Afternoon of sweet adrenaline overload
Hey, sports: We missed you. A ton. From the hockey rink to the basketball court, from Canada to Florida, this was a Saturday of sports so intense it gave the entire 303 area code a case of over-caffeinated jitters, but was as delicious as dark chocolate. Too much is never enough.
The Avalanche. The Nuggets. Two games. Three overtimes. All in one crazy afternoon.
The Avs and Nugs created a channel-surfing tsunami for Denver television viewers. The action left us with the sweaty palms of adrenaline overload. Colorado fans came away with a loss, a win and nerves frayed.
Don’t know about you, but I might have to get back in emotional shape for the sweet agony of postseason hockey and hoops.
With the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference playoffs on the line, Colorado took the ice against Las Vegas. Nathan Mackinnon, whose feistiness is a deep shade of burgundy, blew a gasket at the refs and scored a spin-o-rama goal fueled by don’t-make-nate-mad intensity. But in the end, the Avs lost, 4-3 in overtime.
“Losing …” grumped Mackinnon, searching for the right word in his postgame presser.
Losing stinks, Mack decided. (Although he actually employed a PG-13 word too salty for polite company).
Then Nikola Jokic saved the day, transforming from Sleepy the dwarf to Joker the superhero at halftime. With moves as sweet as Tupelo honey, he scored 28 of his 30 points after his wake-up call at intermission, coming up big in the clutch, as Denver beat Utah 134-132 in double overtime.
“There is no pressure,” Jokic claimed.
Well, that’s easy for him to say.
With the playoffs around the corner for two Denver teams that didn’t get their competitive juices flowing for more than four months during an extended timeout forced by the coronavirus pandemic, the Avs and Nuggets have reminded us that to be a bona fide championship contender, it takes more than talent.
Postseason action in both the NHL and NBA is beautiful, but not always pretty. Winning
ugly is a measure of true grit.
“If we’re expecting this thing to be easy, we’re in the wrong tournament,” said Avs coach Jared Bednar. His skilled and speedy team outshot Vegas 35-26, but lost because the Knights ultimately delivered more energy-sapping checks, outhitting Colorado 27-18.
Nothing comes easy. Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, playing in a real game inside the NBA bubble for the first time after nursing a nagging hamstring injury, was told to expect 22 minutes of court time Saturday afternoon. Then he gutted out nearly twice that amount of lung-burning labor to beat Utah.
The playoffs can etch lines of fatigue and tension in the face of even a seasoned pro, evidenced by the furrowed brow Bednar wore when he refused to say whether Philipp Grubauer or Pavel Francouz would start in goal as the Avs begin their Stanley Cup pursuit in a first-round matchup against Arizona.
It’s not a question of whether the Avs have the scoring to win a championship, but if they can deal with the pressure of expectations on a club that has had none for more than a decade. Are they ready for this? “We feel like we have another gear,” Mackinnon vowed.
A Nuggets team hit so hard by the trials and tribulations of
COVID-19 that it has been difficult for coach Michael Malone to conduct practice with full five-on-five drills for more than a month, has spent considerable time during recent games searching for anything approaching winning basketball.
“Wake up!” Malone shouted at his players, as Denver fell behind Utah 57-39 in the second quarter.
Maybe the biggest sports challenge of a strange year of disruptions, including a shutdown of the NBA and NHL from mid-march until the middle of summer, is that too much time has passed for any meaningful carryover from the outstanding work done by the Avs and Nuggets before the pandemic hit.
This is a whole new season. Rather than a reset, every serious contender needs to establish a fresh mindset.
“I think we’ve gotten back to our game pretty well,” said Bednar. More than the penalty kill and the power play, his concerns for the Avalanche now are consistency and focus.
“We want to win games. We want to go into the playoffs with some confidence in playing good basketball,” said Malone, still awaiting the return of injured starters Will Barton and Gary Harris. “We didn’t want to come down here and lose eight games and say, ‘It’s OK. We’re going to be OK for the playoffs.’ That’s not going to happen.”
The playoff cliché is players need to pick up their games at winning time.
But here’s what is closer to the truth: Teams that make a championship run don’t step up, so much as they refuse to let postseason pressure cause them to come unglued.