There, I said it.  And I absolutely believe it.

I've watched pretty much every Nuggets game since Melo was drafted (and a good many prior), and while the proof is obviously in the playoff pudding, the team as currently constructed plays better offense, much better defense, and has a deeper bench than any squad of the Melo era, including the team that made that magical run a couple years ago.  That team was a couple inbound passes away from getting to the NBA Finals, and I see no reason why a team that's improved in every major respect from that one can't go even farther.

Am I crazy?  Or does anyone else see the dead-serious title contender I do?

Ever since the draft lottery handed us the 3rd overall pick instead of the 1st, Nuggets fans (myself included) have wondered what might have been if those ping pong balls had bounced differently and Denver got the Golden Ticket that was LeBron James.  Not that we we weren't thrilled to death to get a franchise player in Carmelo Anthony or, thanks to Joe Dumars, avoid the drafting of Skita 2.0 in the person of Darko Milicic (whom the Nuggets absolutely would have taken had he been available, and which may well have killed basketball forever in the Mile High), but watching him rack up MVP awards, deep playoff runs and even a Finals appearance during his stint with Cleveland, who could blame us for having the occasional LBJ daydream?

But for all that, I've never quite shaken the feeling that, all things considered, Denver got the better deal with Carmelo.  And after last night, I'm absolutely certain. 

Now, in terms of straight-up basketball ability, the argument can still be made that LeBron > Carmelo.  I personally think Melo's the superior shooter, and that as a result, his game will age better and make for the longer, more productive career.  But that's not the point I'm here to make. 

What I'm saying is this:  as a package, I can honestly say that as of this morning, I feel nothing but relief that LeBron James did not become a Denver Nugget. 

Think about it - when Cleveland landed the "King,"  they didn't just get a basketball player.  They got LeBron Inc. - the brand, the celebrity, the wannabe businessman and erstwhile coach.  Between Nike and the media at large, they got a 24/7 hype machine that would make Tiger Woods blush.  They got the astronomical pressures/expecations that come with having a player lauded as nothing less than the second coming of Michael Jordan & Magic Johnson.  And for the last two seasons, the organization and their fans have had to watch LeBron blow kisses to suitors in New York, New Jersey and Chicago as he teases and toys with them over the prospect of his looming free agency, a display that has to rank among the most shameful I've seen in professional sports. 

With Melo, meanwhile, we pretty much just got a great basketball player.  It's funny to think of Melo as a blue-collar timecard puncher, but compared to LeBron, that's exactly what he's been.  He's had his issues on the court and off, but by and large, the guy shows up, plays his ass off, and treats both fans and the team with the respect they deserve.

Melo might not stay with the Nuggets.  He might opt out in the final year, and if he does, it'll hurt.  But every day I thank the basketball gods that he's never held the Nuggets (or the city of Denver) hostage the way LeBron has the Cavs and Cleveland.  Never rubbed our faces in the fact that he may not be a Nugget for life.  Doesn't constantly preen and pose and talk himself up despite having never won anything bigger than a high school championship.  And whatever's Melo's faults, I've never seen him mail it in during a big game the way LeBron did last night (or act like it was no big deal after the fact). 

So I ask you, Nuggets Nation:  is there anyone who still wishes we'd landed LeBron all those years ago?  Anyone who thinks we wouldn't be in the exact same position Cleveland's in now, with their franchise player one foot out the door and looking like he could he give a shit in a playoff series they were supposed to dominate, in a year they were the prohibitive favorites to win it all?  Because as a fan, painful though our first round elimination was, you couldn't pay me to trade it for what Cavs fans are going through. 

I'll be honest - upon hearing the news that KMart could be lost for the year (coupled with the similar, now hopefully false alarm re: Ty Lawson), my initial reaction was something along the lines of "Game over man!  Game over!"  

But then I took a deep breath.  And I read the "NUGGETS SEASON OVER" fanpost from the cowardly, pathetic melloyello, who is apparently so pants-wetting terrified of a WCF rematch with Nuggets that he cheers for injuries.  That's when I realized before we all start slitting our collective wrists, we should keep in mind the following:

1. Nothing's for sure yet. Until we hear from the horse's mouth that KMart's shut down for the year, no point in stressing over hypotheticals.

2.  Last season's Houston Rockets.  They lost their TWO premiere players and still managed to take LA to the brink.  It can be done.

3. No guarantees in this league. Yeah, beating a healthy Lakers squad in the WCF with no KMart is a tall order, but there are a lot of assumptions in that scenario. The Lakers bigs have been just as prone to injury over the years as ours, and Kobe's been nicked up all year. Who's to say they don't lose just as big a piece coming down the stretch, or that a hot/scrappy OKC or Phoenix squad doesn't take em out first? That's why they play the games.  

4. Joey Graham. He's not KMart and plays more a 3 than a 4, but I think he's got the size, strength and attitude to bang against opponents on D and maybe even add a few new wrinkles on offense. He'll have to step it up, but from what I've seen in his limited minutes this year, I think he could be up to it.

5. The X Factor. Could be anything from Nene playing in beast mode full time to Ty coming back from his (hopefully likewise non-season ending) injury better than ever to JR finally emerging as the full-on superstar we know he can be to the team simply digging deep and finding inspiration in their coach's cancer battle. You never know how circumstances will affect - again, that's why they play the games.

Losing KMart would be brutal, no question, but the bottom line is nothing's over 'til the Nuggets decide it is. If any team has shown an ability to take a punch and battle in the face of the adversity over the last few years, it's them. So long as they don't quit on us, I'm not about to quit on them.

(And to melloyello and any other Laker fans popping champagne over this KMart thing, just remember:  what goes around, comes around.  We'll be seeing you REAL soon.)

Does the team have issues? Sure. Can we match or even top last year's playoff run? I have no idea. An NBA title is the toughest of the four major pro sports to win imho, and there's no guarantees. It's entirely possible that last year's insanely entertaining playoff run will go down as the Nuggets' (this iteration, anyway) high water mark.

That said, I'm enjoying the hell out of this last season-and-a-half. As someone who suffered through the dark days of Skita, Tariq and Junior Harrington, watching these Nuggets push & shove their way into the NBA elite (and stay there!) is thrilling, and in some ways more satisfying to me than even the Broncos Super Bowl wins - blasphemy I know, but there it is.

Bottom line: frustrating and inconsistent as they can sometimes be, it really doesn't get much better than this. Enjoy this golden age folks, because you never know how long it'll last, or how long it will be until the next one....

I really thought we were past this.  The 27 game-winning shots, the 25 ppg/6 rpg career, his current 30 pts/2 steals per game pace, the ocassionally brilliant interior passing, the highlight reel finishes, last year's franchise-best playoff run - I thought all this was sufficient to silence any remaining doubts about how crazyluckyrich the Nugs struck it when the Pistons took Darko and the XXL pot of gold known as Carmelo Anthony dropped into our laps. 

But no.  Every time the Nugs drop a game (which is known to happen in the course of an 82-game season, BTW, even on the best of teams), I see fans coming out of the woodwork to pin our woes on Anthony:  he's selfish, he drives too much when he's not getting calls, the offense stops to watch when he's in isolation etc etc.

News flash:  these are the side effects of having a player on your roster who is simply THAT GOOD.  On any given night, these very same issues afflict the Lakers with Kobe Bryant, the Heat with Dwayne Wade, and the Cavs with LeBron James.  Yet I don't hear their fans complaining.  Would you rather we didn't have Melo and his automatic 25 & 5 a night?  Besides Bryant, Wade, James, and maybe Dwight Howard, is there another player in the league you'd rather have?  A player who gives us more night-in, night-out than we get with Melo?

Which leads me to this:  BE GRATEFUL we have a player who puts the game on his shoulders when the rest of the team struggles (as we often have with this season with a misfiring Chauncey, a nicked-up Bird, and 7 games sans JR). BE GRATEFUL that Melo keeps taking it to the rack even when the calls don't go his way  (would you rather he settle for long jumpers, as he did early in his career?).  DON'T blame him for the stand-n-watch that goes on when he's got the ball (he can't MAKE the other four guys move), and quit acting like it's his job to get everyone else involved in the offense.  Last I checked, Melo plays SF, not PG, and when the ball is in his hands, he SHOULD be trying to score.  We didn't give him that max contract 'cus he's Steve Nash - we gave it to him because he's arguably the league's most natural and consistent scorer. 

So please, next time you're getting ready to call him out after he or the Nugs have a bad game, just ask yourself:  where would the Nuggets be without Melo?  My guess is we'd be in the same place we were before he got here: scratching & clawing with the dregs of the league, dreaming of one day making it back to the playoffs.  Whatever bumps he's hit (and will continue to hit - he's human) along the way, his accomplishments with and for the franchise over the past six-plus seasons have earned him the benefit of the doubt. 

First, big ups to Mike Nolan and the Bronco D.  Aside from Cinci's final drive and some occasional softness over the middle, they were lights OUT, and pretty much the only reason we were in this game.  Stuffed the run completely, and the consistent QB pressure was truly a sight for sore eyes.  Bravo sirs!

And of course, much respect to Stokely for coming up with a one-in-a-million grab that only happens because he never quit on the play and put himself in position to be at the right place at the right time.  Kudos!

That said...this game confirmed many of my worst fears about McD, Orton, and the Broncos offense from watching them in the preseason: this is Grieseball 2.0.  For someone who found those years the near unwatchable, the putrid sense of deja vu this morning was unmistakable - the maddeningly predictable/ineffective bubble screens, the underthrown deep efforts, the hospital balls over the middle, the dump offs the D knows are coming before we do, the no-hope, white flag 5 yard pass on 3rd & 13...it was like I'd gone through a freaking time warp. (Unrelated, but for the love of god, can someone tell me why we refused to pound the rock with Hillis late in the game?)

Now, does this mean the McD/Orton Broncos can't be competitive?  No.  While the Broncos O was often hideous to watch during the Griese years, we were still good enough to make the playoffs.   What it does mean, however, is that unless McD & Kyle improve VASTLY in terms of both playcalling and execution, we'll never be more than 1st round playoff cannon fodder - just like we were with Griese.  Without a credible, consistent deep threat, the dink-and-dunk style of play is just good enough to win against cellar dwellers and also-rans, and just good enough to get you beat by any team with a serious D and an offense that makes you pay for going 3 and out over and over.

Again, thrilled beyond belief by the outcome (particularly after two straight weeks of seeing my beloved Buffs absolutely embarass themselves), and I hope the struggles were an aberration, but if this what our offense is going to be, I shudder to the think what Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and New York are going to do to us...

Not to say we shouldn't ever double, but in Game 5 we went completely overboard, choosing our spots poorly and letting Lakers not named Pau Gasol get on track for the first time in the series, giving them looks so ridiculously wide open their shots couldn't help but drop.

Sure, Kobe had been torching us for 30+ in the first four games, but we either won or had chances to win all of them.  Game 5 was the first time the Lakers experienced real, team-wide success against our D, and a lot of that seemed the result of our decision to move away from the defensive philosophy that got us here, one that used double-teams only as a last resort.

Bottom line?  if Kobe takes us down with a game for the ages, I can live with that.  What I can't live with is scrubs like Brown, Farmar and Vujacic slowly bleeding us out with uncontested three's and lay-ups. 

Let's hope we've made the adjustments necessary to send this thing back to L.A. for one last shot.  GO NUGGETS!!!