The Denver Nuggets had some sparks on Thursday night but not enough of them. The Philadelphia 76ers blew out their fuse in a 103-89 win without their superstar Joel Embiid.
Nikola Jokic finished the night with 30 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists, just an ordinary day for the Joker. Will Barton added 19 points, nine rebounds and eight assists on 50 percent shooting from the field. Barton had missed two straight games prior dealing with lower back pain but logged 34 minutes in his return.
“I feel pretty good,” Barton said. “Me and coach (Michael Malone), we talked before the game and I told him don’t worry about it just play me as the game needs me. If I’m playing well and you need me to keep going play me. Just play me how you were going to play me before. Don’t think about me being injured or coming back from an injury. Once I’m out there, I’m out there. No excuses.”
Denver got off to a hot start to open the first quarter as Barton connected on a 3-pointer. Jokic helped give Denver an early 11-4 lead after a monster dunk. Barton added seven quick points but Philly’s rising star Tyrese Maxey scored six straight to steal the lead. Sixers went up 24-23 to close the first quarter.
Philly opened the second quarter on a 17-2 run fueled by the bench unit with Shake Milton and Charles Bassey who both finished the night with 12 points. The 76ers bench out scored the Nuggets bench 19-3 with just under seven minutes left to go in the first half. Denver trailed by as much as 17 points but then went on a 23-12 run to get within six to close the quarter thanks to Jokic and Barton. Sixers had a 58-52 lead at halftime.
Third quarter, the Sixers were relentless on both ends of the floor and perhaps weren’t getting the same treatment from the officials or at least that’s what it seemed like for Nuggets head coach Michael Malone who charged onto the court to confront the refs aggressively enough that Jokic had to restrain him. He then got ejected from the game with just over six minutes left in the third, which was probably the most exciting part of the Nuggets game.
“I wasn’t trying to get tossed but I just didn’t understand a lot of the things that were going on out on the floor,” Malone said. “I feel like I left David (Adelman) in a tough spot tonight but we’ll bounce back because we have to. We have no other choice.”
Malone said that sometimes he purposely gets technical fouls to motivate his guys to play harder. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and on Thursday night, it definitely didn’t.
“When I get a tech it’s usually pretty planned,” Malone said. “At that first technical foul I wasn’t trying to. I was trying to make my point that I thought there was an offensive foul and I guess he got a little taken aback by that. Sometimes especially in a game like tonight where every huddle you’re imploring guys, you’re begging guys to fight, to turn the tide. They’re the aggressors. They have us on our heels right now. We got to hit them and it was one of those nights where it never took hold and obviously sometimes when you stand up for your players or when I show I’m still fighting sometimes that has a positive reaction but that wasn’t the case tonight.”
After that, the Nuggets went over three minutes without a bucket and the bench unit didn’t provide much help either. They only scored five points in the third while the Sixers bench scored 20. Philly took an 87-69 lead to close the quarter.
“It was a tough game for us,” Jokic said. “They were really aggressive. They scored. They defended. We didn’t. We couldn’t score.”
Not much changed in the fourth quarter. There were moments of a potential turnaround for Denver but every time they tried climbing back, Philly responded twice as hard. Maxey kept going off and he finished the night with 22 points on 9-of-15 shooting from the field. Seth Curry added 20 points, six rebounds and five assists and Tobias Harris had 17 points and seven rebounds. It was an all around impressive performance by a shorthanded Sixers team as they snapped their five-game skid to win it 103-89.
The Sixers held Jokic to just three points in the second half. He left the game at the four-minute mark of the fourth quarter to go check on his coach according to both him and Malone.
“It was just one of those nights,” Jokic said. “Some nights I don’t score in the first half. Some nights I score in the second half. [Andre] Drummond was playing really good defense.”
This was the first game at Ball Arena this season where the Nuggets allowed 100 or more points.
While Thursday night’s game was not on par with the Nuggets brand of basketball, they look to turn things around on Friday night when they face the Chicago Bulls on the second night of a back-to-back. The Bulls are currently third in the East while the Nuggets have dropped to sixth in the West.
