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Smith goes for 40 as Nuggets handle Wizards

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:57 AM DENVER (AP) -- Last year, Carmelo Anthony had a career night against the Washington Wizards. This time, J.R. Smith and Chris Andersen took their turns.

Smith scored a season-high 40 points, Andersen had a career-high 18 points to go along with 11 rebounds and six blocks and the Nuggets beat the Wizards 116-105 Friday night for their fifth straight win.

Anthony, who scored a career-high 49 against the Wizards on Feb. 8, 2008, had 20 points and let Smith steal the show. Smith was 15-for-23 from the field and also added six assists. He didn't stick around to talk about his night, but his teammates did.

"He had a game, didn't he?" Anthony said.

Chauncey Billups scored five points and took only seven shots because Smith was playing so well.

"When J.R. is shooting like that, with all the other options we have, we're pretty much unstoppable offensively," he said.

Smith had two key spurts that keyed the Nuggets' win. In the second quarter he came back into the game with Denver down 32-31 and scored 10 points, two on a fast-break layup that gave his team a 52-43 lead with 3:05 left in the period. His bank shot later in the quarter gave Denver a 10-point lead, and the Nuggets went into halftime ahead 58-51.

Smith, whose previous high this year was 32 against New Orleans on Nov. 27, had 11 points in the third quarter to reach 30 heading into the fourth. He fell short of his career high of 43 set Feb. 22, 2008, against Chicago, and left to a standing ovation with 2:28 left.

"J.R. was pretty good. Pretty efficient. He was a nice horse," Nuggets coach George Karl said. "He was a guy you could ride and feel really good about. The efficiency is something that doesn't come every night. Tonight, maybe one or two shots (were bad), but when you're in that rhythm you're allowed that."

Andersen gave Denver a boost off the bench. He had three blocks and 12 points in the second half to help the Nuggets keep a comfortable lead.

"At first we came out real slow but everybody started getting into rhythm," he said. "In the second half we started picking it up a lot."

Antawn Jamison had 27 points and Nick Young scored 20 for the depleted Wizards, who have lost three straight and five of their last six. Injuries to Juan Dixon and Caron Butler left Washington with only nine players available.

"We're used to it by now," Jamison said of the injuries. "The difficult part is not having Juan Dixon able to play and Darius Songaila is really banged up. So we might be shorter than what we are. Nobody will feel sorry for us. We have to play through it. We have a lot of practice at this."

Washington coach Ed Tapscott said Denver's play was more of a factor than his short bench.

"It was more the aggressiveness of the Nuggets came into play," he said. "They scored too many fastbreak points. Thirty fastbreak points, and that was my point of emphasis, to limit their number of fastbreak points."

The Nuggets increased their lead in the Northwest Division to 1 games over idle Portland. Utah moved into a tie for second with Portland with its win over Memphis on Friday.

Karl thinks his team could strengthen its hold on the division with a couple of wins on the upcoming three-game road trip.

"If we go out and win two out of three, which I think we're capable of, it puts us in a position to have an incredible season," he said.