Missed it by that much...

OK... so my assessment of Knicks/Nuggets couldn't have been much farther off. That's all right. I'll take the win and live with the embarrassment of having my shortcomings displayed all over teh interwebz.

Mea culpas aside... how did the Knicks beat the Nuggets?

1. Renaldo Balkman is improving with every game. In the season opener, after missing most of the preseason with an ankle injury, Balkman racked up three fouls (all on LeBron James) in about two minutes and was promptly yanked. Against the Nuggets on Tuesday night, Balkman played nearly 28 minutes, scored 11 points and blocked three shots. More importantly, his hounding defense on Carmelo Anthony and Linas Kleiza really keyed the fourth-quarter comeback.
2. Zach Randolph (22 points, 17 boards) is a beast.
3. Randolph seems to be rubbing off on Eddy Curry (24 points, eight boards -- five boards and one block in the fourth quarter alone)
4. Denver played with a very short rotation. The back court is running on empty, with Chucky Atkins, Anthony Carter and Mike Wilks all sidelined. Kenyon Martin was held out of Tuesday's game so he'd be available for Wednesday's against the Celtics -- he isn't playing back-to-backs as a precaution after all his knee problems. Denver coach George Karl used only eight players, and one of those -- Yakhouba Diawara -- only played nine minutes. (The Knicks also played an eight-man rotation, with Balkman, David Lee and Nate Robinson as the only subs used, and Robinson used sparingly. But the Knicks as a team are far healthier than Denver.)
   
5. By the middle of the fourth quarter, it seemed, the Nuggets were really exhausted. Maybe the short rotation was a factor. Maybe it was exhaustion from trying to deal with the big bodies of Randolph and Curry. Either way, as a team they really seemed a step slower than New York when the game was being decided -- as evidenced by Randolph's key board of a missed free throw, and a couple of very soft fouls by Marcus Camby.