BOSTON — The impetus for the biggest win of the season started on the heels of a loss.
One by one, as the Denver Nuggets trudged to the team buses on an extremely cold Tuesday night in Philadelphia, the thought came almost in unison. They had given one away in the last five minutes against the 76ers. They had turned the ball over too much. They hadn’t made shots when it counted. They had failed to get a handle on Joel Embiid. And a game that was there for the taking slipped away.
They didn’t let that repeat itself in a week that included the tragic and sudden passing of Golden State Warriors assistant Dejan Milojević, who coached Nuggets star center Nikola Jokić in Serbia. The past few days haven’t been easy. Milojević was beloved throughout the league by coaches and players. Jokić has been grief-stricken and hasn’t felt like speaking to the media.
“The last couple of days, we’ve just been supporting him, comforting him, giving him a hug,” Denver coach Michael Malone said after a 102-100 win over the Boston Celtics on Friday night. “As I mentioned to our team, I could not be more proud of Nikola for playing the way he played. You lose somebody that you love and you care about, you go honor him. And that’s what Nikola did.”
The Nuggets (29-14) became the first team this season to hand the Celtics (32-10) a loss at TD Garden. Boston’s 20-0 streak was something the Nuggets had talked about on the plane to Boston, and at the tail end of their practice in a dank gym at Emerson College, and again Friday morning. Snapping it was something they fought valiantly for between the lines.
More importantly, in what was perhaps an NBA Finals preview, the Nuggets established a blueprint on how to deal with Boston’s five-out offense and the volume of 3-pointers it produces. Denver turned up the physicality and cross-matched. Malone assigned Jokić to Jrue Holiday and Michael Porter Jr. to Kristaps Porziņģis, in an effort to stay home on the big man’s shooting. Malone mirrored Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with star forward Jayson Tatum so that Tatum couldn’t feast on Denver’s second unit. Malone played Aaron Gordon the entire second half and played just seven guys in the second half.
This roster knows what it takes to win. The Nuggets drank champagne in June. They hoisted a banner in October. They flashed rocks on their fingers on ring night. And for a team that wants more, this was one of those nights in the mundane days of January that doesn’t come around often. Friday night was a measuring-stick game, when a team seeking another title could size up the prime competition for that goal.
“We pushed all of our chips into the middle of the table,” Malone said. “And we were lucky enough to come away with the outcome that we desired.”
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Did the Nuggets again establish themselves as title favorites? It’s tough to argue otherwise. Their balance, the symmetry of their starting lineup, the understanding of what needs to be done from possession to possession is unmatched in the league. For as talented and as deep and as experienced as the Celtics are, the Nuggets had more answers down the stretch on both ends of the floor.
Jokić went for 34 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists. He did it on 14-of-22 shooting from the field in 38 exhausting minutes, while chasing the Celtics around the perimeter defensively. In an NBA chock full of talent and depth, Jokić still stands on top of the mountain. And in front of a hostile sellout crowd, his bag of floaters and jumpers and footwork in the paint silenced that crowd repeatedly.
Jamal Murray was almost as good, scoring 35 points on an assortment of jumpers and twisting finishes in the paint and at the basket. He grabbed eight rebounds and handed out five assists. He cooked almost whoever Boston tried on him and carried the offense in the minutes Jokić sat on the bench. And on the final possession, the Nuggets forced Tatum into a miss that clinched their biggest win of the season.
“Both teams were throwing haymakers, and we were able to throw the final punch,” Murray said. “We mixed it up, and they did the same for a couple of stretches. It was a technical game. It was a game where everybody had to be on the same page. Each time out, there was something different. There were different defenses almost every possession. It was just one of those games where you had to figure it out.”
Afterward, Gordon sat at his locker, wrapped in ice, almost like a mummy. Jokić sat at his stall for almost an hour, soaked in ice. The Nuggets aren’t as deep as they were last season, and that bears watching as it gets closer to the postseason, but that doesn’t keep them from being a favorite for the championship.
Malone trusted seven guys almost exclusively in a matchup he coached like a playoff game. There were eight last season. The most notable omission was Christian Braun, who’s been a valued reserve this season. He played just five minutes Friday, and with him on the floor, the Celtics were able to throw hard double-teams at Jokić. For the night, Jokić and Murray scored or assisted on 89 of the 102 points, and even if that’s sustainable, other than a late game flurry from Porter, the Nuggets weren’t as balanced as they want or need to be.
But they’re still every bit as formidable as they were last season in that march to a title. The collective chip on their shoulder hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it’s bigger. And the ability to play at an elite level when needed is as omnipresent as ever.
That means the road to a championship still goes through Denver. And good luck to the rest of the NBA trying to wrest a title away from a team as good as this one, a mile above sea level.
(Photo: Brian Babineau / NBAE via Getty Images)