Brooks’ big game ends up wasted
ROCKETS 130, NUGGETS 125 (OT)
houston » Nuggets coach Brian Shaw laughed when he said it, but inside he yearned for it to change in a meaningful way. Players on the Denver roster who faced their former teams have been, well, less than stellar in those games this season.
Shaw hoped that might change Sunday with Aaron Brooks. It did. But there was no fairy tale ending — only a lump of coal at the end of a back-and-forth slugfest between the Nuggets and Brooks’ former team, Houston. The Nuggets lost a 14-point lead in the final 4:35 of the fourth quarter and fell in overtime, 130125 at the Toyota Center.
“It was a game of runs,” Shaw said. “I don’t knowthat I’ve seen anything like that before. But when you have a 14-point lead with four minutes and something left, you expect to win that game.”
The Rockets, which lost a 17point lead of their own in the third quarter, outscored Denver 13-8 in overtime— nailing three 3-pointers to get the separation they needed. Itwas theNuggets’ sixth consecutive road loss, and their sixth loss in the past seven games overall.
“We started to play not to lose instead of playing to win,” Shaw said. “We started throwing the ball all over the place, turning it over, and they took advantage of that.”
Starting in place of injured Ty Lawson, Brooks took over, scoring 24 points. The veteran guard also had 15 assists and eight rebounds. If the Nuggets had resigned themselves to being priced out of Brooks’ free-agent market this summer, they might be rethinking that now.
None of that is Brooks’ concern, though. The sting of a return to Houston gone wrong in the end is what stuck with him.
“Looking back at it, we probably should have played to win the game, and not run the clock out,” he said.
Down17 points at halftime, the Nuggets outscored Houston 3619 in the third quarter to tie the score 88-88. The scoring came from everywhere: Brooks. Quincy Miller. Evan Fournier. Randy Foye.
And yet with one minute to go, theNuggets (33-44) found themselves needing to hold on. They couldn’t. James Harden’s 3-pointer with 7.1 seconds left tied the score 117117. A desperation shot by Foye at the buzzer fell short. In overtime, the Rockets (51-25) pulled away for their latest win.
“We basically gave it to them,” Foye said. “At the end of the day, we gave the game away.”
The Nuggets received a teamhigh 26 points from Fournier and a career-high 19 points from Miller.
“I think we panicked a little bit at the end of the fourth quarter,” Fournier said. “Unfortunately, we threw the game away by turning the ball over. We have to learn from it.”