"Coach believes in us": Michael Malone's best qualities on display as Nuggets net crucial Game 2 win

With his team on the ropes in the third quarter, their dream season hanging on by a thread, Michael Malone called a timeout to regroup and mount one last charge. The Nuggets trailed by 16 points with a quarter and a half to go, and their head coach could sense hope was fading.

“I could see it on some guy’s faces,” Malone said. “Which way is this game gonna go?”

He reminded them: Less than 24 hours earlier, the Clippers stormed back from 31 points to beat the Warriors.

“It’s only going to happen, though, if we believe, we commit and we fight and we attack,” Malone stressed.

The Nuggets could have wilted. They’d fallen behind by as many as 19. Their starting point guard and small forward were slogging through two of the worst shooting performances of their careers. Boos even rained down at them at different points throughout the game. Instead, with all that working against them, they did as their coach said: punched back.

The Nuggets outscored the Spurs 57-32 over the final 17 minutes and 45 seconds of play. Jamal Murray flipped the switch from freezing to smoldering in the fourth quarter, when he scored 21 of his 24 points. The white-knuckled 114-105 win not only brought out the best in the 22-year-old scoring guard but also his 47-year-old head coach.

At halftime, Malone found Murray and told him to relax. After an 8-for-23 shooting performance in Game 1, which included Murray missing a wide-open go-ahead jumper and committing a turnover on Denver’s last-gasp effort, Murray came out cold once again. He had two points and missed all six of the shots he took through two quarters.

“I just grabbed him and said, ‘Listen, take a deep breathe. You’re putting so much pressure on yourself. Every shot right now is like end of the world. I believe in you. I love you. Just go out there and play,'” Malone said.

In the third, Murray still couldn’t get a shot to go down. He was 0-for-8 from the field going into a fourth quarter that could effectively determine if Denver’s season continued. With Monte Morris, perhaps the game’s best backup point guard, at the ready, it could have been tempting to pull the plug on Murray then. But Malone never even considered that option.

“I knew in my heart he needed to get these minutes,” Malone said. “He needed to be out there. I needed to show him I believed in him.”

Murray responded in a way even Malone didn’t think possible during the most crucial point of the season. Sweeping layups, midrange Js, the deep ball — Murray had everything working, this explosion coming after he’d look broken for most of the game. His back-to-back 3s with less than three minutes to go helped Denver put the game out of reach.

“We trust each other,” Murray said. “We believe in one another, and we stick with it no matter what happens. The game keeps challenging us, and we keep accepting it.”

In a league full of grinders, Malone’s work ethic and attention to detail stand out. He pores over film and knows the numbers like the back of his hand. His most impressive skill, however, is something Gregg Popovich, his counterpart in this series, has mastered: the ability to coach players hard without them ever forgetting how much he cares about them.

“They’ll accept the brutal honesty if they know you care about them as people,” Malone remembered Popovich telling him before he took his first head coaching job in Sacramento.

This season, Malone has publicly challenged Murray to become more consistent and Nikola Jokic to do a better job of keeping his emotions in check. Malone doesn’t hesitate to demand more from his franchise cornerstones because of the rock-solid relationships he’s built with them.

“We are playing for him,” said Jokic, who went for 21 points, 18 rebounds and seven assists in the win. “He is the best coach for us.”

To understand how far the Nuggets have come in four years under Malone, it’s important to look back at what the landscape was like when he arrived. When Malone took the job in Denver, he was fielding questions about his team’s party habits. Getting back to the playoff required a complete rebuild. Only three players — Gary Harris, Will Barton and Jokic — remain from 2014-15, Malone’s first season in Denver.

“Coach believes in us,” said Harris, who came up huge with 23 points on 8-of-16 shooting. “We’ve all been through a lot. We’ve all kind of grown up together. And we’re all just doing this together.”

Malone’s belief in Murray paid off with one of the most memorable playoff performances in franchise history. Malone trusted his gut by sticking with Murray down the stretch. He was rewarded with his first playoff win as a head coach — and what figures to be the first of many at the helm in Denver.

“What makes him different from a lot of coaches is how much he cares about each and every individual on this team,” Murray said. “He cares. He coaches with a passion. We love it.”