Season Preview For The Denver Nuggets
The Denver Nuggets had a very successful season in 08-09 despite losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.
Denver finished the regular season 1st in the Northwest division at 54-28. Denver was an excellent home team, 33-8, but an average road team at only 21-20. Denver was a top 6 team in scoring averaging with 104 points per game.
The knock on Denver for many years was they can score but refused to play defense – this wasn’t the case because Denver was’th is defense. Trading Iverson for Billups, definitely was a key move to fixing this problem.
Coach George Karl and the rest of the team had other plans though. The acquisition of Chauncey Billups proved invaluable to the team. Billups’ leadership, efficiency on the court, playoff experience, and his ability to serve as a natural point guard – a position the team had sorely been lacking ever since the departure of Andre Miller a few seasons prior – all gave the team a major boost in places that the Nuggets had been lagging before he joined the team.
Billups is also a great on court leader who knows how to play in big games. In 77 games with Denver Billups averaged 17 points per game, 6 assists and 91% at the free throw line. At 32 years old at the time, Billups seemed to hit the prime of his career.
Birdman, also known as Chris Andersen stepped up off the bench and had a huge year. He’s become one of the best shot blockers in the league.
As a result, the Nuggets ended up beating the Hornets in five games, before easily defeating the Mavericks in round 2 of the NBA playoffs. Then it was on to the Western Finals against the Lakers.
The Denver Nuggets have the same core of players that had last season and it wasn’t enough to beat the Lakers, maybe Denver can add one more piece to their team to give them a better chance this season.
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