Wednesday night NBA: Utah Jazz at Denver Nuggets
The second game of the ESPN NBA doubleheader on Wednesday night is both similar to and different from the Hornets-Spurs opener.
It’s similar in that both Utah and Denver are playoff teams from last year and likely to get back there. But it’s different in that neither the Jazz nor Nuggets made big offseason acquisitions to bolster their chances in the loaded West, instead sticking mostly with what they had or re-signing their own players.
The Nuggets, 5.5-point favorites tonight on WagerWeb.com, believe they can beat the Lakers and think they should have in last year’s West finals, losing in six games. Their big move was resigning Chris “the Birdman” Andersen to a new deal. He was second in the NBA in blocked shots (2.46) a season ago, playing only 20 minutes per game, an incredible rate of production. He should get about five more minutes per game this season. Denver also added rookie point guard Ty Lawson to backup Chauncey Billups, but these Nuggets will look nearly identical to the 2008-09 model.
Entering his second season in Denver, Billups said he knows his teammates’ tendencies even better, he knows how to better motivate and he knows what the Nuggets did to blow winnable games that they will need to fix this year.
Of course the best Nugget is Carmelo Anthony, who might be ready for an MVP-type season. He was great in the playoffs last year and improved his diet this offseason, dropping from 240 pounds to 228 and lowered his body fat from 8.6% to 7%.
“I feel good about this team,” Anthony said. “When you got a good team, you don’t really need to go out there and get big-name players. We got our core group of guys.”
Remember that Denver won’t have guard J.R. Smith for the season’s first seven games. He was suspended after pleading guilty to reckless driving for a 2007 accident that killed a passenger in his car.
Utah, meanwhile, was hoping that Carlos Boozer was going to walk away as a free agent, but he didn’t opt out. That gives the team a glut of power forward after it re-signed up-and-coming Paul Millsap to a big deal. Look for Boozer trade rumors to be prevalent all season and for him to get moved eventually.
It’s the second straight season-opener vs. Denver for the Jazz, who beat the Nuggets 98-94 last season and went on to a 5-0 start. The Nuggets and Jazz split their regular-season series 2-2 last season, with both teams winning twice at home.
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