Denver Nuggets facing another first round exit, Game 4 is a must win - NBA Play-offs Update
The Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Denver Nuggets 97-94 in the third straight game of the first-round of the National Basketball Association play-offs on Sunday, April 24.
This has made Game 4 a must win situation for the Nuggets, in order to avoid another first round exit.
With their last loss, the Nuggets are now just one defeat away from their seventh first round exit in eight years. If the Thunder sweep them, then it is going to be the second time in four seasons that they have gone down in the same fashion.
The Thunder has packed down the Nuggets twice in the regular-season and thrice in the post-season in the past 18 days.
In their earlier first round exits, the Nuggets struggled because of injuries, some meltdowns and their coach George Karl’s throat and neck cancer. However, this time they got the wrong opponent and their defence seems to be struggling big time against the
Thunder, whose attack kept finding in-roads in their fragile back court. Denver also needed go-to players that can turn things around for them during the crunch-times.
The Nuggets hurt themselves with poor implementation late in the third game and missed a lot of points from the paint. Their shooting guard J.R Smith almost brought them back in the previous game after slashing a 10 point deficit in the last 50 seconds with
his two 3-pointers, but he missed a 29-footer that could have pushed the game into extra-time.
After the thwarting their third loss Smith said, "When you're on the verge of getting swept it's always embarrassing. You never want to get swept let alone lose six out of eight to this team in the season. It's not a good feeling."
During Game 3 the Nuggets hit 30-of-45 free throws and from there on shot with an average of 68.7 percent. The Nuggets realised that their small mistakes have made them look less competitive in comparison to the Thunder during this series. On Monday night
they will try to avoid their small mistakes in order to stay away from first-round exit.
Arron Afflalo said, "They're good. They're a good basketball team, but do you reverse it and say we're the best team if we make five more free throws and we win the game? Now we're up 3-0."
A week before Nuggets’ coach Karl stated that he wanted the first-round matchups with the Dallas Mavericks, as the reason behind his statement can now clearly be understood.
After the Nuggets’ poor performance coach Karl said, "There's a big part of me that's disappointed because of our failures. But I also know that sometimes some of the best teams lose in the first round because of matchups and circumstances. Oklahoma City
does a good job against some of our strengths. We like the rim, and they have four defenders that like to protect the rim, and do it pretty well."
However, Coach Karl is still hopeful, as he wanted his team to do what no team in the National Basketball Association has ever done before, after going down 3-0 in the series. Karl is looking to give some inspiration to his team through his 1996 NBA Finals
experience.
When the Chicago Bulls went 3-0 against Karl’s team and the Bulls even had a practice of handing out the trophy on their court and the scripts were also rehearsed as to who was going to say what and who should be doing what, but Karl and his team did not
give up and shocked the Bulls with their furious performance and prevailed in the next two games.
This time Karl again is expecting the same performance from his team, so they would not just bounce back in the series, but silence all their critics too.
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