Mile high city, Denver is..with elevation we are not accustomed to. That did not seem to hinder the Lakers a whole lot however..even though at half time we were 10 points behind. Kobe Bryant chose to not suit up and rested his bod this night and Andrew Bynum still out on injury....however still, Lakers gave the nuggets some minutes of hard play all the same. This was the first of five games to play before date of April 18th, for start of the playoffs. They still got in some practice. Lakers play back to back tonight at Minnesota, then home again to play Portland. We tied the Nuggets at different times during the game yet still lost by 2 points leaving the score: Denver 98 - Lakers 96. Kudo's Korner ought to be mentioned here with our coach, Phil Jackson, once again going to the defense of his players. Some bad calls by the Ref encouraged him to stand up for what he saw as error. In doing so, he was fined $35,000 by the NBA. Not fair at all but what can one do in cases such as these? Note the Laker team payroll of $91.4 million is the highest this season in the NBA. The Lakers lead the Western Conference standings and have the league's second best overall record. Minnesota will be an interesting game I should think having been the Lakers first home prior to L.A. move. Babs Wells