Game 1: Lakers Make Tough Statement

Hard to know what to make of Tuesday’s game. The Nuggets almost won on the road, which would seem to indicate that they are indeed for real. And while near-misses don’t count for much in basketball, that they came this close despite subpar showings by Chauncey Billups and J.R. Smith was pretty impressive. Denver also led for most of the game, even when its patented bursts of momentum gave way to sloppy play. It was a heartbreaking loss, to be sure, but an encouraging one for a team that needed to prove it belonged in the same class as L.A. And this wasn’t the kind of weirdness that allowed Houston to catch the Lakers off-guard. This was hard-fought, high-level basketball where one team just outlasted the other.↵
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↵On the other hand, this game also proved, however thinly, that the Lakers can turn it on when necessary. They hung around, tangled, weathered Denver’s outbursts, then got huge plays down the stretch from the likes of Derek Fisher, Trevor Ariza and, of course, Kobe Bean Bryant. The game was, in a way, a microcosm of their perplexing postseason, and while this was by no means the final verdict on their composure or sense of purpose, Denver did have them on the ropes until the very end. And when it mattered, when they had to produce, the Lakers turned the tables. Bottom line, the Lakers won when they easily could’ve lost, displaying exactly the kind of grit that Boston schooled them on last year and refusing to let the Nuggets out-tough them. ↵
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↵There’s no reason to suspect that every game will be this tight. But this was the kind of game where you saw two teams lock horns, gore each other, and realize that the other wasn’t dead yet. That certainly bodes well for the rest of the series. Oh, and although I stressed how inconspicuous Melo and Kobe would be, they ended up in a shootout that dwarfed all other figures on the floor (save for Pau Gasol’s 13 points, 14 rebounds and unwillingness to back down). And at the end of the day, Kobe made all the important shots, while the Nuggets were desperately hoping for Billups or Smith to come around.
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