Nobody was going to reprise Doug Moe’s famous 1987 pre-playoff analysis — “We’ve got no shot to beat the Lakers” — but the Nuggets had to be wondering.
After nine straight losses, including a four-game playoff sweep last spring that wrote the epitaph to the Allen Iverson Era, it was fair to ask the question:
Would the Nuggets beat the Lakers in our lifetime? Or in Kobe Bryant’s?
Yes, Virginia, it turns out anything is possible.
The Nuggets broke through Friday night by holding the best in the West to a dreadful 29.8 shooting percentage and a season-low 79 points. Not one player on the Lakers’ roster made half his shots.
They did it — write this down — by playing relentless, active defense. They did it by protecting the basket and the perimeter simultaneously. They did it by playing the game the way they have to play to be successful.
But before you start blocking vacation time for the NBA Finals, keep a couple of things in mind:
• The Lakers were playing the second of back-to-back games, the first of which was on the West Coast, meaning they got into town about 4 a.m. This was the same situation in which Spurs coach Gregg Popovich benched his stars in a fit of pique at the NBA schedule-makers earlier this month.
• This is February, not May or June.
“That was a garbage game, no doubt about it,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. “I wish we could repay the fans some money for that game. Neither team played very well, but they played better than us.”
How seriously the respective coaches took the outcome was a measure of the distance between these franchises. The Nuggets’ George Karl was almost giddy. “The beer’s going to taste like champagne tonight,” he said.
He even channeled a little Warren Zevon, calling Chris Andersen “an excitable dude.”
Andersen was, too. There may be no player in basketball who needs the inspiration of the crowd the way Birdman does. His seven blocked shots single-handedly accomplished Karl’s goal of protecting the basket against the Lakers’ fast-paced inside game.
“They did both — they protected the basket and the 3-point-line both,” Jackson said.
However bad the Lakers were — and a bench that shoots 3-for-19 won’t win you many games — there was an obvious lesson for the Nuggets in their first win over the Lakers in almost two years:
Defensive energy and determination wins basketball games. As lethargic as the Nuggets’ defense looked against Boston in a 38-point loss four nights before, that’s how energetic it looked Friday.
“We challenged a lot of shots,” Karl said. “It was a tremendously active defensive game. That activity, if we could bottle it and put it on the floor every night, we’re a good team.”
That’s the biggest “if” about these Nuggets. In a year in which the organization’s priority was cutting costs to get below the luxury tax, the arrival of Chauncey Billups and the good health of Kenyon Martin and Nene have given them an unexpected chance to contend.
“We’ve been given a gift by the basketball gods, to lose Marcus Camby and replace him with a similar type player,” Karl said of Birdman’s emergence as the Nuggets’ third big man.
The Nuggets trapped all over the floor and forced Bryant to launch long, off-balance fadeaways all night. Granted, he usually makes a lot of those, but he hit only 10-of-31 in this one. Yes, even Kobe can have an off night.
The question for the Nuggets is whether they can play this way more than every so often. They will not be taken seriously as contenders until they do.
But for one night, the traveling Lakers’ support group — those modern Deadheads in purple and gold — were unable to take over somebody else’s house.
“All those guys that were cheering for the wrong team had to shut up,” Karl said. “That was good, too.”
Now they know: At least it’s possible.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-1294 or dkrieger@denverpost.com
