DENVER — The Denver Nuggets weren’t going down at home.
Following consecutive late-game collapses in losses to Oklahoma City, the Nuggets closed strong Thursday night for a 119-107 Game 6 win over the Thunder. The win ties the Western Conference semifinal series at 3-3 and sends the series back to Oklahoma City for a winner-take-all Game 7 with a berth in the Western Conference finals at stake.
Gassed and worn down by a deep and relentless Thunder roster, the Nuggets lost Games 4 and 5 after holding leads of at least eight points in the fourth quarter of each game. They entered the fourth quarter of Thursday’s game with a 90-82 advantage.
This time, they held on for the win as Denver didn’t have to lean almost strictly on Nikola Jokić down the stretch. Julian Strawther provided a big burst off the bench, and the Nuggets got a balanced effort from their starting unit, including a strong game from Jamal Murray, who was questionable with an undisclosed illness in the hour before tipoff.
Murray sets tone while playing sick
Murray opened Denver’s scoring with a four-point play after being fouled on a 3-pointer and finished the first quarter with 11 points, quelling concerns that he wouldn’t be a factor in a closeout game for the Nuggets.
“I kind of was watching the first six minutes like is this real, can he do it?” Nuggets coach David Adelman said after the game. … “That’s Jamal Murray. It’s almost like the worse it is, the better off it’s gonna be. What a tough-minded man.”
Murray cooled off and made just one of five shots in the second quarter. But he picked things back up in the third quarter as the Nuggets mounted a 32-21 run to seize control of the game.
Murray finished as Denver’s second-leading scorer with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists. And he never had a doubt that he would play.
“I woke up feeling it,” Murray said. “Went to the clinic, got tested for a couple different things, was negative. Happy about that. But I was always gonna play in my mind.”
No fourth-quarter collapse this time
Playing with a shallow bench, Nuggets coach David Adelman leaned on Jokić for the entire fourth quarter of Tuesday’s 112-105 loss as the three-time MVP was Denver’s only reliable source of offense. That wasn’t the case Thursday night.
Jokić spent the first 4:07 of the fourth quarter resting on the bench as Adelman gambled that his supporting cast would fend off Oklahoma City. That supporting cast delivered. When Jokić returned to the game, Denver had extended its lead to 97-86.
The reward was a rested Jokić for the stretch run of the game, and the Thunder never challenged Denver’s lead again. A Ball Arena crowd that was previously anxious after watching Denver blow a 71-63 lead in Sunday’s Game 4 loss erupted.
“Last game I kind of kicked myself for not taking one of them out,” Adelman said of playing Jokić and Murray for the entire fourth quarter of Game 5. “Nikola seemed body-language wise like he wanted to sit for a second.
“The beautiful thing was I had four timeouts again. I know it didn’t work out last game. That does let you control your substitutions. Those guys held water to start that quarter.”
Strawther provides bench support Denver desperately needs
One of those guys who held water was little-used reserve Julian Strawther, who’d entered Thursday averaging 2.4 points in 7.3 minutes per game while making appearances in seven of Denver’s previous 12 playoff games.
Strawther was the star of the third quarter-rally that allowed the Nuggets to take control of the game that was tied at 78-78 with 3:58 left in the quarter. The Nuggets closed the quarter on a 12-4 run sparked by eight points from Strawther, whose 3-pointer with 1:37 left in the quarter was the first off the bench by the Nuggets.
He hit another with 36.1 seconds remaining to extend Denver’s lead to 88-80.
Strawther’s offensive outburst and defensive effort earned Adelman’s trust to keep him in the game for 10 more minutes in the fourth quarter as the Nuggets thwarted any hope of a Thunder rally.
Strawther rewarded Adelman’s trust with another big 3 down the stretch while playing high-leverage minutes.
“That’s the moment that you dream of when you was a little kid,” Strawther said. “Come into the game, having all the guys believe in you and find you in your spots and just being able to make an impact on the game.”
When the game was done, Strawther had tallied 15 points while shooting 4 of 8 from the field, including a 3-of-4 effort from long distance. It was the surge off the bench this Nuggets team has desperately sought late in this series.
“Julian’s gonna get credit for scoring 15 points,” Adelman said. “I thought he held water defensively, too. That was a big deal.
“You want to keep an offensive player out there. But they have to be able to handle their own on the other end and he did. We didn’t have to change dramatically defensively because he sat down, moved his feet and guarded.”
Support for Nikola Jokić
While Strawther led the bench unit, four different Nuggets starters scored in double figures. Jokić led the way with 29 points, 14 rebounds, eight assists, two steals and one block while shooting 9 of 14 from the field. But again, it wasn’t all on him.
Christian Braun added 23 points, 11 rebounds and five assists. Coming off a 1-of-7, 3-point effort in Game 5, Michael Porter Jr. put up a considerably more efficient 10 points on nine shots while hitting 2 of 5 attempts from long-distance.
It added up to a much-needed balanced effort after players not named Jokić shot a combined 1 of 15 from the field in the fourth quarter of Denver’s Game 5 collapse. Jokić spoke about his teammates after the game.
“He was amazing,” Jokić said of Strawther. “He had big points, big moments in the game. … It was a great game for him.
“I think CB played really good. Jamal played really good. Our defense was really good, I think. I think that’s why we won the game.”
The Nuggets won the game from long-distance and on the boards. They shot 12 of 32 (37.5%) from 3 compared to an 11-of-40 (27.5%) effort from the Thunder. And they secured a 52-40 rebounding advantage, including an 11-7 edge on the offensive glass.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led Oklahoma City with 32 points and six assists. Chet Holmgren (19 points, 11 rebounds) and Lugentz Dort (10 points) were the only other Thunder starters in double figures. All-Star forward Jalen Williams struggled from the field with six points, seven rebounds and 10 assists on a 3-of-16 shooting night.
Concern for Aaron Gordon
Aaron Gordon was the only Nuggets starter to fail to reach double figures in a five-point effort. And he appeared to sustain a hamstring injury in the game’s final minutes. He clutched his left hamstring after chasing a loose ball in the game’s final 2 minutes and left the game with 1:10 remaining.
Adelman said after the game that he didn’t know Gordon’s injury status. Gordon said in the Nuggets locker room that he feels “OK.”
“I feel OK. We’ll see,” Gordon said of his status moving forward. “I’m gonna start the recovery process now and make sure I’m getting ready for Game 7. Not entirely sure what happened.”
Denver’s Game 7 experience edge
The series now shifts back to Oklahoma City on Sunday 3:30 p.m. ET, when the Nuggets will play in a Game 7 for a third consecutive series. They lost in the second round last season in Game 7 to the Minnesota Timberwolves and beat the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of these playoffs.
In fact, the Game 7 will be the seventh for the Nuggets since Murray and Jokić have teamed up in Denver, dating back to the 2018-19 playoffs. But it will mark the first time they’ve played one on the road. They’ve won four of their previous 6 Game 7s.
The last time the Thunder played in a Game 7 was in the first round of the 2019-20 playoffs in Gilgeous-Alexander’s first season with the team. The Thunder lost that series to the Houston Rockets in the NBA bubble.
The winner of Sunday’s game will advance to face the Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals, which begin on Tuesday.
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