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Denver Nuggets Odds to Win 2008 NBA Finals

Written by Jimmy Boyd on June 2, 2008

The Denver Nuggets made it into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth despite having one of the most talented teams in the Western Conference. Any team with players as talented as Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony cannot be taken lightly even if they are the eighth seed in the West, however. Find out how far Jimmy Boyd thinks the Nugs can go as he weighs the 2008 Denver Nuggets odds to win the NBA Finals.

Why they’ll win it all:

I’m not going too far out on a limb when I say that no one will pick the Denver Nuggets to win a NBA title this season outside some blissful die hard. However, when you have two players of the caliber of Iverson and Melo, no team in the Western Conference is going to be able to hold them both down on the same night, and that gives the Nuggets an excellent chance against anybody. Offensively, you can only hope to contain the Nuggets who are the second highest scoring team in the league at 110.5 points per game. I’m not going to say the Nuggets have underachieved because any time you can win 50 games in a season you are doing something right. But when you look at Denver’s roster, it would appear that they could be one of the top teams in the West. Marcus Camby and Kenyon Martin are two more high caliber starters and Linas Kleiza, J.R. Smith, and Eduardo Najera have been fantastic off the bench all season long. With Nene back, the Nuggets have gained even more depth. While the Nuggets are certainly not my pick to win it all, if they did happen to do so I wouldn’t be left scratching my head because there is an immense amount of talent on this team.

Why they won’t:

When we speak of talent, it is all too often skewed toward the offensive side of the basketball. So what I should say is that Denver is a talented offensive team, but is lacking defensive talent. But I don’t think that’s quite true either. I think that Denver, outside of Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson, doesn’t put out near enough effort on the defensive side of the ball. That’s why they rank 29th in the league in scoring defense, allowing 106.9 points per game. They allow their opponents to shoot 45.7% from the field and 36.4% from behind the three-point stripe. I know the Nuggets play uptempo basketball so they are going to allow more points that the Spurs who like to slow things down, but there is no reason why this team should be allowing nearly 107 points per game. I’m a firm believer in the old saying that defense wins championships. It has been what has made the Spurs so successful and it has been the Suns lack of defense that hasn’t allowed them to get over the hump in the postseason. In short, if the Nuggets haven’t proven that they wanted to improve defensively all season, they have proven that they don’t want to win it all.

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