Here’s what JR Smith had to say about George Karl’s announcement tonight:

Love coach Karl he will be fine everyone keep him in your prayers!

For Nuggets fans who somehow missed it, George Karl announced tonight that he will be taking a leave of absence from the Nuggets while he is treated for neck and throat cancer. For the next six weeks, he will be undergoing a series of aggressive treatments, although he noted that the doctors have told him that they believe the cancer is treatable.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Karl and his family. Here’s hoping he responds well to the treatment.

More here.

The Nuggets didn’t like their performance in the last playoff game in New Orleans, and they proved the point tonight with a big win. A really big win. In fact, it was the biggest win in a playoff game since 1956. The Nuggets beat the Hornets 121-63, a record-tying effort that matched a playoff game more than five decades old.

The Nuggets didn’t see much of their starters in the last period of the game and, aside from a few easy threes, worked more to eat up time than they did to score points through that stretch.

The Nuggets were fabulous tonight, but they were helped along by a Hornets team that grew lethargic as the game went on. You’d be hard pressed to say that the home crowd got their money’s worth in that last period with a New Orleans team that was hardly even trying. Given how scrappy they were early, how aggressive they were through the first half, I’m sure it was a disappointing end of the game for their home fans.

Basketball doesn’t get much uglier, but it was fun for Nuggets fans to see the team claim a 3-1 lead in the series. It’s even better when folks realize that the Nuggets are flirting with progressing to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in over a decade.

But here’s the really funny bit: when I went to my Yahoo page to check the box score with something like five and a half minutes left in the game, they had already listed the score as a final. When I clicked form my page to the box score a few minutes later, they updated the score but still had it listed as a final. Apparently, while the NBA doesn’t have a mercy rule, the Yahoo sports page does.

Ouch.

I wouldn’t count on seeing the Hornets quitting in Denver for game five the same way they did tonight. In fact, I’m guessing they’ll play a vigorous and aggressive game just to reclaim a shred of dignity, because this game absolutely had to hurt.

Congratulations to the Nuggets on a big win where the entire team played brilliantly.

The only reason to care about Ashley Biden’s snorting episode (if, indeed, it did happen) is because she didn’t see fit to share with the rest of us.

Bitch.

Aside from that, I’m pretty sure we have some more meaningful issues to discuss right now. Like my sadness about Duke’s early exit from the NCAA tournament, my patriotic fervor (as in, dissent is...), and the potential meanings of North Korea’s long range missile launch.

Compared to all of that, the overstimulated nostrils of one young woman can’t really be all that meaningful, can they?

In case you were wondering (and I know you were), my strategy of incredible ignorance, trusting the rankings, respect for tradition, and inexplicable whimsy has worked out pretty well for me in the brackets.

Amazing.

I fully expect the second round to expose me as a pretender, though.