Miked Up: Torrey Craig Keeps Denver Nuggets Alive In Win
By Mike Wilson
Sigh of relief after the Denver Nuggets pull out a needlessly close win tonight in DC against the Washington Wizards.
Torrey Craig’s energy helped propel the Denver Nuggets past multiple 20 point swings between units against a Wizards team with not much to lose as Nuggets look to secure the #1 seed in the West going into the playoffs next month.
Nugget fans were blessed with an early 5pm MTN start after multiple 8:30pm MTN national game tip offs that kept this blogger from rewarding you with high quality content. It is nice getting the national attention with all the TNT games, but 8:30 tip offs? Even worse when you are on the east coast (yes I am explaining time zones) like the Nuggets will continue on during this 5 game East coast road stretch.
I was lucky enough to take in Monday’s game in the Garden against the Celtics before the team headed down the East coast to DC for tonight’s game. It was nice to hear my Boston work colleagues ooze over what they see in this young Denver roster. “Quietest near triple double” from Jokic they would admit. I’d reply with a “Tom Brady has a losing record on the road in Denver” which would confuse them out of conversational context, but good to keep Title Town on its toes.
Anyhow, back to tonight’s game..
Key Take Aways:
- It’s hard to find any positives out of the majority of your starting unit being injured for a lot of the season. What silver lining remains is the fact that it provides your bench unit and role players who normally wouldn’t get an opportunity to get quality minutes throughout the season, really get some solid experience. Tonights bench unit was the key to the game, especially when the starters were not rising to the level that they are capable of. Whether you want to call out Monte Morris, Malik Beasley, Mason Plumlee or Torrey Craig, that second unit really has been the difference for this team throughout the season. I am completely serious when I say that this bench unit could go head to head against the bottom quarter of the NBA’s teams starting units and come out with a win three out of four times.
- For those of you Denver fans who recall the 90s Avalanche teams of Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy, the secret sauce of those teams success were how deep they were. The Nuggets let the Wizards go on a 25-5 scoring run in the middle of the 3rd to get the crowd back in the game. The starters were stagnant and lethargic. The bench came in and immediately went on a 10-0 run to get the Nuggets back in the game to finish the quarter. Our bench outscored their bench 52-14 in the game. Just wow.
The Nuggets first round playoff game pre-sale went live today at 4pm. One of my pals tried to sign on to purchase tickets and he said he had better luck buying Coachella tickets when they went live. The site just couldn’t handle the traffic. If you couldn’t tell by the number of sell outs in the Pepsi Center this season, the Bronco fanbase has nearly all but come on board with this Nuggets team. Buying SeatGeek or Livid Ticket day of tickets has gotten more and more expensive but I don’t hate it. This will a DECADE of playoff Nugget basketball, similar to what we saw in the Melo years (9 of 11 years in playoffs) and we will need Denver to be with us on it.
So three more games left on this East Coast road trip starting with Knicks at The Garden followed by the Pacers and Pistons before heading back home.
The Nuggets have the 2nd hardest remaining strength of schedule going into the playoffs including TWO games against Portland (back to back), Houston, OKC, Warriors, The Monstars (Warriors), and Utah. Who knows how we will finish but at time of this blog, the Nuggets are 0.5 back of first and have a 4.0 jump on Houston with OKC falling down the 8th. (Would be a terrible first round match up for whoever has them)
Best of luck to your bracket. Hope yours does better than my lady’s who decided them by the cities she likes the best. The secretary picking her favorite mascots always wins the office pool. Year in, year out.
Great game, Torrey.
-Miked Up
Twitter: @mwilsonco