The plan all along was for the Nuggets to play this game as close to for real as they could get.
If only Oklahoma City was on the same schedule.
After a sluggish start, the Nuggets breezed past the intentionally short-handed Thunder 130-115 on Tuesday night at the Pepsi Center. The game wasn’t nearly as one-sided as the starting lineups would have suggested — Oklahoma City didn’t play Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook, although both dressed.
For the Nuggets: Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Nene, Arron Afflalo. For Oklahoma City: Jeff Green, D.J. White, Byron Mullens, James Harden and Eric Maynor.
“We kind of knew at the beginning of training camp that we were going to go after these next two,” Nuggets coach George Karl said.
And they did — offensively.
Carmelo Anthony was in midseason form, as was pretty much everyone else in Nuggets powder blue. He pounded away at the Oklahoma City interior to finish with 21 points on 9-of-16 shooting, including 8-of-11 in the first half. He added nine rebounds.
J.R. Smith started hot, was active on both ends of the court and rebounded well. He ended up with 21 points, seven rebounds and five assists in 23 minutes. Ty Lawson also found the range (18 points) as the Nuggets shot 54.9 percent from the field as a team and made 13 3-pointers.
So there were few problems there.
Defensively? Well, that was a different matter.
“The first half we did some things wrong,” Anthony said. “Missed assignments on defense; no communication.”
Early, Oklahoma City got whatever it wanted, which was a problem given the fact the Nuggets have been working on shoring up the defensive end.
The Thunder hit 63.2 percent from the field in the first quarter and finished the game at 47 percent.
So Denver will continue to work there. The Nuggets did take solace in turning in a solid defensive performance in the third quarter, when they held the Thunder to 17 points.
“We can do it. It’s there,” Anthony said. “I’m just trying to get into everybody, ‘Let’s start now.’ I know it’s preseason, but let’s start now. It’s kind of hard when you don’t have all of your guys there and the other team doesn’t have all of its guys there. It’s preseason.”
Still, learning to lock down consistently on the defensive end shouldn’t be a problem, in no small part because, according to Karl, his team has been locked in during the majority of camp.
“I think our attitude has probably surprised me,” Karl said. “I thought we might have had some cloudy days, but we haven’t had any cloudy days. Pretty serious professionalism most of the camp. In general, when they’ve been on the court, they’ve been very good.”
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
