After over a decade of first round playoff exits, the Denver Nuggets are hoping to extend their Western Conference semi-final lead to 2-0 on Wednesday at 3:30 a.m. GMT. Coming off a 109-95 win on Sunday afternoon, the Nuggets continued their home-court dominance with another terrific performance at Pepsi Center in the series opener.

Until the fourth quarter, game one looked fairly even with both teams rarely being separated by more than one or two possessions. However, with ten minutes remaining the Nuggets really increased their energy level on the defensive end of the floor, forcing a total of eight turnovers in the last quarter. Chris “Birdman” Andersen set a new personal playoff high with 6 blocks a long with 6 rebounds and 11 points. Although these are decent numbers, they cannot describe the impact he had on the game practically keeping the Mavericks out of the paint for most of the game.

All-star Dirk Nowitzki had a big night, scoring 28 points on 12-of-20 shooting and grabbed 10 boards. However, the rest of the team was not able to step up and provide the support Dallas would like to see. Starting center Erick Dampier only played 21 minutes after constantly being exploited in the low-post area by Nene in the first half.

In contrast, the Denver Nuggets got a huge lift of their bench players who scored 39 points combined. Most surprisingly, backup point guard Anthony Carter managed to put up 12 points on 75% shooting while Chauncey Billups finished the game with only 6 points.

Without any doubts, the Dallas Mavericks will have to take better care of the basketball in game two if they want to even the series. A total of 20 turnovers in game one was simply too much to overcome. The Denver Nuggets on the other hand are feeling very confident considering that they did not have to rely much on their two star players Chauncey Billups and Carmello Anthony to win the game in double-digits. You can watch this second round NBA playoff game live here at www.watchlivenba.com, the home of live NBA streaming.