The Denver Nuggets will face the Oklahoma City Thunder in a highly anticipated first-round series against the two division rivals. The matchup pits young teams against each other with fascinating stories about their respective paths to this point. The Thunder moved from Seattle and have risen from an NBA cellar-dweller to a feel-good story of a talent filled organization blossoming in a small market. The Nuggets have fought injuries, incessant trade talk, and an eventual reorganization of much of their squad to reach the playoffs for the eighth straight year.
Oklahoma City, led by a versatile scoring threat in Kevin Durant, have a bevy of offensive and defensive weapons (not to mention a home-court advantage that will feature an undoubtedly frenzied crowd of wild Oklahomans). Russell Westbook, Serge Ibaka, and Kendrick Perkins will surely provide tough matchups on both ends of the floor in addition to the megastar power of Durant. Denver lost two games down the stretch to the Thunder, who reportedly provided no shortage of trash-talking. Fans will be advised to closely watch the not-so-buddy buddy relationship between centers Nene and Perkins, who literally butted heads in the last few weeks.
The Nuggets, while certainly facing a tall task ahead, can beat the Thunder if a few key elements come together. First of all, injuries to important players could be a detriment to Denver. Basically every player on the team has had his fair share of injuries throughout the long NBA season, but the injury monster seems to be rearing its ugly head again at a very unfortunate time. If certain Nuggets players, especially Ty Lawson, Arron Afflalo, Danilo Gallinari, and Nene, all who have suffered injuries as of late, can remain healthy during the series, it would be highly beneficial to the franchise and its fans.
Secondly, the Nuggets can gain confidence and swagger by defeating their foes at least once in the first two games played in the Sooner state, thus giving the men from mile high a home-court advantage, especially significant because of their prowess for consistently high caliber play at the Pepsi Center.
Finally, the Nuggets can prevail by developing a successful plan of attack and executing it flawlessly. For instance, the Nuggets could play a similar strategy that they utilized against a playoff series against Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks two years ago in the second round of the playoffs. The Nuggets surprised many NBA experts by simply not double-teaming the deft shooting German power forward. This resulted in Nowitzki having several high scoring games, but in turn allowed the Nuggets defense to focus more on his capable counterparts. Perhaps the Nuggets could employ a similar defensive scheme in regards to Durant. By playing tenacious defense against the Thunder as a whole, the Nuggets can box-out their individual defensive assignments or create turnovers and flow into their highly effective run-and-gun fastbreak offense and possibly do a little trash-talking of their own while defeating the Thunder.
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