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DENVER - Nate Robinson serenaded his teammate with a song in the locker room, rapping and rhyming about J.J. Hicksons big game. Only fitting, since the Denver Nuggets were marching to Hicksons beat all night. Hickson had 19 points and 11 rebounds and the Nuggets overcame a slow start to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 102-93 Sunday night. Last season, Hickson was a double-double machine for Portland, ranking among the league leaders with 40. This was only his sixth of the season for Denver. "Weve been teasing J.J. a lot: Where are all those double-doubles from last year? Because we need them this year," Robinson said. "I know theyre going to come. "Once we get it rolling, its going to be dangerous; its going to be scary for teams to play us." Especially if they can jump out to faster starts. Once again, the Nuggets took a while to get going on offence and had to play catch-up. But they did and were able to pull away late. No big deal, since its more about how a team finishes than starts, right? "Its how you start," Ty Lawson said, grinning. "We get in such a hole in the first quarter and its hard to come back and have energy in the fourth." Wilson Chandler added 19 to help the Nuggets bounce back from a rare home loss on Friday. Theyre 7-3 at Pepsi Center this season after going a franchise-best 38-3 in 2012-13. Ryan Anderson scored 26 and Austin Rivers chipped in a season-high 17 for the Pelicans, who began a five-game road swing. They were without guard Tyreke Evans, who was sitting out due to a sprained left ankle. "We just didnt have the same juice tonight that weve had in a lot of games," Pelicans coach Monty Williams said. "Guys missed shots. We had a lot of open looks, but we just didnt make good shots." This game was tight most of the way, with neither team able to pull away. The Nuggets went on an 8-0 run midway through the third quarter to gain a little separation, leading 71-62 after a pair of free throws by Lawson. The Pelicans could never slice into the deficit. Jordan Hamilton put an exclamation on the win with dunks on back-to-back possessions late in the fourth quarter. The Nuggets once again received solid production from their bench players, with Robinson leading the way by scoring 14. The reserves are averaging 45.3 points, third best in the NBA. "Our job is to make it hard for them (starters) in practice, to give them the best look that any other starting five in the league is going to give them," Robinson explained. "We take pride in that." As has become the recent trend, Denver trailed after the first quarter, trailing 27-24. This was the eighth straight game in which Denver has fallen behind after the opening 12 minutes. Fed up with his teams slow starts, coach Brian Shaw has done some investigating to fix it. He and his staff examined what the players were eating in pregame meals, whether they were getting proper rest leading up to tip off and even changed their stretching routine. The first-year head coach even put his players on notice that he was thinking about switching up the starting lineup. But he stayed with his familiar starting crew against the Pelicans. Still, it was another frosty start as Denver fell behind 8-0 before the players had time to work up a sweat. "The first bucket and then four, six, eight (points), you start to think about it," Lawson said. "Its like, Oh, were starting off slow again. We try to put it out of our heads." The Nuggets had a spirited practice on Saturday, with Shaws guards hardly missing a shot, he reported. That was quite a contrast to a 103-93 loss to Utah on Friday, when Randy Foye and Lawson went a combined 0 for 9 from the field. Shaw even challenged the speedy Lawson to step up, saying: "As the point guard of this team and a guy on the cusp of becoming an All-Star level player, you cant allow what happened to our team happen to our team." Lawson received the message, dishing out eight assists and scoring 12 points. "The challenge he gave us was crazy," Lawson said. "Got to respond to that. We all took it to heart. We had to get better and we did." NOTES: The Pelicans had just six fast-break points. They came in averaging 17.4, which was second in the league. ... The Nuggets outrebounded the Pelicans 51-32. O. J. Howard Jersey . The Oilers jumped into the free agent market early by signing defencemen Keith Aulie (six-foot-six, 228 pounds) and Mark Fayne (6-3, 210 pounds) and left-winger Benoit Pouliot (6-3, 197-pounds). Two days earlier MacTavish traded lightweight forward Sam Gagner to Tampa Bay for 6-3, 203-pound right winger Ted Purcell. Lavonte David Buccaneers Jersey .500 ball against teams with winning records, so they needed a huge lift from somebody Tuesday night in a matchup of division leaders. http://www.authenticbuccaneerspro.com/Gerald-mccoy-buccaneers-jersey/ . CSKA received the heavier punishment of playing its next European home game behind closed doors, after its supporters displayed racist and far-right symbols in the Czech Republic during a 2-1 loss to Viktoria Plzen on Dec. Vita Vea Jersey . - Considering where Jeff Gordon was after Richmond, left out of the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship in part due to some late-race shenanigans, he couldnt have been happier on Sunday. Vita Vea Youth Jersey . First-half goals by Will Bruin and Oscar Boniek Garcia sucked the life out of the Impact as the Houston Dynamo bounced them from Major League Soccers post-season with a 3-0 victory on Thursday.Each week, The Reporters put their thumbs out to the good and the bad in the world of sports. This week they discuss Kyle Lowrys All-Star blessing, Coach Q, unheralded undraftees and leaving the NFL playoffs alone. Cathal Kelly, Toronto Star: My thumb is up to the 14 NBA coaches who decided this week that raptor Kyle Lowry doesnt deserve to be on the All-Star team. Theyre wrong, of course. Badly wrong. According to reports, the player who pipped Lowry for the last bench spot was Brooklyn Nets forward Joe Johnson. Lowry is out-averaging Johnson in every statistical category - including rebounds - and Johnson is seven inches taller. In making this mistake, however, those coaches have done Raptors fans a huge service. From here until the end of the season, Toronto not only has the best point guard in the East, they now have the most motivated point guard in the East. Steve Simmons, Sun Media: My thumb is up to Joel Quenneville of the Chicago Blackhawks, who this week moved up to No. 3 on the all-time list of coaching victories in the National Hockey League. Its impressive enough to make the top three. Its even more impressive when the only coaches ahead of you in wins are named Scotty Bowman and Al Arbour. Quenneville, for some reason, doesnt get a whole lot of attention, doesnt make a lot of headlines, rarely gets mentioned for coach of the year, which he won once more than a decade ago. But here he is behind a nine-time Stanley Cup champion and a four-time Cup winner. And nobody else. Yeah, hes an all-time ggreat.dddddddddddd And when have we ever said that about Joel Quenneville? Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated: My thumb is up to Edmonton goalie Ben Scrivens, for impenetrability. Scrivens stopped a record 59 shots in a shutout of the Sharks, a dash of good news in a city unaccustomed to seeing a goalie make 59 saves in a week. Scrivens stellar game underscored the notion that goalies dont need pedigree. Undrafted out of Cornell, Scrivens once played in the East Coast Hockey League. Ex-Calgary Hitman netminder Martin Jones of the Los Angeles Kings, also was undrafted and played in the Coast as did the Rangers Cam Talbot, out of the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Another thing they have in common: among NHL goalies with at least 12 starts, they are one-two-three in save percentage. Dave Hodge, TSN: My thumb is down to the likelihood that the NFL playoffs will be expanded to include 14 teams, up by two from the current 12. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones delivers the argument for more playoff teams this way: "How exciting is it for fans of a .500 team to see that team in the playoffs with a chance to win the Super Bowl?" Well, heres whats more exciting - two teams like Denver and Seattle, with 13-3 records, showing off their season-long excellence at the Super Bowl. Jerry Jones needs to improve his team, not the League. But the guy in charge of the league, Roger Goodell, supports the idea of more playoff teams, thus more playoff games - get ready for wild-card "week". ' ' '