- That
bottle of champagne the Denver Nuggets had been planning to
pop to celebrate year 2000?
After their last game of 1999, it will probably be a
fizzless dud.
The Nuggets on Thursday night laid an old-fashioned, 19th
century-style egg against the Boston Celtics at the Pepsi
Center, falling 102-94 to a team that had lost 11 road games
in a row.
The Celtics hadn't won anywhere but the FleetCenter and Air
Canada Centre this season, last winning away from Boston on
Nov. 2. But the Celtics beat the Nuggets for the second time
in three weeks, outplaying them from start to finish in a
victory that sends them back to Boston after a three-game road
trip and into Y2K with a warm and fuzzy feeling.
And all that goodwill the Nuggets engendered through the
Rocky Mountains by winning 10 of their last 11 games at their
new home court and running up a 15-12 record before Thursday's
clunker?
Evaporated, like so many fermentation bubbles.
"That would have been a great opportunity to be four games
over .500," an obviously steamed Nuggets coach Dan Issel said
afterward, "and we let a team that can't win a game on the
road do whatever they wanted to do." Issel overstated things
only marginally. The Celtics had, too, won on the road this
season. Of course, it was all the way back in their season
opener, at Toronto, on Nov. 2. Since, they had not won once in
any state that voted for Richard Nixon in the 1972
presidential election.
And the Nuggets didn't let the Celtics do quite everything
they wanted. Boston hadn't intended to be outrebounded by 10,
or to give up 14 offensive rebounds, which was the only reason
the Nuggets managed to claw from 12 down to within one point
with 7:37 left in the game.
But the Nuggets coach was close to right.
The Celtics did most everything they wanted, including
turning Paul Pierce into their go-to guy in the fourth
quarter. Pierce scored eight points in the final eight
minutes, including five straight to push Boston's lead from
88-85 to 92-85 with 3:50 remaining.
Pierce was surprised to find he was guarded through most of
the final period by Denver small forward George McCloud, whose
10-year career has been built on a foundation of clutch
perimeter shooting, not a reputation as a defensive stopper.
McCloud did what he could to keep Pierce, averaging 18.9 this
season, from getting clean looks at the basket, but he
appeared nearly powerless to stop him.
Denver's James Posey had opened the game with the defensive
assignment on Pierce, but played only 10 minutes of the second
half.
"It surprised me," Pierce said of the defensive matchup. "I
thought (James) Posey did a good job on me. And I was
surprised I didn't get trapped more late, because they were
doing it a lot in the first half." Posey hardly poses the
offensive threat McCloud does, and with the Nuggets trailing
throughout the second half, Issel said he could not afford the
luxury of using his defensive stopper.
"We needed the offense," Issel said.
The Nuggets found themselves in such a predicament because
they opened the game as if their sole concern was getting to
Denver International Airport to catch planes to holiday
parties. Issel already had told them they would have today and
Saturday off to celebrate the arrival of Y2K, which helped
explain the coach's pique, since his munificence was rewarded
by one of his team's worst efforts of the season.
"We weren't playing like we had been playing," said Ron
Mercer, the Nugget whose personal quest to beat the team that
traded him away in August was met with frustration twice in
three weeks. "They came out pumped up, with more energy than
we had. We just weren't ourselves tonight." Issel said he knew
the Nuggets weren't themselves as soon as he saw them clanking
free throws and throwing uncatchable passes.
"Obviously," he said, "we weren't ready to play. We missed
16 free throws. Free throws and turnovers, that's an excellent
way to tell if you're ready to play. We had guys who couldn't
hold on to the ball."
