK, let’s get this show started. Lonzo Ball Is Still Garbage And Everyone Still Knows It OK, you all know how I keep calling Lonzo Ball “Dollar Store Westbrook” around here. Tonight was a prime example of why. Ball had 10 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists. And you’d see that and think “whoa, he almost got a triple-double, that’s great!” Until you realize he shot 3-of-12 from the field, 1-of-7 …

Is He Any Good

Is This NBA Player Any Good?: Emmanuel Mudiay

November 9, 2017November 9, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

Emmanuel Mudiay has been a bête noire of mine for as long as he’s been in the league. My vicious “he’s a bust” rhetoric in 2015 about Mudiay’s -0.042 WS/48 season as a rookie is the reason Matt Moore of CBS blocked me on Twitter. Speaking of Twitter, everything you’re about to read is written with a big tip of the hat to Nuggets maven Rafael Torres, whose tweet started my brain’s gears moving and decided the subject of this week’s Is He Any Good: Mudiay is playing great so far this season and he’s continued it tonight. — Rafael …