Eight months of anticipation since a season-ending Game 7 culminated with another Thunder demolition.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander went for 34 points and 13 assists, and the defending NBA champions ran the Nuggets out of their building until a late push, which resulted in a 121-111 Denver loss Sunday.
It ended with a broken vow. Nikola Jokic has been determined to avoid confrontation with referees this season, often turning away and collecting himself when on the verge of snapping. With 3:11 remaining in the fourth quarter and Oklahoma City up by 17, he couldn’t help himself after Gilgeous-Alexander — the MVP frontrunner for a second straight year — picked his pocket from behind. Jokic pleaded his case for a foul, no avail, of course, and soon he and Denver’s other rotation players had been pulled from the game.
Jokic finished with 16 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and six turnovers in his second game back from a left knee injury. Jamal Murray registered a double-double but was held to 12 points on 16 shots in his first game since being named an All-Star. Peyton Watson led the Nuggets (33-17) with 29 points.
The first-place Thunder shot 40% from 3-point range, getting a 27-point boost from Cason Wallace. Gilgeous-Alexander stole the night, though, as the first defending MVP winner to visit Ball Arena as an opponent since Giannis Antetokounmpo on March 2, 2021. SGA shot 11 of 16 from the field.
In the first installment of four scheduled for the next two months, both teams were limited by the scar tissue of the season. Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson and Christian Braun remained out for Denver, though Braun (ankle) was upgraded Sunday to doubtful, foreshadowing a possible return in the next week. Oklahoma City was fending without secondary scorer Jalen Williams, Game 7 Jokic stopper Alex Caruso and burgeoning star Ajay Mitchell.
The Nuggets scrapped and clawed into halftime down only seven points despite two field goal attempts by a restricted Jokic and a 1-for-7 downtown clip from Murray. It helped that Oklahoma City missed seven of eight shots after seizing offensive rebounds, and that the Thunder matched Denver’s 10 turnovers.
David Adelman tried to recapture some of Julian Strawther’s Game 6 magic from last year, and he mostly succeeded at doing so. Strawther knocked down a pair of early 3s, made hustle plays on the glass and on the defensive end, and he knifed into the paint for a floater during one stint when Adelman was playing a lineup short on shot creators (no Jokic, no Murray, no Watson).
The Nuggets could finally sniff the lead when it all fell apart. Down 77-74 in the third quarter, their willingness to let Oklahoma City’s role players fire away started to burn them. Wallace buried four consecutive 3s in a seven-minute span. Gilgeous-Alexander piled on with a step-back. By the time Aaron Wiggins joined the party, it was a 12-0 run and the game’s largest lead. The Nuggets had recovered from a 14-point hole early. Fifteen after halftime was too deflating.
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Spencer Jones struggled to stay on the court in his second-to-last game of eligibility on a two-way contract for Denver. He picked up his third foul early in the second quarter for encroaching on Gilgeous-Alexander’s landing space on a midrange jumper. That left Adelman with slim pickings at power forward, building smaller lineups around his centers for chunks of the night. Jones finished a minus-22 in 27 minutes.
His last game, as things stand, will be Tuesday when the Nuggets tip off a three-game road trip at the Eastern Conference leading Detroit Pistons. After that is a back-to-back at Madison Square Garden.
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