Well it’s spring time and that means several things. One, my time spent inside on my computer is taking a backseat slowly and surely to being outside. Especially now since I have a house of my own to keep up with I have plenty to do including weeding, planting, mowing, painting, cleaning and all the joyous things home ownership brings. Another thing that comes with spring time is the NBA playoffs and as you all may know, my Denver Nuggets are killing it so far this year. I really haven’t missed hardly any games at all this year (thank God for Altitude), and I do mean from game one in the fall to game one of the playoffs and up until now. I am not your run of the mill local band wagon jumper; I even placed a bet on them to win back in October right after the Rockies blew it! Doesn’t it grind your gears when you are devoted and supportive of your team regardless of their record and then they finally are doing well for themselves and all these faux-fans come out of the woodwork, laying claim that they were always down for the cause?!

Anyhow, before I get to ranting about those band-wagon-hoppers, according to records of past seasons they have reached the Western Conference finals only twice since becoming an NBA franchise and I get this tingling feeling that they could be on the verge of winning their first! The way the Rockets and Lakers have been going back and forth gives me even more confidence in the chances the Nuggets have. It is hard to say who will be better for the Nuggets to face, in that the Nuggets have struggled playing both teams, at least during the regular season. I do remember one game however when they hung almost 30 points on the at the time, unbeatable Lakers. For the Nuggets sake I would like to see them play the Rockets because that would give them home court advantage which is great since they haven’t lost in 16 games at home since March 9th, when they lost to the Rockets, ironically. Plus without Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady in the line up it will be hard for the Rockets to keep up the pace they have been without their two big stars. On the otherhand as a fan I would love to see the Lakers here in Denver for the Conference Finals, that would be a great thing to go to personally since who knows when the next time they will be in the Conference finals again, it took them 24 years to get back this time, I don’t want to have to wait until I am 50 or worse to see this happen again.

I think the teams main objective in the Finals is to slow down or stop Kobe Bryant. As cocky and narcissistic as he is, we all can agree he is pretty darn good on the basketball court and is always in the MVP conversation. The only way to do this is put extra pressure on Kobe. Since the post season started the Nuggets have shown that they can and will play defense to with the game. I think they have finally come to the understanding that it doesn’t matter if you score 140 points a game, if you can’t make stops on the defensive end of the court you can’t win when it matters. J.R. Smith and Dante Jones are the best options for the Nuggets to put some pressure on Kobe. Dante Jones in my eyes, probably plays the meanest defense at the guard position for the Nuggets, but on the downside his offensive output isn’t very high. Being the inverse of Dante is J.R. who not only put’s up offensive numbers, he sometimes reminds be of Kobe in the way nobody can stop him. The one downside of J.R.’s game is that he is young and inexperienced. Chauncey has helped with this situation by being a great leader for all the young guys on the team including J.R. but the stage is huge and so is the pressure, so it will be interesting to see how J.R. responds to this series.

That said, it should be an exciting week of basketball and hopefully the ball bounces the Nuggets way, no pun intended!