DENVER -- Final four week turned into a flop of finalists.
Meetings of last season's conference finalists got started Wednesday when Cleveland took a huge lead and clobbered defending East champion Orlando 102-93. An even bigger dismantling occurred Friday night at the Pepsi Center.
The way the Nuggets demolished the Lakers, you'd have thought they tried to smuggle coke into the building.
The Nuggets got some revenge against the defending West and NBA champions 105-79. It wasn't even that close.
"Hopefully, this is a big message, not just to the Lakers but to the whole NBA. We're a legit team,'' said Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony, who scored a game-high 25 points and outscored Lakers star Kobe Bryant 18-0 in the second half (no, that's not a misprint).
Denver's previous coach wasn't bashful about title talk.
"To win a championship, you've got to talk championship,'' Michael Cooper said on several occasions as members of the media attempted to keep from snickering.
Let's just say Cooper, who compiled a 4-10 interim coaching stint before being silenced in January 2005, didn't do much more than talk championship.
Now, the guy who replaced Cooper is doing a lot of such spouting. But nobody is snickering.
"I believe this team can win a championship,'' said George Karl, who has led the Nuggets to five straight playoff berths since taking over.
SALT LAKE CITY -- No, J.R. Smith's suspension hasn't begun yet.
Nevertheless, the Denver Nuggets guard, who will have to sit out the first seven games of the regular season due to an NBA penalty, wasn't with the Nuggets when they opened the preseason Thursday night at Utah. But Denver vice president of basketball operations Mark Warkentien said it was nothing to be alarmed about.
"It's a personal situation,'' Warkentien said. "We knew this a few weeks ago. His absence wasn't unexpected. It was absolutely excused.''
DENVER -- For the first week, J.R. Smith just stared at the walls. Finally, he got a radio and listened to sports talk shows.
Eventually, though, there was so little to do in jail that Smith found himself perusing a chemistry book that was sitting around. Not that Smith claims he now knows his periodic table of elements.
The Denver Nuggets guard spent 23 days in jail in July after pleading guilty to reckless driving for a June 2007 accident that killed his passenger and good friend.
"Oh, by far," Smith said Friday when asked if it was the most humbling experience of his life. "I was in protective custody. They wouldn't let me interact with anybody. I was on 23-hour lockdown. I was pretty much in there by myself. The whole time you definitely see the difference between freedom and not being free."
So what's the word from Nuggets guard J.R. Smith on his seven-game suspension to start the season?
Well, actually there isn't one yet.
"The team said I'm not allowed to speak to nobody yet,'' Smith said Thursday, saying team officials have told him not to talk to the press until media day Sept. 25.
Smith was asked, though, if he at least wanted to make a comment on whether the suspension, handed down Aug. 28, was fair.
The NBA suspended J.R. Smith for seven games, and Jason Richardson for two games, after both players recently pleaded guilty to separate driving offenses.
The timing of the suspensions seems rather random -- Smith's reckless driving incident (from 2007) was resolved by the courts this past July, while Richardson served one day in jail for his DUI conviction back in December. But you knew they were coming at some point, because, well, leagues tend to suspend players who get into trouble with the law.
I'm wondering, though, if the length of the suspensions doesn't seem almost as random as the timing of the announcements. When looking more closely at the details of the incidents, the punishments come across as being a bit disingenuous.
The 2009 NBA season could be considered the season of Twitter, as the NBA was at the forefront of the explosion of the micro-blogging service. Twitter became the go-to communication tool for many NBA players because of its ease of use and because it enabled them to reach their fans without the help of mainstream media.
But if the 2009 season was the season of Twitter, then the 2010 season might be the year of Ustream. Ustream (and competing services such as Justin.tv) is a web platform that allows for "lifecasting" and streaming of live events via a web cam or some high-end phones.
All year long, the Lakers had a singular, simple goal: to return to the NBA Finals, and avenge last year's loss in the championship round.
They achieved the first part of that goal on Friday by closing out the Denver Nuggets in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, 119-92.
In a series where the referees were the topic of discussion over the past two games, the Lakers made sure that this one wouldn't be close enough for the officials -- or the Nuggets -- to have any say at all regarding the outcome of this game.
Bloggers knee-jerking on the phone + roundtable style = RoundCast.
In Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, George Karl made sure that Kobe Bryant wouldn't be the one to beat the Nuggets all by himself. Karl sent two defenders at Kobe as soon as he got the ball, which was a pretty big change from the way he chose to defend Bryant through the first four games of the series.
Will Brinson and I discussed the change in philosophy, as well as the fact that Denver's bench players (we're looking at you, J.R. Smith and Chris Andersen) were largely ineffective as the Lakers went on to take a three games to two lead in the series.
All that, plus some thoughts on the probability of the Magic being able to close out the Cavs in Game 5.
Despite suffering their worst loss of the postseason two days earlier in Denver, the Lakers re-asserted themselves as the best team in the West -- if not the entire league -- with a 103-94 win at home over the Nuggets. They now hold a commanding 3-2 lead in the series, needing just one more win over the next two games to return to the NBA Finals.
The Lakers have been maddeningly inconsistent the last several weeks, but Wednesday's win did preserve one positive streak: they've yet to lose consecutive games in the playoffs. Granted, they've yet to win consecutive games against the Nuggets, but the way the schedule works out, they don't need to.
DENVER -- Final four week turned into a flop of finalists.
FanHouse 
SALT LAKE CITY -- No, 
DENVER -- For the first week, 
So what's the word from 
The 
The 2009 NBA season could be considered the season of 
All year long, the 
In Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, 
Despite suffering their worst loss of the postseason two days earlier in Denver, the Lakers re-asserted themselves as the best team in the West -- if not the entire league -- with a 103-94 win at home over the Nuggets. They now hold a commanding 3-2 lead in the series, needing just one more win over the next two games to return to the NBA Finals. 
