| Lakers Sweep Melo, Nuggets |
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| Written by Ryan.W | |
| Tuesday, 29 April 2008 | |
 These two teams were polar opposites of each other with the Lakers entering the playoffs being arguably the best team in the NBA and the Denver Nuggets barely getting the 8th seed in the West after battling the Golden State Warriors.
The Nuggets on the other hand have been a team searching for their identity ever since they made the trade for Allen Iverson last season. There is no questioning the fact that the Nuggets are probably one of the most talented teams in the league with very good big time players to fill every position, but even though they were able to win 50 games in the regular season they couldn’t play with any kind of continuity through their playoff series with the Lakers.Ever since the huge Pau Gasol trade, the Lakers have been red hot and beating some of the best teams in the league with solid team basketball, instant chemistry between Kobe Bryant, Pau and the rest of the boys in purple and gold and seem to be destined to go far in this year’s playoffs; maybe even make it to the NBA finals. As a result of their failure to play with each other and create some kind of game plan or team chemistry for that matter, the Lakers just rolled over them with relative ease. In the beginning of the series it was Pau Gasol dominating inside and crashing the boards in which the Nuggets had no answer for. Pau was near unstoppable as he seemed to score at will and grab boards over last year’s defensive player of the year Marcus Camby. The punishment for AI and company didn’t stop there, since they had put their crosshairs on Gasol they still had to deal with the best player in the NBA, Kobe Bryant. With the Nuggets concentrating on containing Pau, Kobe was able to do what Kobe does best, score and score a lot! Kobe was on fire and the Nuggets were at his mercy as all they could do is watch another amazing Kobe performance while he went off for 49 points. Not only did Kobe score like crazy in game 2 at Staples Center, but he also dished out 10 assists to set up his teammates for easy jumpers and lay ups to make the lead insurmountable for the Nuggets. After Kobe and Pau had their way in game 1 and 2, the Nuggets were down 2-0 and had little to no hope to make this even close to a competitive series as it was painfully obvious that the Lakers were the better team, in fact, a much better team. Much like games 1 and 2, game 3 was ended with the Lakers beating the Nuggets by 18 points in on their home court in Denver. The Nuggets just looked deflated and uninspired with no set offense or a lick of defense making it really easy for the Lakers to dominate them in all facets of the game. It got to a point where it seemed as if the Nuggets just stopped listening to Coach George Karl and turned the game into a 1 on 1 match up with whatever player had the basketball. In the fourth and final game of the series, I have to give to the Nuggets that they couldn’t get a call to save their lives, everything was going the Lakers’ way regardless of how obvious it was that it was Nuggets’ ball, it actually became pretty ridiculous to down stretch. All of these bad calls really hurt the Nuggets in fourth quarter, first Kenyon Martin fouled out (best defender), then Carmelo Anthony got the boot and that was pretty much all she wrote for Denver! Now the Lakers are playing the waiting game as they will be sitting on the couch awaiting the result of the Utah Jazz vs. Houston Rockets series which is tied at 2 a piece. As for the Nuggets, I would expect some really drastic changes before next season starting with George Karl looking for a new job and possibly Iverson signing with another team since he is an unrestricted free agent. All I know is something has to change or it will just be more of the same next year.         Set as favorite Bookmark Comments
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