The Denver Nuggets have flown into town, and for the Atlanta Hawks’ sake, let’s all hope their arms are tired.

The Nuggs (29-36, 11th in West) come into tonight’s action feeling mile-high, just hours after having dusted the suddenly-bumbling Miami HEAT on their own floor. Running through a five-game road gauntlet over the course of seven days, including three games in the last four, rookie Head Coach Brian Shaw’s charges endured a month-long stretch that was almost as mountain-rocky as Atlanta’s.

Going into Wednesday’s game in Orlando, Denver had lost eight of their previous ten and ten of their prior 13 matchups. After taking out the Magic and now the HEAT, Denver’s can turn its half-empty road trip into a half-full one with a victory tonight.

Up to this point, not a whole lot has been working out for Shaw, following up a Denver mainstay and last season’s NBA Coach of the Year while handed a roster of defensively-flawed players not of his own choosing. Hopes were still high back in early November, when his team fended off the Hawks at the Pepsi Center for his first coaching victory.

JaVale McGee looked as though he might be finally turning the corner as a reliable NBA starting center. Playing for a guy he played against for four seasons, surly veteran Andre Miller looked like he might be willing to get with Shaw’s program, coming off the bench alongside hyperactive free agent acquisition Nate Robinson. Evan Fournier is hitting shots. Another free agent pickup, J.J. Hickson was sought to provide an offensive spark and hopefully improve on the other end. Jordan Hamilton was starting at small forward, sure, but just wait until Danilo Gallinari comes back!

As the season wore on, it became clear Gallo wasn’t recovering. Energetic forward Kenneth Faried suffered through crises of confidence, and franchise-face Ty Lawson (career-high 18.5 PPG and 9.0 APG) had a hard time finding his shot (career-lows of 43.9 FG% and 36.0 3FG%), now with defenses keying in on him and denying his drives.

Fournier remained inconsistent as a shooter. Hickson struggled defensively and lost his starting gig in favor of Timofey Mozgov. Young frontcourt reserves Anthony Randolph and Darrell Arthur not only haven’t improved, they’ve regressed. Miller got DNP-CD’d probably for the first time since the Reagan Administration and eventually went AWOL on Shaw. Five games in, McGee (tibia) was lost for the season, joined within a few months on the IR by Robinson (knee).

And then there were the streaks. A seven-game winning streak in November was followed by a string of eight straight losses in December, five wins in a row in January, and losing strings of five and six games beginning in February.

Faried (21.5 PPG, 10.1 RPG, 63.9 FG% in March) has regained his confidence after the All-Star Break, routinely deploying a jump-hook shot in the paint and beating his opponents down the court for dunks in transition. Team morale has improved since the trade deadline, when Miller was shipped off to Washington and Aaron Brooks was unearthed from Houston’s depth chart to replace him. Ty Lawson’s two highest-scoring games (30 and 31 points) have come in the past two weeks, and he’ll be sought out to up his volume (21.4 PPG and 10.6 APG, 47.1 FG%, 45.2 3FG% post-All-Star-Break) after putting up just seven field goal attempts in Miami last night.

Fans of tanking in Denver aren’t quite sure what to root for. As a hybrid result of the Carmelo Anthony and Andre Iguodala trades, the Nuggets get the higher of the picks held by themselves and the New York Knicks, the Magic taking the lower pick. With Melo’s Knicks suddenly under Zen-inspired play and winning six-in-a-row, plus the Nuggets hopelessly mired among the worst of the West (9 games behind 8-seed Memphis, with 17 games left), the prospect of a new winning streak has some Nuggets fans feeling some kind of way and reaching for the motion sickness pills once again. I think it’s safe to say Magic fans are pulling for the Hawks (29-36) tonight, as they’d like both the Nuggs and Knicks to get back to losing again.

Denver’s still got some players, but they hack a lot. They lead the league with 23.0 personal fouls per game, leading to 20.4 made free throws per game for their opponents (most in NBA). New daddy Lou Williams can get his game back in stride by getting inside and drawing trips to the charity stripe. Jeff Teague, Paul Millsap, Elton Brand and the struggling Mike Scott (0-for-5 vs. Milwaukee and shooting way too many threes) can also do damage by mixing it up inside and going for And-1s.

Denver also draws plenty of fouls as well with their high pace-of-play (100.2 possessions per 48 minutes, 3^rd in NBA) and persistence in attacking and crashing the rim. But unlike the Hawks (78.1 FT%, 5^th in NBA), the Nuggets don’t help their own cause (71.9 FT%). The Hawks’ refreshed frontline has to commit to minimizing easy buckets in the paint, stripping the ball when it’s pushed inside and forcing the Nuggets to earn their keep at the free throw line.

Wilson Chandler will be on Kyle Korver duty, after Korver shot 10-for-12 in his last three games from downtown. Denver has been surprisingly effective at stopping three-point shooters (34.3 opponent 3FG%, 4^th lowest in NBA), but they really don’t have the defenders at the wing spots to shoo Korver and DeMarre Carroll off the three-point line, and Mozgov isn’t wasting time coming out for Pero Antić. If Hickson and Faried are deployed to help at the perimeter, opportunities should open up on the interior for Atlanta.

Go Hawks!

~lw3