Cleveland – To Nuggets coach George Karl, upwardly mobile doesn’t always mean continually adding to the win column.
“It’s how you play, not how many wins you get,” Karl said. “I think we’re in a good mode, playing good basketball.”
Sunday, it just so happened that a “W” came with it.
The Nuggets got solid performances from Carmelo Anthony and Nene to carry them to a 105-93 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena. The win snapped a two-game losing streak and evened their record on the current road trip at 2-2.
“We were due for a game like this,” Anthony said, adding that the Nuggets played extremely well defensively.
Anthony scored 27 points and added five rebounds, and Nene scored 21 points with nine rebounds. The win avenged a loss the Cavs handed Denver at the Pepsi Center in January, and it started with slowing down Cleveland star LeBron James.
James had just 18 points on 8-of-19 shooting. He did not score in the fourth quarter.
“I just stuck to what the plan was,” Anthony said. “The plan was not to let him get in the paint … try to keep him on one side of the court, keep the ball in his left hand, and I tried my best to do that.”
Anthony did that and then some, using some help from double teams.
“You’ve got to tip your hat to Melo,” Karl said. “He was very conscientious of what we wanted to do with (James) and where we wanted to send him. We had a breakdown in the second quarter where (James)got four or five situations I kind of thought he got loose on us. But other than that, I thought we made him take tough shots … most of the night.”
Taking tough shots was not the Nuggets’ problem. There just weren’t that many in a game in which Denver hit a season-high 59.7 percent from the field. Contained within that were 32 fast-break points and supplemental performances of 14 points from Linas Kleiza and 13 points from J.R. Smith.
Karl called Smith’s game “the best he’s played since he’s been injured.” Smith scored 10 of his 13 points in the second half, while Kleiza scored 12 of his 14 points in the first half.
“Just call us Killer Duo No. 2,” Kleiza joked.
Guard Allen Iverson added 18 points and 12 assists for the Nuggets (35-33). It was his 14th double-double of the season.
“After that last game, we as men just have a lot of pride in our basketball,” Iverson said. “To get beat like that, we wanted to come in and prove to ourselves that was out of our system and just get a win.”
Staff writer Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
