David Adelman’s coaching rite of passage wasn’t enough to spark the Nuggets to an improbable comeback.
Adelman earned the first ejection of his career as an NBA head coach Saturday, and the Nuggets’ offense looked mortal for the first time all season in a 115-101 loss to the Houston Rockets.
Their defense was mostly stingy enough to keep them in the game for most of three quarters, but Rockets guard Reed Sheppard executed an 11-0 run single-handedly to finish the third with an 82-66 lead. He made six 3-pointers en route to 28 points. He was only topped by Kevin Durant, who scored 31 on 8-of-14 shooting.
Denver (20-7) was trailing by 17 when Adelman took exception to a no-call in front of his bench as Nikola Jokic tried to play through a crowd. He angrily confronted the officiating crew out to mid-court even after being handed his second technical foul, which automatically disqualified him.
Jokic was held to 25 points on 20 shots and five assists while spending a large chunk of the afternoon sidelined with foul trouble. Jamal Murray scored 16 points on 13 field goal attempts. The Nuggets shot 40% from the field and 28% outside the arc in a grudge match after their overtime win over Houston on Monday. They were up 2-0 in the season series going into this clash. One meeting remains.
After only four days away, the Rockets returned to Denver with every reason to treat this game with playoff seriousness — not just due to the overtime thriller that left coach Ime Udoka fuming, but because they also squandered a mid-week opportunity to bounce back against the lowly Pelicans. It had been a costly week already, including the $25,000 fine Udoka incurred for postgame comments critical of the officiating on Monday.
“We were minus-10 in personal fouls with five minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Both of our centers fouled out,” Adelman pointed out before opening tip of the rematch Saturday, already revealing a chip on his shoulder. “I know the narrative was the opposite, which is fine. I know I had no centers at the end of the game. So things work in weird ways. This game will be just as physical.”
Adelman decided to take a turn chewing out the refs in the first quarter. He worked hard to earn a technical after Jokic picked up his second foul of the frame, both on loose balls while fighting for a rebound.
The crew included Marc Davis, who was officiating in the playoffs two years ago when Murray threw a heat pack on the court in frustration.
Houston made the Nuggets burn energy and clock just to get into their actions. Murray, whose offense has been consistently efficient, ran into one of his first clunky games of the year. Generating clean looks in the half-court offense was laborious. Often, Denver’s safest bet was to clear out a side for Jokic to play in isolation.
But defensively, the Nuggets kept the game messy enough to hang around despite Houston’s 10-for-18 first half from 3-point range. They had no choice but to increase the intensity even more when Jokic got hit with a fourth foul with 7:18 left in the third. Adelman decided to sit him for the rest of the quarter and have him ready to play the entire fourth, but it meant a difficult survival game without him.
Denver almost weathered the storm. Morale was high and the margin was 71-66 shortly after Bruce Brown scored a second-chance bucket and chirped at Durant, his former teammate. The altercation didn’t quite escalate, but the game had clearly arrived at a permanently chippy state. All it took was one heat check from Sheppard, and the gap was too wide.
Durant, who played phenomenal help defense against Jokic in both games this week, seemed to enjoy getting a last laugh of sorts. He played through Brown’s persistent trash talk, gleefully waved Adelman goodbye after the ejection and eventually treated Ball Arena to a cheeky celebration for the ages after a fourth-quarter 3-pointer.
After making the shot over Murray from the right wing, the future Hall of Famer fired some imaginary artillery at Denver’s star guard and danced all the way down the court. Nuggets lead assistant coach Jared Dudley called a timeout, and Brown got into it with Alperen Sengun as Durant practically skipped back to the huddle.
Gamesmanship aside, though, Adelman remains an admirer of Durant.
“Kevin is, you could argue, a top-10 offensive player ever? Maybe top five?” he said before the game. “So you can’t just throw one pitch at him. He’s gotta see a lot of different people. And even when you do that, the guy is gonna score.”
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