BOSTON — Finishing their seven-game road trip with a losing record wasn’t what the Nuggets had in mind, but under the circumstances, they’ll happily take 3-4.
Less undermanned than they were in Philadelphia but still fending without a traditional center, the Nuggets completed their Eastern Conference marathon with a 114-110 win over the Celtics on Wednesday.
Jamal Murray went for 22 points, 17 assists and only two turnovers. Peyton Watson led the team in scoring with 30 points on a 6-for-7 night from 3-point range. Jalen Pickett and Zeke Nnaji earned another opportunity to play in David Adelman’s closing lineup, fresh off their heroic performances Monday at Philly.
And Denver assembled a 14-0 run in the middle of the fourth quarter for the second straight game, putting away the East’s second-place Celtics (23-13). All three teams the Nuggets (25-12) defeated on their road trip are top-five seeds in the conference.
Jaylen Brown led all scorers with 33, but on 29 shot attempts against a variety of coverages. Boston kept pressing and fouling in the last minute, shaving an 11-point deficit to three before Murray clinched the game with a late free throw.
A road trip that seemed doomed after a loss to the Nets on Sunday ended with two straight surprising wins.
After entering halftime tied at 58 for the second consecutive game, offense dried up for the Nuggets in the third quarter. They missed 11 straight shots during a six-minute scoreless stint and fell behind, 72-63. Then Murray buried a 3-pointer out of a timeout and found Tim Hardaway Jr. for another in transition the next possession. Suddenly, it was a one-score game again, and Denver was on its way to a 13-2 run.
Anfernee Simons was the Celtics’ antidote. He hit a couple of 3s while Brown was on the bench to take them into the fourth with an 82-79 lead and Denver’s non-Murray minutes looming.
Pickett, scoreless in the first three stanzas, helped weather the storm with a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer from Aaron Gordon and a floater in the pick-and-roll. Murray came in for Hardaway after only a four-minute rest.
The longer the game wore on, the more the Nuggets felt their size disadvantage on the glass. Celtics center Neemias Queta secured 20 rebounds, eight of them in the first three minutes and change of the fourth. Boston compiled 27 second-chance points and won the rebounding battle by eight.
Like they did in Brooklyn, the Nuggets used Aaron Gordon off the bench in a sub pattern conducive to his minutes restriction that enabled him to be on the court when Murray wasn’t. Gordon said after his return from a hamstring injury that he felt a step slow on defense, and that was the case again on a few possessions in Boston. Still, he left an imprint with 12 points and six rebounds. He played 23 minutes, staying in the same range as last Sunday.
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Nnaji shouldered the majority of the backup center minutes again after his 21-point, eight-rebound performance in Philadelphia. It’s been a position where he has struggled in recent years, especially relative to the production of Denver’s lineups when he has played the four. But David Adelman hasn’t had any other choice but to use Nnaji at center recently, and he delivered again with clutch buckets in the fourth quarter and solid defense throughout the night, both in pick-and-roll help against Brown and in rim protection.
Christian Braun also closed the game for Adelman in his second game back. He and Gordon both sat out the second leg of Denver’s back-to-back in Philadelphia, staying on the same schedule in their respective returns from injuries. Braun (ankle) was frustrated at himself a couple of times throughout the night when he missed transition layups, but he came up huge with a corner 3-ball in front of the Nuggets’ bench during their fourth-quarter run, stretching the lead to five.
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