Nuggets out muscle LA on the boards, even series, and fly to LA on their own power

In the course of totally outworking the Lakers on the boards (+18) the Nuggets have evened the best-of-seven at two game a piece. The physicality of this series has been at the forefront of the discussion as there has been flagrant fouls in each of the four games thus far ( they have added one to Jones for the trip on Kobe), and one has to believe it will get even worse as the series is not the best two out of three. The Nuggets went to the line 45 times as their offense more resembles blacktop ball than NBA. Drive to the hoop as hard as you can, throw yourself into the defender, backboard, ref, anything tangible, scream, and hope for a whistle. You’ve got to hand it to Denver however, if there was a style that would get the “finesse style” of the Lakers out of rhythm, that would be it. Pau “secret” Gasol(strong enough for a man…), and Lamar “sleepy” Odom, have been turned into curtains for the Denver front line show. I love Chris Anderson’s effort as much as any fan but how does this guy score? The only aspect of his game is following up missed shots, yet LA can not seem to find anyone to put a body on him. If you would have thought that Melo would go 0-for-life the way he has in games 3 and 4, you would have laid 20-1 that LA would be going back home up 3-1 but that’s not the case as now Denver has the mo’ going back to Hollywood and is feeling pretty good knowing the Lakers are facing their second must win.



As a side note, here are the simulation odds for the finals before the playoffs started. Even with all of the possible scenarios David Stern’s dream matchup of an LA/Cle aka Kobe/LeBron match up still had over an 18% chance of coming to fruition. Unlike a one game playoff system as in the NCAA tournament, upsets are harder to come by and D-Stern must have been counting his money as the playoffs began but as we mentioned in last week’s blog, a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia, the Nuggets and Magic decided not to be “witnesses” and have both Conference Champs on their heels. Denver has evened up their series with LA and the worst Orlando can do is find themselves in the same position. Last series the Magic beat the Celtics 6 games to 3 as they threw 2 games away before taking game 7 in the Boston Garden, they have already let one game slip away due to horrible ‘inbound’ defense (why does that sound familiar?) and rest assured this series will not be as forgiving, but if the Magic can hold serve one time the computers and D-Stern will have to go in for a checkup.

Most common Finals matchups and results
Pairing..............% of sims.% won by East team
Cleveland-L.A..........18.1.....54.5
Cleveland-Portland..... 1.5.....55.6
Orlando-L.A............10.0.....41.8
Orlando-Portland....... 6.5.....50.5
Cleveland-Denver....... 6.4.....70.4
Cleveland-San Antonio.. 4.2.....79.0
Cleveland-Houston...... 4.1.....66.8
Orlando-Denver......... 3.9.....68.4
Boston-L.A............. 3.3.....31.3