The Nuggets returned from the All-Star break Thursday night with a 115-114 loss to the Clippers at Intuit Dome, falling to 35-21 this season. They’ve lost five of their last seven games going into a back-to-back Friday at Portland.
Clutch nightmare
The Nuggets are not the same team they once were in clutch time. The last minute in Los Angeles was littered with more errors as a game they led by as many as 10 slipped through their fingers.
Benedict Mathurin drew a foul and knocked down both free throws to give Los Angeles the lead with 36 seconds left. That was enough time for David Adelman to call a timeout, wanting to go 2-for-1 to get a quick game-tying bucket while leaving enough time to get the ball back. Nikola Jokic plowed into the paint, but Brook Lopez stopped him at the rim.
Still, enough time remained for Denver to defend out the next possession instead of fouling. But Tim Hardaway Jr. intentionally fouled Derrick Jones Jr. anyway, a lapse that he appeared to immediately regret. Jones made his free throws for a four-point lead.
The Nuggets also left Lopez alone in the frontcourt on a Los Angeles sideline inbound play, leading to an easy dunk that pushed the deficit back to four with 13 seconds to go. Jamal Murray answered with a quick 3-pointer, but it all built up to the icing on the cake with 0.9 remaining on the clock. For the third time in the last three weeks, Murray drew a foul on a potential game-tying 3-point attempt before the buzzer. For the third time, he missed one of the free throws — this time, the last one that would’ve forced overtime.
Joker’s lousy birthday
With his perennially irritated right wrist wrapped up, Jokic struggled with shooting touch on his 31st birthday. More alarmingly, his recent trend of sloppy turnovers carried over to the other side of the All-Star break.
Jokic committed another six in Los Angeles, bringing his total to 22 in the last three games. He has 67 assists and 37 turnovers (a 1.81 ratio) in eight games since returning from a bruised knee. Those mistakes have felt accentuated by the fact that Denver avoided turnovers better than any team in the NBA during Jokic’s 16 games on the sideline.
The Nuggets’ offense stalled at the end of his stints. They went the last 3 minutes, 43 seconds of the first quarter without scoring in what eventually snowballed to a six-minute drought after Jokic subbed out. Then in the third stanza, they made only one shot from the field in the last 4:52. Both times, the Clippers capitalized by erasing deficits of nine or more points.
Defense, role players keep Nuggets alive
How do you even stay in a game when Jokic and Jamal Murray combine for a 14-for-37 shooting night? Make life difficult for the opposing superstar, for starters. Kawhi Leonard has been as automatic as ever as a scorer this season, but after a surprise fire sale at the trade deadline by Los Angeles, Denver was able to be a bit more singularly focused with its defensive scheme. No more James Harden pick-and-roll wizardry. No more Ivica Zubac post-up offense.
Denver blitzed Leonard on ball screens, fronted him and tried to find other creative ways to deny him the ball. He needed 18 shot attempts to accumulate his 23 points, while the role players around him couldn’t make a 3-pointer behind Denver’s double-teams for most of the night. Instead, Mathurin gave the Clippers a jolt off the bench with 38 points in his home debut for his new team.
Julian Strawther and Bruce Brown gave Jokic a generous birthday present, keeping Denver’s offense in the game when nobody else could. Brown, whose all-around play has improved in recent weeks, went for 19 points, five rebounds and six assists off the bench. Strawther kept his starting job after a strong finish before the break and added 18 points, shooting 6 of 11 from deep.