If the Nuggets fancy themselves a playoff team, the winning must start now, guard Ty Lawson said Friday.
Asked if it’s too early to panic with the Nuggets off to a 1-3 start, Lawson said, “I don’t think so. Our next three or four games are tough, and I know we don’t want to be 1-7 being like, ‘Oh, we’re trying to get into the playoffs.’ So I think we need to get it together right now.”
Problem is, the Cavaliers are looking at Friday night’s game the same way. Cleveland is 1-3 and stories of discontent are swirling around the team. A win, of course, begins to cure all ills for a team that is expected to contend for an NBA title.
The Nuggets were projected to fight for one of the last playoff spots in the Western Conference.
“This could be the win that turns our season around,” Lawson said.
Getting that win, Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said, depends to a large degree on Lawson, who has started slow. He is averaging 12.8 points and shooting 38 percent from the field.
“I don’t think that you panic,” Shaw said. “We’re 1-3, it’s not where we want to be. But there has to be a sense of urgency, not panic. I haven’t seen that urgency, and it starts with (Lawson). He’s our first line of offense, he’s our first line of defense. If he looks at his own numbers and his own performance in these four games, he’s played one aggressive half of basketball — and that was the second half in Oklahoma City.
“The fact that we are struggling the way we are right now, it’s a mirror of how he’s played. And it affects Kenneth (Faried), and it affects Arron (Afflalo) and everybody else on the floor who need him to set the table for us. So I just want him to be more aggressive, because how he goes that’s how we go.”
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Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypost
