I know, I know, we don't want to rehash our lone loss to the Jazz but with all of the news media falling all over themselves because of Utah's hot streak I had to bring it up again. It's not making excuses for the Nuggets (who played well, considering), merely an attempt to bring the basketball world back to their senses. After all, the Jazz are only 1-3 against the Nuggs.

I was doing some thinking about that game. I mean, Billups sat and Melo sat, Afflalo and Nene got hurt. How many minutes did our starters actually play? So I picked up the boxscore and did some basic addition. I used the minutes that our regular starting 5 played in the Utah game. Then I wanted to see how many minutes each of them usually play.

Billups: 0 mins at Utah; 33:18 normally.

Afflalo: 21:41 at Utah; 26:24 normally.

Anthony: 0 mins at Utah; 37:42 normally.

KMart: 40:31 at Utah (!!!); 35:12 normally.

Nene: 20:33 at Utah; 33:48 normally.

Starting 5: 82:45 at Utah; 166:24 normally.

In other words, out of a possible 240 minutes (48 mins by 5 players), our starters use 166 of them normally, or just over 2/3rds. At Utah, our starters used just over 1/3rd of the minutes - or half their normal use - while the bench played twice as many minutes as usual. Utah on the other hand played their starters for 162 minutes, equal to the 162 minutes that they normally play. So Utah's full-strength starters played 2/3rds of the game and their subs played 1/3rd while Denvers starters played 1/3rd and our subs played 2/3rds.

I realize that guys get paid to play whether they start or come off the bench, but it's admirable that our subs played starter minutes against the Utah starters and only lost by 10. Congratulations Utah, you just barely beat our subs... on a back-to-back, at home.

Yeah yeah, a win is a win and I'm just bitter over that defeat. It's true. If Utah had mopped the floor with the Nuggets that night (like they should have) I wouldn't be bringing this up.