It’s the One-Man Band from Dallas against the Denver Symphony Orchestra. If the Mavericks believed they could match Dirk Nowitzki against Melo, Nene, Chauncey, Kenyon, Dahntay, J.R. and The Bird of Paradise, they can, unlike Fleetwood Mac, stop believing.
Sweet music.
Late on Tuesday night, the Nuggets turned a thriller into another playoff nosh-up.
Nowitzki scored 35 points and finished with nine rebounds. The Nuggets scored 117 and had 42 rebounds.
This one took a little while longer but was just as satisfying as the other home victories in the postseason. At The Can, the Nuggets can do.
In the first half, the Mavericks’ starting frontline of Erick Dampier, Josh Howard and Nowitzki combined for 17 points. Nowitzki had the 17.
The Nuggets made Dirk strain, struggle, slog and sweat to get every score. He was swarmed by a horde.
“He’s a marvelous player,” George Karl said. “They put him down on the low block tonight hoping, I think, to get more foul shots. Our scouts and coaching staff had decided the right way to go was to keep putting different people on him. He kills the double-team. . . . I don’t know if he was fatigued, but we kinda got control of it in the fourth quarter and did a better job on him.”
Every time Nowitzki would look up, the Dallas leading man was confronted by a different Denver defender. Just 2 minutes, 40 seconds into Game 2, the Dirkster had been guarded by four Nuggets starters — Kenyon, Dahntay, Nene and Melo. And Chauncey took him on a screen.
Chris Andersen was soon to come. By halftime everybody wearing white on the court had taken a turn at the 7-foot forward, the second most-hated person at The Can. (Cuban trumps German.) But Nowitzki, to his everlasting credit, didn’t back down.
While the Nuggets were helping each other, Nowitzki was getting no help from the other starters. Howard played six minutes and limped into the locker room with zero points and one rebound, done for the night with sore ankles. Dampier should have gone with him. He had no points, three rebounds and three fouls. Until the last shot of the half, Jason Kidd hadn’t scored. And the other guard, Antoine Wright, managed just six points.
So Nowitzki kept the Mavs in the game with the newly named and defamed Thuggets. While the Mavericks produced only two points in the paint in the opening half, Nene was an Impressionist; J.R. Smith arrived to score as many as Nowitzki as the Nuggets clutched a precarious 58-55 lead at intermission. Andersen, the Wild Thing, was doing his thing. Billups emerged from his shooting funk in the second half. So did Kenyon Martin. Carmelo Anthony was quietly effective with 25 points, five assists and five rebounds.
Attention, K-Mart Choppers. Martin stayed calm, for the most part, but did draw a technical foul in a brief dustup with Dallas’ Ryan Hollins.
This foul won’t cost as much as the last. Martin was fined $25,000 for his bruising block of Nowitzki in the first game of the playoff series. The Mavs and their backers have joined the Martin-is-a-thug accusations.
Kenyon’s sister, Tamara Martin-Harris, called into a radio talk show hosted by former Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin, no saint, and put up a defense the same way her brother did.
She stated: “My brother’s not a thug.” Good for sis.
As expected, and anticipated, Martin began the game guarding Nowitzki. Guess what? Nowitzki came out scoring — a successful finger roll here, an errant 20-foot fader there. The Nuggets switched, shifted, double-teamed and put some bodies on Nowitzki.
Martin picked up two fouls and left; Anderson didn’t draw blood, but drew three fouls and had to depart. Linas Kleiza, Smith and Nene leaned on Dirk.
Red Auerbach used to light a cigar (Cuban?) when the Celtics had a game in hand. Can’t smoke in the arenas any more, so Karl got another chance to light up his last three players on the bench at the end. A squeezed sellout of 19,850 were dancing in the aisles at the conclusion.
“We did a good job hanging in there in the first half,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said.
Half good ain’t good enough.
“Turnovers were our undoing again in this game, and they went on a run in the fourth quarter, and we couldn’t come back,” Carlisle said. “I’m not going to blame the fatigue. Some of it is Denver. Some of it is us.”
The Nuggets are not Thuggets. They are a rhapsody in light blue.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
