By Garry Jones
The Los Angeles Lakers scored a rare victory in Denver against the Nuggets, as they opened a season-high six-game trip on Friday night at 93-89.
Mike Brown, the Lakers coach, was fuming silently in the last seconds as a non-call gave Denver a last chance at winning the game.
Andrew Bynum scored 22 points, while Kobe Bryant added 20, but their victory was only achieved after Al Harrington missed a 3-point attempt with 2 seconds left that could have landed the game in Denver's lap. Harrington said, "A step-back, that's my favorite shot. I thought it was going to go in."
Matt Barnes was called on a foul on the rebound, and sank two free throws with two-tenths of a second remaining. Lakers' Pau Gasol scored 14 points and 17 rebounds, as the team won for the third time in 10 road games this season, with only the second win in Denver over their last seven trips to the Pepsi Center.
The Lakers rallied after Nuggets center Timofey Mozgov rolled his left ankle after scoring a bucket early in the later half. Chris Andersen and Julyan Stone helped his to the locker room without putting any pressure on his left foot, but he didn't ray. The Nuggets said that his X-rays were negative.
Coach George Karl came by his locker after the game to inquire how he was doing. Without putting any weight on the foot, Mozgov, who got injured as he hurried back on defense after a layup, said, "Could be better."
Two minutes later in the game, Denver's leading scorer, Danilo Gallinari, was accidentally poked in his left eye by World Peace. He then retreated to the locker room for a few minutes to replace his contact, as the Lakers rallied ahead to victory. Though he returned to the court, but skipped the final six minutes for blurry vision. Gallinari was held to six points on 1-of-9 shooting.
Having led Denver with 24 points, Harrington hit back-to-back three-pointers keeping the game a close one in the final minutes.
Nene's slam with 28 seconds left cut the Lakers' lead to 91-89, after which Bynum missed a dunk with 11 seconds left. After the officials reviewed the tape, they overturned their initial ruling that the ball went off a Nuggets player to out of bounds. Bynum just said, "Some nights, that's what happens, but I'm supposed to put them in the rim."
However, Coach Brown said, "Obviously, it was a missed call, and that missed call was tough to swallow. Drew has a clean dunk and he gets fouled and it ends up
being Denver's ball in a two-point game. That’s tough to swallow when it's in somebody else's building. We didn't execute right down the stretch but we got lucky and had a clean dunk at the rim and we got fouled. It’s tough to sit there and watch a no-call at that point in the game."
On the inbound, Ty Lawson passed to Harrington, who then found World Peace, and had to step back to try shooting a three-pointer.
Brown added, "We made it really hard on ourselves, but it's good to get a win. Our defense got us a win in a tough environment. What an ugly game, we found a way to win. I'm a little disappointed the way we executed down the stretch and disappointed in how the game was called down the stretch. In a tight ballgame, you hope that you got something better from both parties, from our guys and from the official."
The Nuggets hoped to make a break. Karl wanted Lawson to visit the hoop with about 5 seconds left, but Derek Fisher didn't let him through. Lawson said, "He played great defense, so I had to go to the second option and I saw Al and he had a good shot when he stepped back, and it almost went in. He'd hit two big 3s. He had the hot hand, so we definitely wanted to get him the ball."
Following Bynum's 15 first-half points, the Lakers assumed a 44-41 lead into the locker room after they tackled Denver's fast-break and Gallinari, who averages 17.5 points.
Prior to the game, it was highlighted that Karl finally had a roster with enough big men to try and match up to the Lakers' size, but he said that he wanted nothing to do with a match-up of that sort. Before the tip-off, Karl said, "This team goes to the post as much as anybody in basketball. I don’t want to try to beat them power vs. power, I want to go speed. I want pace vs. power. We're always going to try to outrun them."
Instead, the Lakers controlled the rhythm. At 47-46, the Nuggets took their first lead with, on Gallinari's 3-pointer on 10:34 left in the third quarter. Thirty seconds later,
Mozgov scored another point to make the score 49-46, with which he injured himself as he tried to get back to defense quickly.Since his left foot was not flat on the floor, he tripped and immediately rolled about in pain.
