Do the Nuggets have what it takes?

Pulled this from espn insider

1. Do The Nuggets Have What It Takes?

Two weeks of watching the Winter Olympics and one game of watching the Nuggets and Lakers have me in flaw-finding mode, like an ice skating judge looking for a missed rotation or a wobbly landing.

Now that the Lakers have established they can actually beat Denver this season, doing so for the first time in three games with a 95-89 victory Sunday afternoon at Staples Center, it's time to nitpick the Nuggets to see whether they really have what it takes to win a playoff series between these teams.

First, the valid Nuggets excuses for their loss Sunday: It was their third game in three cities in four days, having zigzagged from Oakland to Denver to L.A. They had to play the second half without Ty Lawson, who bruised his left shoulder. And they had to play the final 2:13 without Carmelo Anthony, who was whistled for his sixth personal foul, a dubious call when he cleared Ron Artest's arm with a defensive lineman-style swim move while establishing post position.

Next, some complimentary quotes from the victors, led by Lamar Odom calling the Nuggets, "a really tough team -- they play hard, they push us to the limit."

Kobe Bryant explained why he abandoned the Lakers' offense and set up shop on the right block, where he surveyed the floor and found cutting teammates often enough to get 12 assists on a night he shot 3-for-17 from the field.

"God knows I love the triangle, but we kind of had to get into playoff mode a little bit tonight," Bryant said.

That's a testament to the Nuggets, because the Lakers sure weren't inspired to enter playoff mode during an unimpressive victory over the 76ers on Friday night.

The question is whether the Nuggets are capable of getting into playoff mode themselves, of winning when the pace slows and the transition opportunities diminish, as they so often do in the postseason.

As much as they insist they're not as running-game dependent as they used to be, here's some evidence to the contrary: Denver now is 0-3 when scoring fewer than 90 points and 5-13 when scoring fewer than 100 points.

Coach George Karl expounded on the Nuggets' half-court issues, saying, "A lot of our losses, it's because we don't offensively trust the pass and have enough patience to fight through the defensive intensity. When we find the open man, when we move the ball and have a high assist night, it's the key to us winning games."

When it goes bad, they'll pull up for the quick jumper or they'll forget to put the ball in the hands of Anthony, the third-best scorer in the league. It all gets back to the focus issue, the annoying label that has dogged this team for much of the season. It stems from the Nuggets' 24-10 record against winning teams and 14-10 record against teams below .500. They claim they're past that now ("We had a team meeting; guys spoke up," Anthony said), and can point to victories against Golden State and Detroit last week as proof.

And part of me says it's irrelevant because during the playoffs, they'll face only winning teams. But it's indicative of a group that can't find its consistency. Besides, great teams win games when they don't play well. They manage to squeeze out just enough good minutes to prevail.

Then there's the issue no other team is facing, the one you wish no team ever had to deal with. Treatment for Karl's recently revealed throat cancer already caused him to miss the game at Golden State last week, and he said he definitely will miss the March 10 game at Minnesota and possibly back-to-back games in New Orleans and Memphis the weekend after that. Games at Orlando and Dallas at the end of the month are in question as well.

"There are going to be days I'm not going to be with them," Karl said. "I'll try to keep that upfront and ahead of the curve. I'm not going to hide anything from them. They've been great. They've been a great team all year long. I believed in this team, I think, last year before anybody did. And I really do believe in the team this year. I don't want to be a distraction from the standpoint of taking away from the opportunity. The opportunity is there for us. My staff is talented enough to fill in the holes when I'm not there. And they're talented enough, if they accept the opportunity and the challenges to get better in the next 25 games, I think we have that opportunity to be the best."

You get the sense that Karl, who survived a battle with prostate cancer, is particularly frustrated by this go-round because he feels this could be the group that wins him his first NBA championship and he doesn't want to be a burden on these players. His own health is far more important than the impact his absences could have on the Nuggets' place in the Western Conference. Still, for Karl and everyone else connected to him, there is business to address.

"It is a major thing, but George's attitude has given us so much positivity," Chauncey Billups said. "He's so positive and upbeat about it. If we see him like that, we have no choice but to kind of be the same way. If we see him coaching games like this and coming out and putting his heart out for us, we kind of owe it to him to return the favor."

Karl sounds both brave and realistic.

"I'm going to be tough," he said. "But I'm not going to be stupid-tough."

It sounds like good advice for the Nuggets as well. Tough but not stupid. Focused, not foolish.

They have defeated the Lakers twice. Their aggressiveness had the Lakers out of whack and behind by 13 points in the second quarter Sunday. And despite everything that went wrong Sunday, including the 32 percent shooting and 37 points in the second half, the Nuggets still were tied with about three and a half minutes remaining and within four points inside of two minutes. Except they never scored again.

It was their inability to sustain their style of play or to counter the adjustments by the Lakers that let this game get away -- and let doubts about their ability to get it done in the playoffs creep in.

J.A. Adande is a columnist for ESPN.com.