Nuggets are five - and finished

Nuggets bow out of NBA playoffs in five games for fourth consecutive season
By Anthony Cotton

Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 05/03/2007 01:04:49 PM MDT

San Antonio

While it may be true that there was very little difference between the Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs during their opening-round playoff series, the NBA postseason isn't about shades of gray.

As the ubiquitous television commercials state, it's win or go home. So it is that, despite five closely contested battles, Denver found itself eliminated Wednesday night in a 93-78 defeat.

The loss marked the fourth straight season Denver was eliminated in the first round.

Unlike those previous years, the Nuggets clearly belonged on the floor with their favored opponent - none of the previous four games were decided by more than nine points. However, the Spurs ultimately proved too experienced and too savvy to overcome.

Michael Finley, a 34-year-old guard playing in his 12th NBA season, was the latest San Antonio player to bedevil the Nuggets. He scored a game-high 26 points, setting a Spurs playoff record with eight 3-point baskets.

"I look at them and I see where we want to get to," Nuggets guard Allen Iverson said. "I see what we can be if we get into training camp next year and get an identity of how we want to play all year on both ends of the court."

There was a numbing inevitability Wednesday night at the AT&T Center, the sense that no matter how much the Nuggets competed in Game 5 of their opening-round playoff series, no matter how close they came to scaling the formidable mountain that is the San Antonio Spurs, the climb would fall short.

That had been the case over the previous week, and it happened once again in what proved to be the Nuggets' season finale. The visitors fought hard, but the Spurs used a timely 3-pointer here or offensive rebound there in a convincing 93-78 clincher.

"I can't say they were the better team than us. Each game was close, each one could have been flip-flopped to our advantage," center Marcus Camby said.

That was certainly a slight upgrade from how the Nuggets played in opening-round losses the previous three years, each of which ended, like this series, in a 4-1 deficit. But perhaps it was being so tantalizingly close in losses in games 2, 3 and 4 that left Carmelo Anthony sighing in the visitors' locker room.

"This is the worst feeling ever," the Nuggets' star forward said.

Ultimately, the Spurs proved too experienced, too savvy. After shooting down the Nuggets on Monday night with a late 3-pointer by veteran Robert Horry, the Spurs turned to another veteran, Michael Finley, Wednesday night. The 34-year-old set a Spurs playoff record with eight 3-pointers; the fourth cut the Nuggets' 48-44 halftime lead to a single point. The fifth, coming with 1:30 remaining in the third quarter, extended his team's lead to six points.

Not long after two 3-pointers from Allen Iverson helped cut the Nuggets deficit to 77-71 with 7:16 to play, Finley made No. 7 to push the Spurs to an 11-point edge.

No. 8 was just overkill, a bomb from the left corner that put San Antonio ahead 89-76 with 2:32 remaining.

Soon, Spurs fans were dancing in the aisles and the team's coaches were beginning preparations for their Western Conference semifinal series.

"He was ridiculous," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said of Finley.

The Nuggets, while earnest, weren't able to sustain a consistent offensive threat and scored
a franchise playoff low in a half with 30 in the final two quarters. Anthony, who averaged 26.8 points in the series, had 21 and just three in the fourth quarter. Guard Steve Blake, who rallied Denver from an 11-point opening-half deficit by making four 3-pointers, went scoreless in the second half.

And Iverson, despite his near-heroics in the fourth quarter, ended a disappointing postseason by missing 16-of-22 shots. For the series, Iverson made but 37 percent of his field-goal attempts.

"I felt like this was the worst playoff series of my career," he said. "It was frustrating; I came to Denver, wanting to be the one to get this team over the hump, but I didn't play the way I was capable of playing."

In the end, what may have hurt the Nuggets the most were the after-effects of a tumultuous regular season that included Anthony's 15-game suspension for fighting and, soon after, its trade for Iverson. While the team was able to come together enough to win 10 of its final 11 games, gaining the sixth seed in the West, that wasn't enough to avoid meeting the battle-tested Spurs in the opening round.

"You don't want to play Phoenix or Dallas or San Antonio in the first round," coach George Karl said. "The only way to avoid it is to win 50-55 games during the season."

And, as the players slowly emerged from the showers and packed their bags to mark the end of the season, the Nuggets were indeed already beginning to think about how to do just that.

"I look at them and I see where we want to get to," Iverson said. "That's the way we want to play. We have to get into training camp next year and get an identity for how we want to play all year on both ends of the court."

Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.