Playo≠s are at stake for Nuggets
Denver’s chances almost surely require defeating the Trail Blazers.
Jameer Nelson lamented the timing of the Nuggets’ most lopsided home loss of the season before finding a silver lining.
“The good thing about it,” the veteran point guard said after his team suffered a 115-90 loss Sunday night to the New Orleans Pelicans, “is we play in a couple days against the team that we’re fighting with.”
The Nuggets visit Portland on Tuesday night in a game that could determine who gets the eighth and final playoff berth in the Western Conference.
The stakes create added significance. Each team enters the game 35-38. The Trail Blazers at season’s end probably will own a tiebreaker over the Nuggets, whether by virtue of head-to-head record (Denver trails the season series 2-1) or by Northwest Division record — an edge Portland would clinch with one win in its final five division games. That means a Nuggets loss Tuesday, in a practical sense as it pertains to the playoff chase, would put them two games behind the Trail Blazers with eight games left. Also, Denver plays six of its final eight games on the road while Portland plays six of its last eight at home.
Any way you cut it, it’s hard to
imagine a path to the playoffs for the Nuggets that doesn’t begin with a victory at the Moda Center on Tuesday.
“It’s big because it’s the next game,” coach Michael Malone said. “That’s the only reason why. We haven’t looked at standings the whole time, and we’re not going to start looking at it now because it’s Portland.”
Before their perplexing, lowenergy loss to New Orleans, the Nuggets had been hot. They had won six of their previous eight games, with the two losses coming to MVP candidate James Harden and Houston on the final possession. Even after the debacle against New Orleans, the Nuggets are 10-7 since the all-star break.
DENVER AT PORTLAND
That still hasn’t been good enough to hold off the red-hot Trail Blazers, who have won six of their last seven games and are 12-5 since the break — the thirdbest performance in the NBA.
Portland has resurrected its season with the help of Jusuf Nurkic, who was backing up Nikola Jokic at center for the Nuggets before he was traded to the Trail Blazers, along with a first-round draft pick, for Mason Plumlee in February. Nurkic has averaged 14.0 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.8 blocked shots in 18 games (17 starts) with Portland. The attention Nurkic has commanded inside has opened opportunities for Portland’s talented backcourt duo of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum.
Lillard averaged 26 points on 43.8 percent shooting from the floor and 34.8 percent shooting from 3-point range in the 55 games before Nurkic’s arrival. In the 18 games he has played with his new center, Lillard is averaging 29.1 points while shooting 47.4 percent overall and 42.8 percent behind the 3-point line.
Momentum belongs to the Trail Blazers, who have an 83 percent chance to capture the West’s No. 8 playoff seed, according to the website fivethirtyeight.com. The Nuggets have a 16 percent chance. That would drop much closer to zero with a loss Tuesday.
“It’s going to be a tough game,” Nuggets forward Darrell Arthur said. “It’s going to be a scrappy battle, so we’ve got to go in and compete and play a full 48 (minutes). We have to finish this season out strong.”