San Antonio – The NBA playoffs are graded on a brutal curve. Sorry. Anything less than perfect is failure.
All the hard lessons hurt. The sting of losing 99-89 to San Antonio and the regrets of what could have been in this opening-round series will be wasted, unless the Nuggets remember it all long after Wednesday night. They got schooled by the best in the league.
Far scarier is how much the Nuggets must yet learn.
If winning an NBA championship is the goal, then nothing else matters until Denver figures out how to beat San Antonio.
“The Spurs are the best team in basketball. I don’t think there’s any doubt,” Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe said. “Tim Duncan is one of those rare creatures in the NBA who can change the whole equation of every game. How do we beat San Antonio? Right now, I honestly don’t know.”
Raise a glass. Make a toast. Buy coach George Karl a cold one for putting Denver back on the NBA map.
But when that frosty mug is empty, there’s nothing left for the Nuggets to do but go back to work.
Denver cannot be afraid to utter a goal never embraced as truly possible in Colorado.
“In any given year you have a chance to compete for a championship. I don’t think this team is that far from that,” said Karl, whose single unfulfilled basketball ambition is to win a league title.
While the Nuggets deserve to celebrate what they became under Karl, they must also remember that horrendous 17-25 start to the season revealed hard truths about weaknesses that must be addressed.
The NBA playoffs reveal nothing but the truth. And, for Denver, the happy truth was three players who proved themselves essential to the franchise’s future.
It all starts with forward , who demanded such respect that San Antonio dared not guard him alone with Bruce Bowen, one of the league’s toughest defenders. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich lauded Melo for growing smarter with each passing minute, and does not want to deal with him when Anthony grows up.
Center is the defensive soul of the Nuggets. When Denver acquired him, I doubted his fire. He slapped that skepticism back in my face, with the same ferociousness Camby rejects a shot.
The image that defines how hungry the Nuggets have become for success is 5-foot-5 guard climbing up the leg of 7-foot Duncan to force a jump ball in Denver’s final home playoff game. Boykins gives permission for everyone to dream big.
But also remember this. The Nuggets were seeded seventh in the Western Conference for a reason. Their record, through the regular season and the playoffs, against the six teams ahead of them was 8-18.
There’s work to be done. None of San Antonio’s stars, from Duncan to Manu Ginobili to Tony Parker, has reached age 30. The Spurs aren’t going away anytime soon.
The glaring need of a shooting guard in Denver is as obvious as one grim statistic. In this series, San Antonio made 35 shots from 3-point range. The Nuggets made 11.
What makes the fastbreak go in the NBA is a trailing guard who can nail a 20-footer on the run. Vandeweghe must find the man who can hit that shot, even if it means trading power forward .
There is no denying the warrior spirit of . He took the Nuggets from nowhere to the playoffs. But is Miller, whose style is more deliberate than controlled chaos, really the point guard who can lead Denver to the top?
That the Spurs won the best-of-seven series in five games was no accident, something that can be blamed on undeniably bad calls by the referees, or written off as the errors of Denver youth.
“A few years ago,” Vandeweghe said, everybody in the game was asking “What in the world can we do to beat the Los Angeles Lakers?’ Now you have to ask yourself the same question with San Antonio.”
The answers will not be easy.
The Nuggets must now be brave enough to ask themselves: Can anything less than winning the NBA championship be considered success?
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
