Unusual game. We get up near 140 points and yet there are just a few minutes of garbage time. Our only good defensive run was with JMAX and Amir in the game to start the 2nd quarter. We gave up a ton of points.


Denver started the game up on us a bit. They were getting exactly what they wanted against us, inside scoring. An old story. Slow start by our starters with no inside defense. They did tighten the D up though and get the lead back.


Hayes had his 2nd good shooting night in a row. Good trend. But considering we scored as much as we did as easily as we did, got to wonder yet if Hayes can do it against good D. We should find that out tomorrow night.


Dixon played extensively. Can't say he did too bad on D tonight. Not that he gave us much, but Denver was playing some pretty darn short guards so Dixon could often find someone to guard in this game that was not towering over him.


Afflalo only got a few minutes of garbage time. Gee, seems we could have used some defense in the game.


Amir did get to play, getting 5 rebounds and 4 points in short minutes. His points were inside, two at the line and two on a cut to the basket. Six of his minutes were to start the 2nd quarter where we had our only good defensive effort.


The 3rd quarter was not too great. We lost that quarter by double digits. Stuckey came on early for Billups. I mean real early, less than 5 minutes into the quarter. JMAX came in for Sheed kind of early too.
Stuckey and Dixon both played a lot. Neither Billups nor Rip played any in the 2nd quarter. Dixon had a couple of buckets. Stuckey scored 11. He hit a triple, another jumper, scored at the line, got inside a couple times for buckets. I liked seeing both him and Amir going 2-2 at the line.


Maxiell led us in minutes. He hit a couple of like 12 foot jumpers(Maybe one was 15), scored on a fast break. The rest was inside work. Ok at the line, not great. Eighteen points in all. One fairly spectacular block.
Sheed did some work inside and was on fire from 3 land, getting player of the game honors. Tay just missed a double double with assists and points while Billups did get one. Rip showed no ill effect from playing short minutes in the first half, hitting everything he threw up in the 3rd quarter.


Again, an unusual game. Little garbage time, yet only Maxiell got over 30 minutes. All four of our stars put up some seriously good stats in short minutes. Dyess hit a couple of outside shots and did some work inside. (8 points.) So why did we give up about 120 points? Simple enough. We have to replace Dyess in the starting unit. Just no inside presence at all from him. No lateral movement. The inside was way too open for Denver with him in the game.


Dyess can be helpful against a team with a big strong center or two. But Denver? No such person. Dyess did not fit at all in this game.
Our 24 point lead we enjoyed in the 2nd quarter shrunk to just 10 with lots of time to go in the game yet, mostly due to that bad 3rd quarter, in which Dyess played the whole time.


Playoff preparation. First good news, another game where Hunter did not play. That is good. Bad news. Another game of trying for no reason at all to cut Afflalo out of the rotation. Dixon did not show much for a ton of minutes he got tonight.


Stuckey and Maxiell got good solid minutes. Amir got 6 minutes in the rotation. We'll call it 75%, a C for this game.
Theo did not play. He would have fit in about as good as Dyess anyway.