#8 – Denver Nuggets
Like the Clippers, the Denver Nuggets have won seven of their last ten and some of their recent victories have been extremely impressive. They recently toppled the San Antonio Spurs at home then on Saturday defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers on the road.
However, the Nuggets have been a little shaky of late as they barely beat the Memphis Grizzlies last week and gave up a sizable fourth quarter lead to the Clippers to fall to the team threatening them the most in the standings. Even after winning seven of ten, the Nuggets are just a half-game ahead of the Clippers and a game and a half ahead of the Jazz, so unless they go on a huge spurt, they have to be considered in danger of falling out.
The Nuggets don’t have as scary of a remaining schedule as the Clippers do by any means. However, Denver is a subpar 11-19 on the road and oddly enough, 11 of their final 19 games are played away from home. That includes an absolutely brutal seven-game road trip to close out the month of March that features the likes of the Washington Wizards, Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors and Oklahoma City Thunder.
That kind of road trip, particularly for a team that struggles away from home, is almost hard to fathom and it could very well annihilate Denver’s playoff hopes entirely. They’ve played pretty well of late and still are barely in the playoff mix. Thus, it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up not being up to the daunting task ahead and suffer some slippage down the season’s stretch.