The Nuggets’ short-handed winning streak is over, but the sting was dull.
Down by 18 in the first quarter and 30 by the end of the third, Denver threw in the towel by keeping everyone’s minutes to a minimum in a 110-87 loss to the Hornets on Sunday at Ball Arena. The Nuggets (29-14) fell to 7-4 without the injured Nikola Jokic going into their first meeting of the season with the Lakers on Tuesday.
“It’s flushed. There’s not much we could do about it,” Jamal Murray said. “Just felt like we were undersized. Undermanned. The whole game. … Take the rest and refocus for a really good L.A. team.”
Charlotte’s rout snapped a four-game win streak for Denver, which was missing four of its usual starters after deciding to sit Aaron Gordon for the second night of a back-to-back. He was out alongside Jokic, Christian Braun, Cam Johnson and backup center Jonas Valanciunas. In their 10th full game without a traditional center and with no help on the way via the 10-day market, the Nuggets were outscored 62-32 in the paint.
Murray scored 16 points in 25 minutes. Peyton Watson added 11 points and three blocks in 28 minutes. The burgeoning star forward was battered and bruised throughout the night, playing through brief injury scares to a knee and an elbow.
Denver shot 40.5% from the field and 21% from the 3-point line against a young Charlotte squad that has ranked second in the NBA in offensive efficiency over the last 15 games. Still, the Hornets were on a back-to-back of their own after playing at Golden State.
They were led by 23 points from Brandon Miller and 14 from Kon Knueppel, who’s challenging his former Duke teammate Cooper Flagg for Rookie of the Year honors.
“Unbelievable. And (he) plays like he’s 28,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said. “Offensively, just takes his time. He’s just quick enough to get where he wants to get. And he’s super crafty in the paint. He looks like someone that, like I said, has been around for a long time. … Him and Flagg on the same team last year, to me, is just insane thinking about it.”
The Nuggets felt their lack of size on both legs of the back-to-back. They lost the rebounding battle 61-36 to Charlotte, one day after getting crushed 27-4 by Washington on second-chance points.
Adelman tried to navigate his lack of a center by matching minutes, but Hornets coach Charles Lee countered by disguising his substitutions. Back and forth the young coaches went, highlighted by the game’s only bit of drama at the start of the second quarter.
Lee made a last-second swap between Ryan Kalkbrenner and Moussa Diabate that Adelman wanted to answer by putting DaRon Holmes II on the floor instead of Zeke Nnaji, but the officials didn’t allow Adelman to make his corresponding change because, as he described it, “I didn’t get him on the ice in time.”
Adelman proceeded to use a timeout five seconds into the quarter so that he could yell at referee Josh Tiven, who allowed him to say his piece without issuing a technical foul. Adelman ended up subbing out Nnaji after a 12-second stint of playing time.
Then in a sequence that summed up the Nuggets’ night, Holmes quickly got into foul trouble and had to be removed anyway.
“That’s something that they’ve gotta think about in the league,” Adelman said. “That should be a delay of game on both of us. I’m trying to match somebody up with somebody else. They literally were hockey subbing back and forth. So I did. And then they decided to put the ball inbounds while I was still hockey subbing. … And Charles and I, we’re not trying to screw with the game. It’s just, I was trying to get a matchup. He was trying to get a matchup.
“At some point, they have to tell us both, ‘You’re getting a delay,’ or they’ve gotta tell us to put five people on the court. So I was ultra-confused, and I had to use a timeout to get my point across, which is not good in a game you’re trailing.”
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