OKLAHOMA CITY — In the first half of Monday night’s Game 1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, David Adelman glanced toward the opposite sideline and saw OKC running players to the scorer’s table at almost every dead ball. The Denver Nuggets went on to win the series opener of a Western Conference semifinals matchup. But that image was an indelible one to Adelman, Denver’s interim head coach.
“Wow. They have a lot of guys,” Adelman recalls thinking.
It underscores the challenge the Nuggets are facing. The ragtag and resilient group pulled off the heist of the century with Monday night’s Game 1 win, rallying from almost 15 points down and walking off the game with Aaron Gordon’s miracle 3-pointer. But even with that 1-0 series lead, those challenges remain. And all those challenges presented themselves at once in the 149-106 Game 2 beating the Nuggets took Wednesday night at Paycom Center.
As Adelman has repeatedly said since the start of the series, the Thunder won 68 games during the regular season for good reason. OKC is one of the deepest teams in the NBA, if not the deepest. The Thunder are one of the best defensive teams in the NBA, if not the best. OKC is one of the fastest teams in the league, if not the fastest. Throughout the season, no team in the league has been able to consistently avalanche teams on the scoreboard quite like the Thunder have.
Wednesday, for one night, that avalanche hit the Nuggets, and they were powerless to stop it. Oklahoma City ran up 87 first-half points, an NBA playoff record for points in a half. The Thunder made shots at a blistering pace, shooting 56 percent from the field, 44 percent from 3-point range and 91 percent from the free-throw line as a team. The Thunder forced turnovers and found easy transition baskets. To make matters worse, Oklahoma City was terrific in defending Denver superstar Nikola Jokić, swarming arguably the best player in the world and not allowing him to have anywhere near the impact he had in Game 1.
“We committed too many turnovers, and we made way too many mistakes,” Nikola Jokić said of the Nuggets’ Game 2 loss. (Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)
“We got punked,” Adelman said. “And we allowed ourselves to get punked. We didn’t play well enough at any point, and we have to realize that this is a team that can separate from other teams. There’s a reason this team has a historic plus/minus. We need a better start than that. We need to be better than that. We can say the series is tied 1-1, but we aren’t going to flush that. That’s not what this game was. We’ll have to look at what they did and how we responded, and I would expect a much better effort than that on Friday night.”
Those same issues existed Monday. But Jokić’s dropping 42 points and grabbing 22 rebounds mitigated things and masked a lot of flaws. And the fact the Nuggets completed the unlikely rally with a win makes Wednesday night’s loss a bit more palatable. Denver needs to figure out a lot of things in the 48 hours between games 2 and 3. But at least the Nuggets are tasked with figuring it out with a 1-1 series deadlock in hand.
Even as the series shifts to Ball Arena on Friday night for Game 3, the issues are enormous.
Oklahoma City’s on-ball pressure defense has almost completely erased Nuggets star guard Jamal Murray from the first two games. Yes, Murray has scored some points and made some shots. But Thunder guard Lu Dort has made life miserable for him off the dribble. When a team does that to your point guard, it’s like cutting off the head of the proverbial snake to the rest of the offense. Adelman spoke Tuesday of not allowing the Thunder to speed up the Nuggets. But that’s exactly what OKC did in Game 2. And that’s exactly what the Thunder did in Game 1 until Denver found a way around it. The answer may be to allow one of Denver’s secondary ballhandlers — Aaron Gordon or Christian Braun — to bring the ball up, which would free Murray to come off screens. But whatever happens, the Nuggets know they have to be a lot better than they were in Game 2.
“We know that we have to come out and play more physical, and we have to own our spots offensively,” Nuggets small forward Michael Porter Jr. said. “We didn’t do a good job of that tonight, and that’s one of the reasons the game got away from us. We know that we weren’t good enough, and we know that we are going to have to be better going forward.”
Wednesday night served as an extreme case, but the Nuggets haven’t been immune to this during the postseason. They were pushed around and soundly beaten by the LA Clippers in Game 3 of that series, falling 117-83 at Intuit Dome. The Clippers took a 2-1 series lead that Thursday night, and Denver’s season looked like it was in peril. But the Nuggets rebounded impressively that Saturday, squeezed out a road win in Game 4 that they had to have and went on to win the series in seven games. Some of the traits from that night showed up Wednesday against Oklahoma City, particularly the Nuggets letting go of the rope and giving in to the physicality of the Thunder. It makes Denver’s response in Game 3 an important one. The Nuggets need to fight back, and whether they can do it will go a long way toward shaping the remainder of the series.
Almost to a person, in the moments after the loss, the Nuggets said Friday night starts with matching Oklahoma City’s physicality. It’s clear Denver wasn’t fully prepared to deal with OKC’s pressure. It’s also clear that the Thunder played with a level of desperation that Denver didn’t come close to matching. There was a level of frustration and self-disappointment in Denver’s locker room Wednesday night. The Nuggets know OKC is good enough to win a game in which Denver plays well. But the Nuggets also know they didn’t put together a good showing. It’s why Adelman was forceful in saying the loss wasn’t a game to flush. Denver knows it didn’t play well.
“We committed too many turnovers, and we made way too many mistakes,” Jokić said. “They played much better than us and rebounded the ball much better than us, and that’s why the score was so bad. We have to try and fight for positioning as best as we can, and then we have to live with the results.”
Over the past month, Denver has consistently been able to find an answer to a bad quarter, half or game. Wednesday night was a little bit of both. The Thunder were much more attentive to detail than they were in Game 1. They made more shots. They were terrific on offense and defense. But the Nuggets certainly didn’t cover themselves with glory. They turned the ball over way too much. Jokić was much too passive in the first quarter, when more aggression offensively could have steadied the boat against OKC’s initial blitz. The Nuggets’ role players, particularly Braun and Porter Jr., missed a bunch of open 3-point looks.
Most importantly, Denver’s defense, so good for much of this playoff, regressed to its regular-season form. The defense was passable against Thunder MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Game 1. It was abhorrent against him in Game 2. SGA will consistently find good numbers because he’s such a great offensive talent. But Wednesday night, the Nuggets allowed him to have way too much of an impact. Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points on 11-of-13 shooting. He made all 11 of his free-throw attempts. He got to any spot he wanted, and the Nuggets never deterred him. If Denver wants to win the series, its defense on SGA will have to improve dramatically.
Wednesday night was a stinker for the Nuggets. And it has certainly put the franchise in a bad mood. The question Denver has to answer is what its response will be in Friday night’s Game 3.
(Top photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander moving to the basket among Christian Braun, Russell Westbrook and Aaron Gordon: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)