At home, the Nuggets have won 16 in a row (including six in the playoffs) since losing to Houston on March 9, and 19-of-20 (including a 90-79 victory over the Lakers) during a 78-day span.

In the 10-year history of the Staples Center, the Nuggets haven't been so good in L.A.

They have a 2-17 record in the regular season and are 0-2 in the postseason against the Lakers at the office supply store arena.

But that's not quite all. The Nuggets also have to play in downtown Los Angeles against the Clippers - and have won only 7-of-19 regular-season games and 0-of-3 playoff games.

The Nuggets are 9-41 there

overall. They have been Staples-

gunned.

Thanks, Phil Anschutz.

Anschutz, the Denver multi-

tasker, built (not by hand, but by wallet) the Staples Center. The Lakers, Jack Nicholson and the Clippers moved in.

This gets even better.

Anschutz owned the land on which The Can was constructed.

One degree of separation: An-

schutz is a minority owner of the Lakers with Jerry Buss. An earlier Lakers ownership partner was the late Bill Daniels, who lived in Denver and also once owned the ABA team in Salt Lake City.

Anschutz is heavily involved in Major League Soccer, as is Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke. An-

schutz sold Kroenke the Rapids. Kroenke owns The Can.

And the man behind the throne is Tim Leiweke. As the president of the Nuggets and the Avalanche, Leiweke was instrumental in the push for a new, privately financed Denver arena. He then joined Anschutz and headed the drive for the privately financed arena in Los Angeles. Leiweke is now CEO of the Anschutz Entertainment Group and president of the Staples Center.

Both arenas opened in 1999.

Leiweke modeled them after The Pond in Anaheim.

Kroenke and Anschutz have owned expansive ranches in Wyoming. Buss received his undergraduate degree at the University of Wyoming. Anschutz got his first major oil break in Wyoming. Kroenke has a mansion in the L.A. area and a penthouse above The Can. Anschutz lives a few miles away in Denver. Buss bought and sold PickFair, the fabled estate of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in Beverly Hills.

Isn't that stuff weird?

Sports franchise owners, F. Scott Fitzgerald would write, are different from me and you.

But owners and landlords don't win or lose NBA playoff series, do they, Mark Cuban?

Arenas are just concrete and brick, and they don't win series, either. The people inside - players, coaches and the fans - make the difference.

"Now we have one of the top five (vocal) crowds in the NBA," George Karl said last week in Dallas. (Nicholson was last seen on Sunday afternoon waving at the crowd to get up and cheer. He finally sat down. Nicholson plays the role of "Rocky" the mascot.)

And the Nuggets now are one of the top four teams in the league.

They must solve the Lakers and the Curse of L.A., though, while holding serve at home.

Since joining the NBA in 1976, the Nuggets and the Lakers have played 154 regular- season and postseason games. The Nuggets have lost 106 - including 13-of-15 in the playoffs. The Nuggets lost a best-of-three miniseries 2-1 in 1979, the best-of-seven Western Conference finals 4-1 in 1985, a best-of-five first-round series 3-0 in 1987 and a best-of-seven first-round series 4-0 last season. (The Nuggets also lost a first-round series 4-1 to the Clippers in 2006.)

The Nuggets are zilch for the playoffs in the Staples Center.

Tear it down, Phil, or tear it up, Nugs.

The last time the Nuggets won a postseason game in Los Angeles (at the old Forum), in 1985, J.R. Smith and Johan Petro were months from being born in New Jersey and France.

The Nuggets stunned the Lakers 136-114 in Los Angeles on May 14, 1985.

In 1979 the Nuggets won the opener of the mini-me set, 110-105, at old Big Mac. Chauncey Billups was 2.

Dan Issel played in both victories. Adrian Dantley, a Nuggets assistant, played with

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the Lakers in 1979.

However, I believe I am

the only person in Denver to have witnessed all 15 playoff games between the Nuggets and the Lakers. (I got pneumonia the night of one when it snowed.) I am 2-13. That's the fact, Jack.

If the Nuggets' playoff record against the Lakers and the Clippers isn't daunting enough, the old ABA Rockets lost to the Los Angeles Stars 4-1 in the Western Conference finals of 1970. The Rockets lost two in L.A.

But these are not your grandfather's Nuggets and Rockets, nor the Nuggets of my youth.

They Can do, but they will have to do Staples too.

Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com