Thunder Smashed

The much ballyhooed matchup between two of the best and highest scoring small forwards in the NBA turned out to be more fizzle than flash. Coming off some of his worst shooting games in recent memory and on a day when he wasn't feeling well, Carmelo Anthony finally found his jumper and helped lead the Denver Nuggets to a 119-90 thrashing of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Early in the day, Melo was complaining of exhaustion and dehydration and had to be given IV fluids at the morning shootaround. Whatever was in that IV woke Carmelo up and it was clear by game time that he was feeling much better. By halftime the Nuggets were nursing a nine point lead and Carmelo was an impressive 8-11 from the floor. He wound up finishing 11-19 with 30 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists.

Carmelo's counterpart, Kevin Durant, saw tough defense from the Nuggets and played what can best be described as his worst game this season. The Nuggets switched defenders on Durant, put big men on him when he was in the post and always had a help defender in his path when he tried to drive to the basket. The methods clearly bothered Durant, who saw his 20+ PPG scoring streak end with a 5-14 night, good for only 19 points. As a team, OKC could only manage 32.5 percent from the field, which is the lowest a Nuggets  opponent has shot all season.

The game was close early on, but the tide turned when the second half opened. The Nuggets blew the game open in the 3rd quarter, outscoring their opponent 31-12 in the third quarter and not looking back for the remainder of the game. Denver got back to a team game passing the ball very well, resulting in 30 team assists. They also outrebounded the Thunder 49 to 45 and dominated in the paint, outscoring OKC 50 to 18. This win proves that Denver is not sliding as some would like to suggest and it also proves Oklahoma City is a good young team but they are not yet an elite team.

All in all, this was a solid win. But are we surprised? This is what Denver does to good teams, especially in their building. It was kind of funny to watch ESPN recap the game this morning, especially since they decided not to mention that the Nuggets have dominated the top teams in the league this year. Instead they went the method of showing how badly OKC has struggled with the top tier teams in the NBA.  It baffles me that ESPN just cannot give the Nuggets props, which is just sickening. There are teams outside of Cleveland and Los Angeles that have a chance of winning a title but they decide the only teams and players worth mentioning reside in those two places. I guess it is hard to cover anyone else when you have your nose so far up the collective asses of Lebron and Kobe and your lips firmly planted on their backsides.

And while we are on the subject of ESPN, can we all please make a concentrated effort to not keep calling Kevin Durant "The Durantula"? I love Durant and believe he is going to be a huge star in the very near future but his ESPN created nickname sucks. Durant is not an arachnid, he is not any type of large spider, and last time I checked he doesn't have eight legs. I am disgusted each time I hear the ESPN morons going on and on about Durantula..It is stupid, please please please let it just die.