<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">What looked for weeks like the Lakers' biggest game in the second half of the season now merely might be their last chance to get well before the summer. Their playoff hopes vanished into thin air even before they arrived in the Mile High City, so the Lakers will face the Denver Nuggets tonight at Pepsi Center looking to end their six-game losing streak and searching for something positive to build on. If they can somehow cool off the Nuggets -- who have won 12 of 13 games and gone 19-5 since George Karl was hired as coach -- the Lakers would close to 3 games behind Denver for the Western Conference's eighth and final playoff spot. If not, as interim coach Frank Hamblen said before practice here Wednesday, the Lakers might be close to conceding that they will miss the playoffs and fall into the draft lottery for the first time since the 1993-94 season. "If they beat us, then that really hampers our ability to get in the playoffs," said Hamblen, who later added, "Right now, it isn't realistic. But things change in this league. Things changed when George came here." Kobe Bryant added: "In the NBA, you never know what might happen. You never know. Denver might hit a slump or we may get hot. So you never know, that's why you have to be ready to play." If nothing else, tonight's game will be a marked contrast of how midseason changes can affect a team. The Nuggets were 17-25 and six games out of the playoff picture when they hired Karl to replace interim coach Michael Cooper on Jan. 27. They have been almost unstoppable since. Karl added former Denver coach Doug Moe -- whose teams led the NBA in scoring six times -- as an assistant and served notice by benching Carmelo Anthony at the end of two games for his lackluster play. "It was never a matter of them lacking talent or anything like that," Bryant said. "I actually heard something Carmelo said where it was more of a stability factor because you knew that the previous coaches weren't going to be here very long."</div> Source
