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<\/p>\nThe Denver Nuggets look like a dangerous team heading into the Western Conference semifinals.<\/p>\n
It was an unusual route to this point, as the Nuggets made headlines by firing their head coach, Michael Malone, with just a handful of games remaining in the regular season. They also fired general manager Calvin Booth.<\/p>\n
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While David Adelman was named the interim head coach, Nikola Jokic has been seen drawing up plays.<\/p>\n
Denver faced a rigorous test in the NBA playoffs’ first round, but triumphed 4-3 over the Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n
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\u00a9 Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Nuggets send 3-word message<\/p>\n
In Game 7, the Nuggets looked like everything came together. They were quicker to every ball and played with an intensity that the Clippers appeared to lack.<\/p>\n
Russell Westbrook was integral to the Nuggets’ advancement to the semifinals. He brought his usual bag of hustle plays and effort on the glass and shot at a highly efficient percentage.<\/p>\n
While Westbrook has never been known for his shooting, he connected on 41% of his attempts from deep.<\/p>\n
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Ahead of their second-round matchup, the Nuggets issued a three-word message.<\/p>\n
“Off to Oklahoma,” the X.com post read.<\/p>\n
Westbrook is no stranger to Oklahoma City. The organization drafted him No. 4 overall in 2008 while he was still with the Seattle Supersonics before relocating.<\/p>\n
While partnered with Kevin Durant, they helped lead the team to an appearance in the NBA Finals, but fell to the LeBron James-led Miami Heat.<\/p>\n
Following Durant’s departure, Westbrook finished in the top five of MVP voting in four consecutive seasons, winning one.<\/p>\n
While the Thunder were dominant this season, the Nuggets went 2-2 in the regular season.<\/p>\n
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Despite that, DraftKings labels the Nuggets as +500 underdogs, which is an implied probability of just 16.67%.<\/p>\n
Game 1 between the two tips off at 9:35 p.m. ET Monday, with the Nuggets as +9.5 underdogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Denver Nuggets look like a dangerous team heading into the Western Conference semifinals. It was an unusual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,250,301,187,3943,938,516,135,189,4231,6,253,302,475,254,1415],"class_list":{"0":"post-9518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-david-adelman","10":"tag-denver","11":"tag-denver-nuggets","12":"tag-denvernuggets","13":"tag-kevin-durant","14":"tag-lebron","15":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","16":"tag-miami-heat","17":"tag-michael-malone","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-nikola-jokic","20":"tag-nuggets","21":"tag-oklahoma-city","22":"tag-russell-westbrook","23":"tag-the-nuggets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114452945059600528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}