The surging Denver Nuggets are fighting for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference \u2014 and fighting their porous 3-point defense.<\/p>\n
Denver (51-28), which has won nine in a row, goes for the first 10-game winning streak in the Nikola Jokic era when it hosts the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night. On paper it looks like a mismatch in the Nuggets\u2019 favor, but Monday night showed nothing is easy.<\/p>\n
Portland, one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the NBA, hit a franchise-record 25 3-pointers on the same night Memphis tied the NBA record for made threes with 29. The Trail Blazers and Grizzlies both lost, but it\u2019s a warning to Denver as the playoffs approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say dare them but they\u2019re all NBA players,\u201d Jokic said of Portland\u2019s 3-point shooting. \u201cI think our contests were not what they were supposed to be. You can still contest and make them think about it. I think we didn\u2019t contest the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Nuggets needed to rally from double-digit deficits in the fourth quarter to win their last two games in overtime. On Saturday, they got a statement victory against San Antonio, and Monday night they avoided a costly loss while battling the injury-plagued Los Angeles Lakers for the third seed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just seeing what it takes to win,\u201d guard Jamal Murray said.<\/p>\n
Denver has two of its last three games at home \u2014 it hosts league-leading Oklahoma City on Friday night \u2014 and will need a bit of help because the Lakers hold the tiebreaker between the teams.<\/p>\n
The Nuggets can\u2019t afford to look past Memphis (25-54), which is 5-25 since early February. One of those five wins came against Denver on March 18, which was a makeup from a game postponed Jan. 25.<\/p>\n
One of the heroes of that Grizzlies win was Ty Jerome, who finished just shy of a triple-double with 21 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. Jerome, who is shooting 42% from 3-point range, didn\u2019t play in Memphis\u2019 record-tying night from deep. He will miss his ninth straight game with an ankle injury and has played in just 15 this season.<\/p>\n
The Grizzlies conceded the playoffs months ago when they dealt Jaren Jackson Jr., John Konchar and Jock Landale to Utah at the trade deadline. They unsuccessfully shopped Ja Morant, who played just 20 games this season.<\/p>\n
With its top four scorers sidelined with injuries, Cedric Coward leads the way at 13.4 points per game. Coward, a rookie out of Washington State, sat out Sunday\u2019s loss to Milwaukee with lower back soreness and played just 18 minutes against Chicago on Monday.<\/p>\n
Coward\u2019s emergence has been a small bright spot in an otherwise tough season for Memphis. He has played well despite getting more attention from opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, when you look at our roster, he\u2019s a featured guy and teams may put a lot more emphasis on stopping him,\u201d Memphis head coach Tuomas Iisalo told the Commercial Appeal. \u201cAnd I think he\u2019s done a great job letting the game come to him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The surging Denver Nuggets are fighting for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference \u2014 and fighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,301,187,3943,6,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-704269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-denvernuggets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nuggets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116366267694423921","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}