Since the start of this NBA season, many people have considered the Denver Nuggets to be championship contenders, or at least close to that. That sentiment seemed to grow stronger when they won the majority of their games while superstar center Nikola Jokic was out for 16 games with a knee injury.
But the Nuggets have now lost six of their last nine games, and that slump was punctuated by a 128-117 defeat on Sunday at the hands of a Golden State Warriors team that was without Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green and Jonathan Kuminga. Denver allowed the extremely short-handed Warriors to shoot 51.1% from the field, go 21-of-52 from 3-point range and rack up 42 assists.
Denver’s offense wasn’t able to pick up the slack — it made just eight of its 31 3-point attempts. Afterward, Jokic sounded the alarm about how his team has been playing and admitted to being “concerned.”
“I’m definitely concerned because we are losing the games. We are losing the games and we are not creating open looks. So that’s something that we need to change.
“I don’t know what it is, but we need to figure it out.”
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While Denver is in fourth place in the Western Conference, it now has virtually no real chance of significantly moving up in the standings, as it trails the second-place San Antonio Spurs by 5.5 games. It is just one game ahead of the sixth-place Minnesota Timberwolves, and if it isn’t careful, it could even fall into the play-in tournament range if it suffers a few more inexcusable losses.
As he did last season, Jokic is averaging a triple-double — he’s putting up 28.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 10.5 assists a game. Jamal Murray is averaging a career high 25.5 points and 7.5 assists a game, young two-way wing Peyton Watson has emerged as a legitimate contributor and the team’s bench is the best it has been in a few years.
But while the Nuggets lead the NBA in points per game, offensive rating and 3-point accuracy, they’re 22nd in defensive rating. During this nine-game skid, they have given up 120 points a game, and five of their last seven losses have come by seven points or fewer.
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This is a team that won the NBA championship just three seasons ago and still has several of the key members of that team. But in February, it has hardly shown the heart of a champion, and it has lots of challenging games coming up.
It will host the Boston Celtics on Wednesday before visiting the defending world champion Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday. The Minnesota Timberwolves will come to town on Sunday, and just days later, the Nuggets will go up against the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Thunder, Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and the Lakers again during a six-game stretch.
That stretch will likely go a long way toward making or breaking their hopes of winning another ring this June.
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