By Dave McMenamin
ESPN Los Angeles
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LOS ANGELES -- There were 15 seconds left, Denver was holding a two-point lead and George Karl's mind wandered back two years to the Nuggets' loss to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

"I thought about it with the inbounds play," the Nuggets coach said.

Danilo Gallinari was able to get the ball in from out of bounds this time around, successfully making the pass from the sidelines that Anthony Carter couldn't complete in Game 1 back in 2009 and Kenyon Martin couldn't pull off in Game 3, and Denver held on for a stirring 95-90 win Sunday.

Gallinari wasn't on Denver in 2009 and Trevor Ariza isn't on Los Angeles in 2011. But the fact that the Nuggets gained the guy to make the pass and the Lakers lost the guy to make the steal is just the tucking back of the ears in the major face-lift the Lakers-Nuggets matchup has undergone.

When Carmelo Anthony, who averaged 27.5 points per game in the conference finals against L.A., was traded it seemed like basketball fans had lost one of the more entertaining rivalries over the past several seasons. It turns out it might have changed for the better.

Denver has now won 15 of 19, staying right there with the Lakers (who have won 17 of 19) as the hottest team in the league post All-Star break, adding L.A. to the pile of pelts it's already collected from San Antonio and Boston in the last six weeks. Maybe the better term for post All-Star break is post "The Melo Situation," as Karl described the four months of will-he or won't-he that the team went through this season before sending Anthony to New York on Feb. 22.

If the Lakers are able to catch the Spurs for the No. 1 seed in the West (they're 2½ games back with six to play including one against San Antonio) and the Nuggets are able to stick as the No. 5 seed and knock off the No. 4-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round, L.A. would have an out-of-nowhere rematch with Denver on its hands.

"They're a versatile team," said Pau Gasol. He finished with 16 points and 12 rebounds, but was reminded by a hard foul by Nene in the third quarter that as different as the Nuggets have become, they still have that nasty streak. "They have a lot of guys that can contribute in different ways and they share the ball. They have a lot of guys that can score 10-plus points and they do that well. They're a dangerous team."

Four players scored 12 points or more for Denver, led by Gallinari with 22, as the team that leads the league in scoring at 107.5 points per game proved once again that you don't need one guy to do all the damage. Gallinari, who paces the Nuggets with 15.8 points per game, doesn't even rank in the top 50 in the NBA in scoring average.

"You look at their lineup; they essentially have two starting fives," said Kobe Bryant, who scored 28 points but needed 27 shots to get there, going 10-for-27 from the field. "That second group that comes off the bench, that's a legitimate starting five in this league ... They're just deeper. They're deeper. That's really all there is to it."

That depth was apparent Sunday as Arron Afflalo, perhaps Denver's most consistent player on both sides of the ball, sat with a strained hamstring. The Nuggets didn't just miss his 12.6 points-per-game average, but he's also "kind of been their guy" to guard Bryant, according to Karl.

They stuck Wilson Chandler on Bryant instead and Karl said his defense on Bryant was "as good as we can get."

If you're going to even think about beating L.A., you better have a couple players who are up to the challenge of containing Kobe. Denver was also missing Chris Andersen, who was out with a sprained right ankle. He always manages to pester the Lakers' bigs, but the Nuggets' stacked lineup showed again as Timofey Mozgov threw his 7-1, 260-pound body around in 15 active minutes off the bench to collect five points and six rebounds in the Birdman's place.

Even though Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, "What [the Nuggets] do, I don't think there's anything that difficult for us that we shouldn't have been able to handle," Denver has the pieces to puzzle L.A.

There's the trio of speedsters in Ty Lawson, J.R. Smith and Raymond Felton that could give the Lakers' transition D trouble the way that Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant & Co. on the Thunder did last spring. The three helped force 20 Lakers turnovers Sunday.

And there's the big bodies in Kenyon Martin, Nene, Andersen and Mozgov to offer some resistance against the Lakers' length and athleticism in the paint. Martin had 18 points and eight rebounds Sunday, including a game-clinching putback to put Denver up by five with 11 seconds left that came from him pushing Lamar Odom out of the way to board a missed free throw.

"That's a foul," said Jackson. "He just steamrolled Lamar underneath."

Maybe it was, but the bigger picture is that Martin played physical enough to make something happen against the Lakers' superior size.

Denver shot just 29.5 percent and trailed by seven at halftime to a Lakers team that came in riding a season-high nine-game winning streak. Rather than pack it in, the Nuggets rallied.

"The stage that we played tonight is a prelim to the playoffs," Karl said. "I just think there's a mental toughness to the team that no one knows ... I feel that we're going to be fine in that area when it comes to playoff basketball."

Karl was asked if he'd relish a chance at playing the Lakers in the postseason again.

"Why not? [With] my team right now it's, 'What are we going to become?'"

What they already are is a potential second-round scare waiting for L.A.

Dave McMenamin covers the Lakers for ESPNLosAngeles.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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