Nuggets give Celtics first home loss of season

You can’t win ‘em all—not even if you’re the NBA Champion Boston Celtics playing at home.  Behind 18 points from recently acquired Chauncey Billups, the Denver Nuggets saddled the Celtics with their first home loss of the season on Friday night winning by a 94-85 score. 

The Nuggets have posted a 4-1 mark since Billups arrived in the Mile High City in a trade that sent Alan Iverson to Detroit.  He was acquired in hopes that he’d improve the play of Carmello Anthony and so far it has—Anthony added 18 points and a season high 13 rebounds in the win over Boston.  Ray Allen paced the Celtics with 26 points, while Kevin Garnett was high rebounder for Boston with 9.   Not surprisingly, Billups was ebullient in his postgame comments:

"It's a huge win. This kind of atmosphere is one of the best you can play in. These are the kind of games where you learn a lot about your teammates and how mentally tough and strong they are.

"Needless to say, I'm happy with the way this game turned out."

Also happy with the outcome was Nuggets coach George Karl:

"There was a lot of fight in that game I think any time you play the Champions, you have to play with kind of a tiger-like intensity. They had their moments, they had their runs momentum-wise, but I don't think we ever stopped being physical or being aggressive."

Celtics superstar Kevin Garnett was impressed with the difference in the Nuggets after five games with Billups in the lineup:

"You see the difference in this team with Chauncey the talking, and the activity and him directing on both offense and defense. But, we had our chance to win the game and we didn't take advantage of that."

The loss snapped a 6 game Celtic winning streak and was their first setback at home since the 2nd game of last year’s NBA Conference Finals against Detroit.  For the Nuggets, it was only their third win in the previous 19 games in Boston.