DENVER — Denver coach Michael Malone calls them ''the two greatest words in sports.''
Game 7.
The NBA has two of them Sunday, and all four teams — the Nuggets, Timberwolves, Knicks and Pacers — have experienced both ends of blowouts in their otherwise scintillating semifinal series.
In the East, Indiana prevailed by 32 points in Game 4 only to watch New York return the favor with a 30-point shellacking in Game 5.
Out West, the Wolves cruised to a 26-point win at Denver in Game 2 before losing Game 3 by 27 points. Then came Game 6, where the Timberwolves staved off elimination by beating the Nuggets by a whopping 45 points.
How is it that a series featuring two teams so evenly matched can produce so many lopsided results?
''Good question,'' Malone said Saturday. ''To your point, our regular season was 2-2 and the playoffs it's 3-3. I think if we played that team 100 times it would be 50-50. You just have two really talented teams. Depending on the day, who gets hot and who's making shots'' is the one that prevails.
And in a big way, like the Wolves' 115-70 beatdown in Game 6