In a battle waged between two of the biggest teams in basketball, the Nuggets made their last stand by going small.
They didn’t have much of a choice.
Eight of their 18 players were not available for the last 83 seconds of overtime, and the remaining 10 consisted of almost no big men. No Jonas Valanciunas (fouled out, ages ago). No Aaron Gordon (in street clothes with a hamstring injury). No DaRon Holmes (on assignment to the G League several states away). No Peyton Watson (removed from the game early with a limp). And now, cruelest of all, no Nikola Jokic — freshly fouled out of a game the Nuggets led by five.
They would have to protect what was left of that after a pair of Houston free-throw attempts without him.
“This is why they brought all of us in this summer, right?” Bruce Brown said. “For this exact situation. People go down. You never really have a season when everyone is just fully healthy for 82 games.”
With a three-guard lineup and a two-way wing playing “center,” the Nuggets hung on for dear life and secured one of their grittiest wins of the season, 128-125 over the visiting Rockets. Those 83 seconds resisted the glamour that characterized the end of regulation, when Jokic and Alperen Sengun traded haymakers, but they did provide an apt microcosm of Denver’s resilient start to the season.
It now includes two nail-biting wins over Houston, another Western Conference contender that could regret both losses later.
“The guys stepped up in the right moment,” Jokic said.
“I was really proud,” coach David Adelman said. “They just did what they had to do. But we’re gonna keep working on situational basketball as best we can defensively. … These two teams are very even, and it comes down to a few plays here or there to see who wins the game.”
The narrowness of that margin was evident in the juxtaposition between Adelman’s postgame comments and Ime Udoka’s.
“Most poorly officiated game I’ve seen in a long time,” the Rockets coach said down the hall from Adelman. “Two (of the refs) have no business being out there, and the crew chief (Zach Zarba) was acting starstruck.”
Both teams benefitted and suffered from a tight whistle throughout the night. But the most consequential and controversial call worked in the Nuggets’ favor. They were down 117-116 with 2.3 seconds left in regulation, looking for last-ditch heroics on an inbound play, when Tim Hardaway Jr. tripped and fell. An initial ruling and a replay review determined it was over the shin of Rockets wing Amen Thompson. A sliver of contact worthy of a game-altering dead-ball foul.
Udoka appeared disgusted, but the letter of the law was irreversible. The Nuggets were allowed to choose their shooter for a single free throw. Jamal Murray, who had missed a costly one moments earlier, redeemed himself.
“I mean, it’s a physical game. It’s tough for the refs to call both sides, like, dead even,” he said afterward in response to Udoka’s officiating criticism. “I think they missed some calls on our end, and they missed some calls on their end, so I don’t really think that was an issue tonight.”
Jokic and Sengun both entered overtime with five personal fouls on their ledgers. First to foul out, conventional wisdom said, would cost his team the game. Crunch time of regulation had been a breathtaking display from two of the most talented centers in the sport, and the supporting casts around them.
One of the most thrilling sequences of the entire NBA season so far had unfolded in this order, with no skips: Sengun game-tying floater, Jokic go-ahead 3-pointer, Reed Sheppard game-tying 3-pointer, Spencer Jones go-ahead 3-pointer, Kevin Durant game-tying 3-pointer.
“The NBA, it’s in such a good place right now,” Adelman said. “The skillset in some of these guys is outrageous. The way they can shoot it, pass it, handle it. Sengun and Nikola both iso-ing at the nail. What Durant is and what he has been. … I’d pay to watch this.”
By the time Jokic fouled out, the Nuggets had established an uncomfortable cushion. But this was a once-in-a-season pickle, at least. Adding a layer of stress was the fact that the Rockets crash the glass and seize offensive rebounds at a historic rate.
Size is kind of important against them.
Cam Johnson slid to the four. And Jones (6-foot-7) was suddenly the five, a new plot twist in his whirlwind of a season.
“A lot of it’s just trial by fire, which is great,” he said. “It’s the best way to learn.”
“He’s chasing Durant around, going through pick-and-rolls, guarding Thompson, walling up at the rim,” Adelman marveled. “We had him on Sengun. It’s a lot of responsibility for a guy that’s on a two-way contract.”
If he had wanted to simply play as big as possible, Adelman could’ve thrown power forward Zeke Nnaji back on the floor to finish overtime. That’s what Brown was expecting as he watched from the bench. But the first-year coach preferred to go with his best available group of players instead, throwing positions out the window. That meant closing with Brown, who finished the NBA Finals on the court two years ago and who’s always been a talented rebounder for a guard. He checked back in with eight on the night, preparing to box out on Sheppard’s second free throw.
“And soon as I go in,” he said, shaking his head, “I drop the rebound.”
It bounced off Brown’s hands and out of bounds, giving Houston renewed life and foreshadowing a messy 83 seconds. But the Nuggets defended hard. They got a stop. They ran clock. They got Murray to the foul line — again on a call that left Udoka flabbergasted.
It was ugly, but they dragged themselves to the last possession of the game with a three-point lead, needing to protect the perimeter for seven more seconds. They planned to deny Durant the ball and switch one through five as Houston drew up a play.
They also planned in the huddle to intentionally foul on the catch. It’s an increasingly common strategy at levels of basketball when protecting a three-point lead at the end of a game. But this was a uniquely nuanced set of circumstances.
Denver would have no centers to box out for a rebound on Houston’s second free throw, in the likely case of an intentional miss. And the Rockets are lab-designed to get offensive rebounds. Especially if they wanted to sub Steven Adams back into the game alongside Sengun.
“There are so many layers to it,” Adelman said. “OK, so you foul and you execute (the foul-up-three strategy). I think we can block them out on a free throw. I mean, there are so many things you think about. Adams comes back in the game. It’s Sengun and Adams you’re trying to block out with no Nikola, no Valanciunas. So a lot of the decisions we made, there was a lot of, ‘Yeah, but this could not work out also.’”
Even so, the direct order was to foul, rather than risk giving up a game-tying 3-ball. After the Nuggets successfully pushed Durant out to the logo, Sengun exited the lane to come get the ball.
“He got loose,” Adelman said. “I thought they did a good job. He slipped out of their action. We took KD away, which was the whole point.”
“It looked like (Sengun) was going toward the rim, so I was letting him,” Brown said. “It was inside the (arc), so I was letting him go. And then he bounced out to the (perimeter). He knew we were gonna foul, so he was trying to bait the foul, and I just let him shoot it. He was off-balance. He wasn’t even trying to make the shot.”
No foul, no problem. Sengun’s 3-point attempt was rushed and awkward, missing the mark by a wide margin. In a fitting moment of redemption for the free-throw gaffe, Brown chased down the rebound and ran out the clock.
In a heavyweight fight that was by turns ugly and epic in quality, that featured controversial calls and arduous coaching dilemmas, that starred unlikely heroes and future Hall of Famers, the Nuggets hobbled off with a character-building win.
The smaller team stood tall.
“That,” an exhausted Murray said, “was a long-(expletive) game.”