Team makes a sweeping statement with victory

DENVER -- Big bristly brooms were everywhere in these NBA playoffs, giant kitchen cleaners such as Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.

But Monday with the little ol’ Lakers was the first time anybody has used the word sweep.

Tough guys were everywhere this NBA spring, hammers such as David West and Carlos Boozer

But Monday with the nice ‘n’ easy Lakers was the first time anybody has used the word crush.

Granted, they didn’t require much more than a pulse until the final hour of the final game.

But nowhere in the NBA today does that pulse beat harder than underneath barely sweaty, slightly torn gold jerseys that brushed quickly through their first mountain.

What the San Antonio Spurs couldn’t do, what the Boston Celtics didn’t come close to doing, the Lakers have done, sweeping their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets on Monday with a 107-101 victory in Game 4 at the Pepsi Center.

After which I asked the Nuggets’ Allen Iverson a question that today permeates not only the Los Angeles basin, but the NBA landscape.

Just how good are those Lakers?

He looked at me scornfully, then laughed.

“We just got swept by them!” he said. “I don’t know what kind of question that is.”

It was one he had just answered, then and throughout a series the Lakers dominated until the final quarter Monday.

It is a question that will probably not be answered more clearly until the next round, when the Lakers will probably play a Utah Jazz team that is the exact opposite of the Nuggets.

We know the Lakers can beat a loosely coached, barely attentive flyweight.

How will they do against a strictly controlled, consistently punching heavyweight?

“We’ve got to be proud, we’ve got to be happy . . . but we’ve got to move on,” said Pau Gasol, who averaged 22 points and nine rebounds in this series, but will probably be more seriously challenged next week by the likes of Boozer.

Coach Phil Jackson was quick to agree.

“We’ll have to be a better team,” he said.

Against a Nuggets team that played like Carmelo Anthony’s constant expression -- a carefree, apathetic smile -- the Lakers only needed to be better in the fourth quarter, after the briefly energized Nuggets had taken a 96-95 lead with 3:23 remaining.

What happened next?

“We collected ourselves,” Kobe Bryant said.

That is one way of putting it.

Another way of putting it is, crash, bang, boom.

With the Nuggets leading by one, Bryant ran down and hit a jumper over Kenyon Martin.

Derek Fisher then knocked the ball out of the hands of Carmelo Anthony, and it ended up in the hands of Luke Walton, standing alone in the corner behind the three-point line, the Nuggets benchwarmers screaming at his back.

He threw up a looping shot.

“I thought, ‘That feels good,’ ” Walton said.

The ball then swished through the net to give the Lakers a four-point lead they never lost.

“When it went in I thought, ‘That feels even better,’ ” Walton said.

What feels good for the Lakers is that Walton, after struggling most of the season, averaged 14 points and five rebounds in this series. If he can do that the rest of the spring, their championship hopes soar.

“The energy on this team in this series stayed high because we play as a team, everyone involved,” Derek Fisher said.

What feels even better for the Lakers is that Bryant is even outdoing his MVP regular season by simply taking over fourth quarters.

He did it in Game 2 and he did it Monday, rebounding from a disjointed third quarter to score 14 in the final quarter, missing only two of seven shots.

“He wants it bad,” said Walton of Bryant. “We just follow his lead.”

As hard as Bryant played, with the exception of that furious final quarter, the Lakers can hardly use these four games as a predictor of their future playoff toughness.

But you know something?

It matters to them.

It matters to them that, in one this most competitive of NBA seasons, nobody was able to roll their first-round opponent like this.

It matters to them that in, in one of the most difficult conference races in NBA history, they are the only West team that has whupped.

“To sweep is huge,” Walton said. “It shows a lot of mental toughness. It showed we can set challenges and rise to those challenges.”

Some of us may still want to see more, but the Lakers have seen enough.

“This was a good opportunity for us to grow as a team,” Fisher said.

Gasol, who was 0-12 in playoff games before this series, had a different take.

“There’s a big difference between getting swept and sweeping,” he said with a grin.

In the beginning, the Nuggets acted, as usual, as if none of it mattered.

The game began, as all Nuggets games in the Pepsi Center begin, with a scoreboard sign.

“No one sits until the Nuggets score.”

Those poor people.

The Nuggets couldn’t score.

Nearly four clock minutes into the game, nearly everyone in the arena was still standing, their will obviously stronger than the players they were watching.

Finally, with 8:45 left in the first quarter, Anthony sank a free throw to give the Nuggets one point and their fans a rest.

“We don’t have to sit down!” shouted the public-address announcer. “We can stand for victory!”

At which point, thousands of fans sat down.

It was that kind of start, that kind of game, that kind of series.

The children’s table cleared, it is now time for the Lakers to venture to the adult table probably found in Salt Lake City.

The eating will be more difficult.

The appetite, however, is unquestioned.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.