Basketball Daily

In the late game on Thursday night the Portland Trail Blazers met up with the Nuggets.  Denver seemed to have a grasp on the whole game even though they let Portland back in it many times, the Nuggets held their ground and came away with the win.  The final score ended at 106-90.

Carmelo Anthony returned from his one game suspension due to not coming out of the game against the Indiana Pacers.  George Karl, the Nuggets head coach was peeved that Mello basically ignored him and sent a statement to him by suspending him.  Anthony ended up apologizing live on TNT during half time and all things should be copasetic now.

The top 3 scorers for the Nuggets were Carmelo Anthony with a huge 38 points, J.R. Smith with 17 points and Nene with 16 points.  The high man off the bench was Linas Kleiza with 15 points.  Denver improves their season long record to 40 wins and 22 losses.

Thursday nights late game turned out to be prosperous for the Rookie of the Year a few years back, Brandon Roy.  He was shooting lights out at home in Portland scoring 52 points on 14 for 27 shooting and 19 for 21 free throws.  He led his team to victory over the Phoenix Suns with a score of 124-119 while getting his career high.

Besides the brilliance of Roy, Steve Blake had 22 points and Lamarcus Aldridge had 16 points.  Off the bench Travis Outlaw contributed with 14 points.  Greg Oden is still in the learning phase, picking up a lot of early fouls and only playing a total of 17 minutes.  The Trail Blazers are starting to gel as a team and they are very exciting to watch.  This team has a great future ahead of them.

The Utah Jazz suffering from a myriad of injuries to its players managed to defeat the up and coming Portland team with a score of 97-88 in front of its home town crowd of almost 20,000 people on Thursday night, December 11th.  The game was a back and forth battle with 4 lead changes and 8 ties, and the Jazz would pull ahead in the third quarter and stay ahead.

A fantastic accomplishment was achieved as 3 players had double doubles for the Jazz.  Mehmet Okur had 27 points and 10 rebounds.  Paul Millsap had 17 points and 12 rebounds.  Deron Williams had 14 points and 11 assists to round out the 3 impressive players that played with heart and determination.  Utah’s record so far isn’t the best, but due to injuries to key players, they are hanging in there, and I expect them to be one of the top 4 teams in the Western Conference.