BSN Exclusive: Will Barton believes the Nuggets could beat the Warriors in the playoffs

DENVER — In the final chapter of the Nuggets and Warriors’ four-game regular season quartet, Denver surged back from a 12-point third-quarter deficit to edge Golden State 115-108. With the win, the Nuggets split the season series against the Warriors 2-2. In its two losses to Golden State this year, the Nuggets hung with the Warriors for the better part of four quarters.

The close games Denver has played over its last four matchups which have all come against top-tier opponents in Boston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and now Golden State — a stretch where the Nuggets have gone 2-2 and hold a plus-eight point differential — built confidence within Denver’s locker room.

So much so that if the playoffs started today, Will Barton, who willed the Nuggets to the win with a team-high 25 points, would be confident in a first-round playoff series that pitted the two against one another. Denver, who’s currently the eighth seed in the Western Conference and Golden State, who’s currently the top seed, could match up in the first round.

“I think we can take anybody,” Barton told BSN Denver prognosticating ahead to a potential playoff matchup with Golden State. “That’s just the competitor in me. I’m never going to say we’re going to lose.”

Saturday night’s thriller at Pepsi Center had the feel of a playoff matchup too. Denver packed an arena-record 20,103 fans in the building — some of which were limited to standing room only.

Golden State was on a back-to-back, landed in Denver from Sacramento around 4 a.m. this morning and is “mentally fried,” according to Warriors coach Steve Kerr. But they’re still the Warriors. Golden State still boasts All-Stars Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green. Even when they’re off-kilter, or mentally and physically fatigued like Kerr says they are, Golden State can still breeze by opponents with a 10-0 or 20-5 run at the drop of a hat.

“You can’t go into the game thinking about how many All-Stars they’ve got. At the end of the day there’s one ball and you just got to go out and play,” Barton said. “We’re confident. I don’t care who we play. That’s the way I’m built. That’s the way our team’s built.”

The short-handed Nuggets edged the Warriors with Jamal Murry, who was coming off a 33-point outing against Oklahoma City, not close to 100 percent. Murray, who wasn’t available for comment after the game, had to exit just one minute and 29 seconds into the contest with a right thigh contusion after Curry’s left knee speared Murray’s upper right leg early in the first quarter.

Murray rode a stationary bike to keep warm while on the bench, got extensive work from the Nuggets’ training staff at halftime but was never himself. He played a gutsy 28 minutes and scored 15 points on 4-9 shooting. Mason Plumlee — the Nuggets’ backup center who started the last time these two teams met on Jan. 8 and finished with 12 points and eight rebounds in a 124-114 Warriors win — is out with a right calf strain. Marquee free agent signing Paul Millsap is also out, hasn’t played since Nov. 19 and isn’t expected back until after the All-Star break.

Thanks to tonight’s victory, the Nuggets’ win over the Thunder earlier this week and close losses to the Celtics and Spurs, Denver has turned the corner and flipped the page on a disastrous end to December and early January. That stretch saw the Nuggets drop games to the Joel Embiid-less 76ers, Kings, Hawks and Suns.

The offense is clicking, the defense has done its job and the Nuggets’ ragtag bench unit is holding its own.

Barton wants to climb higher than the eight seed by the time the playoffs roll around in April but if the Nuggets do match up with the Warriors in the postseason, Denver will come into that series with confidence.

“Their style of play enables us to play our style of play,” Barton said. “They play real fast, get up and down and that’s what we want to do. Matching up with them we get to play our best way.”