Here Come the Nuggets

If you listened to my radio show at all this week, you heard the sound of Lakers' fans jumping off of the bandwagon on a minute by minute basis.  Among the things we heard, and I'm not kidding:

--Trade Andrew Bynum now, while he still has value, because he'll never amount to anything.

--Bench Pau Gasol.  One guy actually called and suggested the Lakers go "Glory Road" and bench all of the white guys (Gasol, Farmar, Walton, Vujacic) because none of them can play.

--Retire Phil Jackson, because he was being outcoached by Rick Adelman.

--That Kobe Bryant will never win a championship without Shaq, and that Kobe is the problem with the Lakers because "he shoots too much."

--And of course the standard go-to line:  "even if the Lakers beat Houston, they'll never get past Denver."

That one is my favorite. 

Mark Jackson from ABC/ESPN jumped off of the Lakers and onto the Nuggets, and so did Charles Barkley.  The Nuggets are the new hip or trendy pick, and my guess is that at least half of the so-called experts will pick Denver.

I'm sticking with the Lakers for the simple reason that the Nuggets never win in LA, and they have to at least once to win the series.  But let's say for the sake of argument that the Nuggets win game one.  The Lakers have won seven of eight games against the Nuggets since Pau Gasol arrived in February of last year, and four of those games were in Denver.  The one game the Lakers did lose this year to the Nuggets was the second game of a back-to-back when they arrived at the hotel after 3 am.  Over the past two years, the Lakers are 10-1 against Denver.

Twice this year, the Nuggets played the Lakers while riding long winning streaks--and LA won both games.  In April, after the Billups trade, Denver came into LA on an eight-game winning streak, having won 13 of 14.  The Lakers won 116-102, with Kobe scoring 33 and Pau Gasol scoring 27.

That was a month ago, with the Nuggets at the top of their game.

So, just because Denver beat New Orleans and Dallas and the Lakers struggled against Houston, that goes out the window?

The Lakers have the better team and home court.  Tell me again why I should be picking the Nuggets?

Lakers in six.

Comments

[Mohammed]

Hey John,
I think the series is Lakers to lose. As I said before here, Nene is the X-factor for nuggets. The only guy I am worried or happy about depending on the type of night he is having is J.R.Smith. If his shots keep falling in, this will be a 7 game series. And you know, he already started jacking up the shots against the lakers before he boarded the plane in Denver.
Personally, I like Billups and hope he wins another championship but I don't like the Lakers to lose.