Two teams were scheduled to play on Wednesday in Oklahoma City, but only one actually showed up, according to Denver Nuggets star center Nikola Jokic.
“Basically, it was one team playing tonight,” he said. “Even the turnovers, misses, they were aggressive. They were rebounding the ball. They were just better. They were much, much better than us today, and that’s why the score was so bad.”
How bad? One of 10 times in Nuggets franchise history that they have lost by 43 or more points, dropping 149-106. It was the second-worst playoff loss in club history, just behind last year’s 45-point shellacking. The game was responsible for both the most points ever scored in the first half of a playoff — 87 by the Thunder — and tied the most points the Nuggets have allowed in regulation since the miserable but fast-paced Paul Westhead era. They actually allowed 149 earlier this season against the Cavaliers, one of now five times they’ve allowed over 140 this season. Before this year, they had only allowed 140 in a game five times in the last five seasons, and three of those games went to overtime.
The Nuggets loss by 43 points, just misses their worst-ever playoff loss by margin — 45 to Minny in Game 6 last year. It’s the among worst the 10 worst losses in any game in Nuggets history. pic.twitter.com/0dVfwE5Nz3
— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) May 8, 2025
“We got punked and we didn’t play well enough, and they came out with the right intensity, and we didn’t,” Nuggets interim head coach David Adelman said. “I thought we let some open shots early in the game affect how we played defensively. And you know, this is a team that does that, that there’s a reason why they have historic plus minus numbers throughout this season as they put people away. So you’ve got to have a much better start than that. We can’t come out like that, that kind of mentality. I’m not going to, I’m not sitting here tonight talking about the 1-1 (series) thing, not tonight, but we, we’re not going to flush that (game), we’ve got to be better. We know that.”
This is the third time OKC has beaten a team by more than 40 in a game this year, with one of those instances being in the playoffs against Memphis in Round 1. Among the 87 games they played coming into Game 2, they won by 15 or more in nearly half of them (42).
Similar to the Nuggets Game 2 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, where Kawhi Leonard missed just four shots, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was 11-for-13, hitting all 11 of his free throws for 34 points and an all-time NBA playoff best +51 when on the floor. SGA played just 30 minutes, it’s the 20th time he’s done that or fewer this season and his team is 19-1 in those contests because his reduction in time played mostly came when he was sitting in the fourth quarter as his team had already blown out their foe, like during Game 2.
All of this is to say is that the regular season told us that both of these teams can be exactly what they showed us to be on Wednesday. The Thunder are a talented machine, and the Nuggets’ defense can disappear. Maybe it was made all the more extreme by the fact that Denver is coming off a physical seven-game series and has already played twice since advancing on Saturday.
The blowout gave the Nuggets a much-needed chance to rest their guys from late in the third quarter on. But some may question why not even earlier, given the game was basically over in the first half.
“I felt like those guys wanted to go back out there and play. I felt like they needed to find the rhythm of physicality,” Adelman said. “They got to sit the whole fourth quarter. They get to sit tomorrow, all day Friday, and get ready for Friday night. So no, I was not going to, going to sit the guys at halftime. Like, that’s, that’s not what we’re doing here… I walked into the locker room, I knew they wanted to go out and play. It was very obvious. So yeah, I was gonna play those guys regardless. There are a lot of proud people in that room who want to go back out there and compete.”
Both Jokic and Jamal Murray played over 31 minutes, not pulling the plug until Joker fouled out — the first time he’s done that in any game since Game 1 of the 2023 playoffs. This led to some questions about the whistles, which are tough to blame when losing by so much.
“I thought they towed the line. I thought the game was refed very physical. I thought we joined the party late,” Adelman said. “When you joined the party late, the refs look at you as reactionary. The whistle doesn’t go your way. So you can’t be reactionary in these playoff games. You have to do it from the tip, from the start. We know that, I could tell in that room, the eyes looking back at me know that that’s the reality of what just happened.”
Jokic had as many fouls and turnovers as he did buckets, six, in the game. Every Nugget who played before garbage time, besides Peyton Watson, shot below 50%. Denver turned it over 20 times, got run on, and also got out-boarded. That’s the anatomy of a blowout.
“Not flushing it,” Adelman said. “But then we will turn the page at some point and when we do and we open up that next chapter, we’ll say, okay, it’s 1-1, and we are playing Friday night, but in the meantime, tonight, take that personally. Everybody in this organization, take that personally, and that’ll help you succeed in Game 3.”
Game 3 is in Denver on Friday. Teams that are able to split the first two games on the road are 68-110 in seven-game series in the NBA since 1984, so the Nuggets are still in a solid situation, given they’re going up against the NBA’s top team.
