Nene and the Nuggets - Semi-Live Blogging, Denver-Sacramento, ABC, Sunday

I was initially pretty dubious about a Denver-Sacramento Sunday game. While it's a welcome break from the full-on LeBron-a-thon, two losing teams playing for little more than the 8th playoff spot doesn't always make compelling television.



But in this case, it did. As expected, the game was fairly high-scoring:29-27 after one quarter, with a lot of three-point bombing (Ron Artest even made one). Final score 113-101 Denver.



Like the rapidly-dwindling number of people who still watch nationally televised games, I dealt with one fundamental question today: "Linas who?" Linas Kleiza, previously known for... nothing, had 24 and 8. Pretty big improvement over a career average of nothing much.



By far the greatest surprise was the play of Nene. I doubt many people outside of Denver have seen much of him. To me, he was the butt of a lot of jokes about stupid, massively inflated contracts in the NBA to hapless big men. But there's something there. Yes, there was a reason to lock this guy up, although he's still hardly worth $60 million. Yet there's a little bit of Amare-like explosiveness to his game, the few massive dunks and blocks that suggest if he were a little skinnier, or able to shoot from more than 5 feet, that he's a player.

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