To make the playoffs, Nuggets have to win on the road

This season began with so much promise for the Denver Nuggets.

Pairing an emerging young core of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Gary Harris with all-star power forward Paul Millsap was supposed to provide the backbone to a team that could score with anyone, but didn’t have much interest in playing defence. And even in the Western Conference, this group looked to have enough talent to make the postseason for the first time in five years.

That was before Saturday in Memphis, when the Nuggets had the single-worst loss of the NBA season. Denver never led and fell, 101-94, to a Grizzlies team that is actively participating in the Great Tank Race of 2018 — and had lost its previous 19 games, a streak going all the way back to a win over the Phoenix Suns on Jan. 29. With the loss, Denver fell to 10th in the crowded Western Conference playoff standings.

“Our starting group did an awful job of starting the game with any real sense of urgency, and we built ourselves a 21-point hole on the road,” Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone told reporters after the awful loss.

“If we’re coaching effort at this time of year, we have a big, big problem.”

Now, as the Nuggets wake up Monday in Miami for a game against the Heat, they find themselves staring at a schedule of six consecutive road games — five of which will come against playoff teams — that will determine their post-season fate. And to make matters worse, the Nuggets will have to do so without Harris, who Malone told reporters Saturday will be out “three or four games” with a knee injury.

So if Denver hopes to make the playoffs, it will have to do so by winning away from home — something it has spent all season failing to do — and with one of its key players hobbled.

The Nuggets have more than lived up to their pre-season expectations while playing in Denver, where they are 27-10 this season. But when they leave the Mile High City, they don’t just become ordinary — they are downright awful.

Denver’s 11-22 record in road games this season is easily the worst of any playoff hopeful in either conference. The Nuggets are being outscored by 4.9 points per 100 possessions away from home (20th best in the NBA) and have the 26th ranked defence.

It’s hard to see any of those numbers improving as Denver moves into a closing stretch that has eight of its final 12 games coming on the road — with seven of those coming against teams with winning records. The home games won’t be gimmes either, as all four are with opponents — the Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, Minnesota Timberwolves and Portland Trail Blazers — that will be where Denver hopes to be: in the playoffs.

But it would be hard to place blame on any individual for the Nuggets having a 10-point swing between their performance at home and while on the road, the biggest discrepancy in the NBA by far this season.

But in a Western Conference playoff picture where a bad week can change everything, recent losses to the Lakers, Mavericks and Grizzlies could prove costly. Had Denver just won those three, it would be sitting in fifth place in the West and would have a much better chance of surviving it’s rough late-season schedule.

Now, the Nuggets have no margin for error, leaving them in a situation where they have to do something they haven’t been able to much — win on the road — to have any chance of doing what they want: making the playoffs.