The Massacre of March 3rd

In a game that was supposed to be a matchup two of the top small forwards turned into a repeat of the 168-116 shellacking the Nuggets dealt the Thunder, who at the time was the Seattle Supersonics, two years ago.  Only difference was Denver actually played defense this time, shutting down one of the top scorers in the game on its way to a 119-90 victory and it was far worst than the score showed.

The Nuggets made life difficult on Kevin Durant, constantly switching all game long and holding Durant

to only 20 points which is the fewest he has scored since December.

Durant ran off screens, but found life tougher on the other side as he was met with Nene and K-Mart. While on the other side of the ball Carmelo Anthony scored at will and when he wasn’t scoring he was finding his teammates.

Melo hit his first four shots and finished the first quarter with 15 points and scored 23 of his game-high 30 points in the first half.

• Nene scored 20 points on 9-of-13 shooting.
• JR Smith scored hit 4-of-5 3-pointers and finished with 18 points
• Anthony Carter redeemed himself from his two previous outings with 12 assists
• Chris Andersen played nearly a perfect game, going 3-of-3 from the field and 7-of-7 from the charity stripe. He also had four blocks and seven rebounds.
• Durant hit only 5-of-14 shots and 7-of-9 FTs and also had four turnovers.
• Durant also wrote ‘RIP Sean Rascoe’ on his shoes in honor of his former high school teammates, who died after falling from a moving vehicle on Saturday. He said he’ll where them in honor of Rascoe the rest of the season.
• Renaldo Balkman, aka Kool played for the first time since November and probably won’t play again until next November. He missed all three of his 3s he attempted – air-balling two. Needless to say Karl was asked about ‘Kool’ after the game and his response was ‘How many 3s did he air-ball?’