The Nuggets needed a face-saving rally to avoid slogging into the postseason on a three-game losing streak.
A loss to Minnesota, which had nothing to play for and rested numerous rotation players – including their star – would’ve been quite the sour note to begin their postseason journey.
Instead, the Nuggets reeled off an improbable 15-0 rally over the final 4:01 of Wednesday’s season finale to secure the No. 2 seed and settle at 54 wins, tying the second-most ever in Denver’s NBA history.
As noteworthy as their regular season success was, there will be no such luxury against San Antonio, no margin for error against a team as steadfast as the Spurs.
“Gregg Popovich has five rings,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone quipped. “I have a wedding ring.”
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It took the Nuggets 44 minutes of a 48-minute game to realize what was at stake. Not that they knew it, but as Denver was rallying, Portland was also doing its part against Sacramento. The Trail Blazers’ win earned them the No. 3 seed – a potentially massive development for the Nuggets’ aspirations.
But all the machinations of playoff jockeying won’t matter if the Nuggets play like they did for the vast majority of the game Wednesday night. And against the Spurs, who’ve now made the postseason 22 consecutive times, they’ll have no chance of reenacting anything close to the comeback they did against the downtrodden Timberwolves.
“We realized in the first quarter, we’re not going to win the game like this,” Murray said. “Second quarter, they were still hitting, we realized we’re not going to win the game like this.”
Why’d it take so long, Denver’s blossoming point guard was asked.
“That’s just our growth,” he said. “We’ve gotta play for 48 minutes and change the energy.”
The Spurs, who split the season series with the Nuggets 2-2, are a model of resiliency and poise. They lost their starting point guard, Dejounte Murray, to a torn ACL in October and replaced him with Colorado product Derrick White. The Spurs then went on to average the fewest turnovers (12.1) in the NBA this season. They also were the most efficient 3-point shooters in the league, connecting on over 39 percent of their long range attempts.
“It’s going to test us,” Murray said. “Disciplined team.”
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San Antonio won four of its last five games to end the year, their last loss coming at the Pepsi Center after Popovich, perhaps strategically, got ejected 63 seconds into the game. The Nuggets won 113-85, but you couldn’t help but think there was something behind Popovich’s short fuse.
“(Thursday) will be a mental day, we’ll bring them in,” Malone said. “We’ll talk about kind of the themes about who we’re playing. The keys, offensively and defensively. We’ll talk about their plays, matchups, coverages, all that kind of stuff. We know them, they know us, we just played them. Then you get after it. Then it’s a chess match.”
Will Barton, whose 3-pointer from the corner jumpstarted the Nuggets’ rally, said the next few days are about addressing their state of mind and ensuring the mental lapses that happened Wednesday don’t crop up when it matters.
“Our mentality,” Barton said. “We just gotta go in there with that, it’s a war. It’s going to be an all-out brawl. Every minute, every second, every quarter, it’s going to be a fight. Every game. And we gotta be ready to have that mentality from the beginning. We can’t wait like we do sometimes in the regular season, like we did a little bit tonight.”
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