After the Denver Nuggets defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Pepsi Center on Thursday night, a common theme started to develop. This Nuggets team is winning games that they likely would have lost last year.
“That was a hell of a win, man. We had a hard time beating that team last year and we all know that,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said with a smile on his face after defeating the Thunder 102-94. “To pull a close game out against a talented team — they’re struggling right now but a very talented team — is just one of those wins that, again, I do not know if we win that game last year.”
This same sentiment was reiterated by Denver’s third-year shooting guard Gary Harris: “This is the type of game that we lose last year but we are getting better each day with the chemistry,” Harris explained in the Nuggets’ locker room. “Paul (Millsap) has been huge for us. The bench has been huge for us. It was just a total team effort.”
After Harris spoke, it started to sound like there was an echo in the Nuggets’ locker room as Will Barton also added his thoughts to the idea that Denver is starting to secure wins in games that they would have lost a year prior.
“I feel like we dropped a lot of those games last year,” Barton said. “This year, it’s a different vibe, it’s a different energy. I don’t feel like we’re ever going to lose those types of games right now.”
It has been incredible how the combination of this young Nuggets roster being another year more mature and the arrival of the veteran Millsap — who has been everywhere and done everything — has suddenly turned the Nuggets from a team that was ‘young-and-upcoming’ into a legitimate playoff contender in seemingly a blink of an eye. “I think we are growing up, we are maturing, and we are getting better by the day,” Malone said.
“We’re growing up. It’s just a different feeling,” Barton explained. “I feel like guys just want to win. I feel everyone’s sacrificing for the team, and hopefully, we keep it up.”
“As a group, we are getting better. I like this team, to be honest,” Nikola Jokic said after the Nuggets’ win. “As a team, we played really good and we go out like a team in that second half and we win.”
An additional year of NBA experience has accelerated the development of Denver’s young core, but that is not the only reason for the sudden maturation of the team. All of the shortcomings that the Nuggets endured late in games during the 2016-17 NBA season has helped the Nuggets learn how to execute and perform in crunch time.
“That is part of it,” Harris said, when asked if the extra experience in close games is what has allowed Denver to begin winning games that they likely would have not won last season. “We played in a lot of close games — a lot of young guys playing in close games — last year that we really were not used to playing in. Just having that experience coming into this year has helped us get more prepared.”
It seems that early in this NBA season this Nuggets team is building confidence at a rapid pace; a pace that should scare the rest of the league. Denver is starting to realize that if they trust each other and continue to work at being great, they could become a formidable and even ferocious team.
“I sense a confidence growing with this team,” Malone said. “I don’t know if you guys can sense it, but I sense it in the locker room — on the bench; watching guys on the court — that there is a confidence growing within this group that they are starting to believe; not that we can be a good team, but we can be a really good team.”
The Nuggets are not there yet. They are still barely scratching the surface of how great they could be. They are still ironing out the wrinkles of adding three new players into the starting lineup. The offense still looks more clunky than fluid at this point in the season. The new, aggressive philosophy on defense is still being integrated and is still work in progress. All of these issues were on display against the Thunder, but Malone challenged his team to step up to the plate and battle.
“I got on them at halftime, man. I did not like the fact that [Oklahoma City] dominated the glass. They got three offensive rebounds on free throws, they had 21 points on the glass at halftime. That is ridiculous,” Malone explained. “I challenged our guys to bring the fight to them and have a hit-first mentality — and [in] the second half, we only gave up five offensive rebounds for five points. That was the story of the game, because in the first half, we had no answer for them on the glass. We allowed them to push us around, and in the second half, I think you saw a much different effort and physicality from our end.”
The Nuggets took Malone’s challenge to heart.
After getting beat on the boards by the Thunder in the first half in embarrassing fashion, the Nuggets came out in the second half and gobbled up 24 total rebounds to Oklahoma City’s 17 and they were able to outscore the Thunder 11-5 in second-chance points in the second half after allowing the Thunder to score 21 points on second-chance opportunities in the first half. The Nuggets did exactly what their head coach wanted them to do: execute the game plan.
“We executed and we got stops,” Harris explained. “We knew that was what it was going to come down to getting stops, not turning the ball over and execute on the offensive end — and that is exactly what we did.”
Eventually, Denver was able to secure the hard-fought victory over the division-rival Thunder; a squad the featured three of the best players the NBA has to offer in Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, and Paul George. It did not matter. The Nuggets out-worked and ground the Thunder down to secure their seventh win of the season.
“This is a division opponent that stacked up this summer. We were not afraid of the fight tonight and we were able to close the game out,” Malone said at his postgame press conference. “We will see them three more times, and I expect three more really, really tough, contested games.”
There was much to be taken from this game, but there is really only one true theme. “Last year, we couldn’t beat this team — and tonight we beat them,” Malone said.
“We won,” Harris said. “That is what happened. We won today.”
