Talking about being playoff-caliber is one thing. Playing playoff-worthy basketball is another.
Suddenly, the Nuggets have been the latter. And that can be attributed to – gasp! – their defense.
“There’s a confidence at the defensive end that I feel,” Nuggets coach George Karl said.
In back-to-back wins over Dallas on Friday and the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday, the Nuggets traded in high-octane offense for lockdown defense, and the eye-opening stats stand in stark contrast to what the team had done through the bulk of the season.
The Mavericks shot 36 percent from the field and 17 percent from 3-point range, and finished with just 71 points. Denver forced Mavericks star forward Dirk Nowitzki into a 9-of-23 shooting night.
The Nuggets limited the Clippers to 43 percent from the field and 18 percent from 3-point range.
They won twice when scoring fewer than 100 points, which for most of the season was a sure recipe for a loss.
Now, Karl said, “when we don’t play well, we usually dig in defensively. We don’t try to outscore people like was normally our personality most of the year. Now, we try to balance it out with some good offense, but also play great defense.”
Said Marcus Camby: “Throughout the season, we haven’t been playing good team defense. We’ve been like second in the league in giving up the most points. But the last couple of ballgames we’ve been locking teams down, and that’s going to have to continue in order for us to be successful.”
Overall, the Nuggets’ stats still show the team is one of the NBA’s worst at the defensive end. They yield 45.9 percent from the field, 35 percent from 3-point range, and have allowed 49 opponents to score 100 or more points, which is fourth-most in the league.
But there appears to have been steady improvement, and last week the Nuggets had the look of a team that can diversify in terms of how it wins. In five wins in seven days, Denver went 3-0 when it scored more than 100 points, 3-0 when its opponent scored more than 100 points and 2-0 when it scored fewer than 100 points.
“I just think we’re trying to tune it up,” Camby said. “Going down the stretch each game is important. Everybody is trying to make that playoff push, and we want to roll into the playoffs playing at a high level, not just offensively but defensively.”
Denver will try to keep it going tonight against the Los Angeles Lakers, a team the Nuggets have beaten the past two meetings. A victory tonight and the Nuggets would win the season series for the first time since the 1993-94 season.
Of more pressing importance is a playoff berth and separation from the Lakers for the sixth spot in the conference. The Nuggets are a half-game ahead of the Lakers and can push their lead to a game and a half with a win. Plus, Denver would own the tiebreaker. Denver owns season-series tiebreakers over the Clippers and Golden State Warriors as well.
The Nuggets have held the Lakers to an average of 95.5 points in the past two games.
“We know we can score whenever we want,” forward Carmelo Anthony said. “But it’s nice to know we can do it on the defensive end.”
Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
