<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">On his MySpace page, where Carmelo Anthony's friends and admirers span the globe from Fort Morgan in rural Colorado to down under in Australia, an 18-year-old fan recently gave his favorite Nuggets player this shout-out: "Hey, Melo. Keep doing what you DO and u'll get the MVP." Anthony is busting out around the world. He alone is worth the price of admission for every game Denver plays. But the NBA season is too long to be all Melo all the time. That's the problem with the Nuggets. It's why they are pretenders when it's time to list legit contenders in this league. As the snow flew outside the arena Tuesday night, Anthony dropped 37 points on lowly Memphis. But the Nuggets dropped a 108-96 decision that revealed them as players who can certainly be entertaining, so long as you don't take them too seriously. Anybody who makes the mistake of assuming Denver is for real will end up as frustrated as coach George Karl was after a defeat that put an ugly halt to a five-game winning streak. Karl said the Nuggets were "standing, holding," playing a poor brand of NBA basketball. When the Nuggets do not run, they are nothing. "I seen it during warm-ups," said Anthony, who felt no energy in the arena. "We were just out there." It's physically impossible to survive the grind of an 82-game regular season without feeling as if your shoes were filled with cement on some nights. But it's also much harder to run in the playoffs than on a night in November. Although Memphis entered the game tied for the league's worst record, Karl was so uptight about a letdown by his team that he expressed a need for a massage. This team would make any thinking coach nervous. It cannot shoot jumpers. It cannot execute in the halfcourt. It has not addressed the most serious problems that have prevented the Nuggets from being anything except first-round fodder when the playoffs begin. "We over-relied on Melo," Karl said. Anthony is averaging a stunning 31.5 points through 13 games. He has grown into the league's most dangerous scorer this side of Allen Iverson. </div> Source
