No apology necessary: It’s time for the narrative around these Nuggets to change

Sixteen months ago Nikola Jokic tried to blame himself for a Game 7 loss.

Jokic carried the Nuggets over 14 playoff games but clanged a free-throw with 11.4 seconds remaining after shooting just 11-26 from the floor in Denver’s 2019 Game 7 second-round loss to the Trail Blazers. Sitting in front of his locker postgame Jokic was remorseful, telling his teammates it was his fault that their playoff run was over even though it clearly wasn’t.

“They look at me as a leader. They look at me as their best player,” Jokic said. “So yeah, I missed those free throws near the end…I missed a lot of other shots, and I’m supposed to make some of those.”

A season later, the Nuggets found themselves back in another do-or-die Game 7. There would be no apology from their star center this time around.

With Jamal Murray hampered by a sore thigh, Jokic took over in the third quarter scoring 17 of the Nuggets’ 30 second-half points to lead Denver to a 80-78 series-clinching win. He had nine of the Nuggets’ 15 in the third quarter and was responsible for eight of Denver’s 15 points in the fourth.

Jokic finished with a game-high 30 points on 12-23 shooting (2-5 3FG’s) to go with 14 rebounds and four assists including the game-winner, a soft, high-arching right-handed hook shot over two-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert with 27.8 seconds remaining in the fourth. It should go down as one of the more iconic shots in Nuggets history.

Jokic’s deuce gave Denver an 80-78 lead which turned out to be the final score of this Game 7 rock fight, a far cry from the offensive obsessed series that the Nuggets and Jazz had been locked into over the first six games.

“The dude’s a joke,” Murray said. “He does everything. He posts up, he shoots it, he passes, he pushes the pace, he’s smart. Like I said, we needed him today. We needed him today. He made clutch baskets and just kept us poised. Even when I didn’t have it going or I missed some bunnies or we messed up on defense and they made their push, especially in the third quarter. He was our leader for that second half, and he did it all. He’s gonna be a Hall of Famer one day.”

But the second career Game 7 win for the 25-year-old Jokic and 23-year-old Murray wasn’t easy. Because nothing for the Nuggets is ever easy.

Denver sprinted out to a 19-point second-quarter lead which the Jazz promptly erased by the first few minutes of the fourth quarter after the Nuggets’ offense stalled and Donovan Mitchell found his rhythm. When Jokic backed Gobert down and converted the eventual game-winner Denver looked like it had the game won, especially after Gary Harris poked the ball away from Donovan Mitchell on Utah’s ensuing possession.

Murray then scooped up the ball and started flying down the floor with 10 seconds remaining and the Nuggets leading by one. Why? Well, no one exactly knows. With the Jazz needing to foul to extend the game, Murray fed Torrey Craig for an unnecessary layup attempt. Craig, who shot 3 of 9 from the floor in Game 7 missed, and in a split-second the Nuggets went from ecstasy to an embarrassment as Mike Conley soon found himself open for a potential series-ending three.

It somehow rolled around the rim and out.

“I swear I thought [Murray] was going to score it,” said Craig who popped into Murray’s postgame interview either to poke fun at the near-fatal gaffe or attempt to explain himself.

“You missed a layup,” Murray responded bursting into laughter.

“My bad,” Craig said.

Luckily for Denver, it will soon be a distant memory because the Nuggets are through to the second round. Denver made history Tuesday becoming just the 12th team ever to come back from a 3-1 series deficit and the Nuggets have now made the second round of the playoffs in back-to-back years for the first time since 1986. Just one Nuggets player, Paul Millsap, was alive when that last happened. He was one year old.

“I couldn’t be more proud of our group because with everything we were facing, down 3-1, the stoppage of play, are we going to continue? Are we not? A lot of teams would have just given in,” Michael Malone said. “Especially when you consider we’ve been here 57 days away from our families. Man, do we really want to extend our stay? And that’s where the pride comes into play because our players, they wanted it.”

How Denver was somehow able to turn the tables on the Jazz and eek out a historical series win will live in Nuggets’ lore forever. Less than two weeks ago the Nuggets suffered a humiliating 124-87 Game 3 defeat. Once Denver competed but ended up also dropping Game 4 to go down 3-1, the book on this version of the Nuggets was written in permanent ink. Chapter 1 of Denver’s autopsy on its 2019-20 season would be titled “131.4” the world-class offensive rating that Mitchell and the Jazz amassed over the first four games of the series.

Whatever Malone said in an early third-quarter huddle during Game 5 with his team trailing by 15 points, Denver’s coach should bottle up and save for a future playoff game. The Nuggets were a few hours away from going home and back to their own beds. But they persevered.

Somehow, the Nuggets located the one facet of their game that had eluded them throughout their entire stay inside the bubble: timely defense. Following the series-saving third-quarter timeout in Game 5, the Nuggets held the Jazz — who had just tallied 63 points in the first half — to only 36 points on 44% shooting over the remainder of regulation to coast to a 117-107 win. In Game 6, Utah scored only 107 points, a far cry from the 135, 124, 124 and 129 respective point totals the Jazz had reached in Games 1-4.

The Nuggets raised their defense to an entirely different level in Game 7. The Jazz scored just 78 points on 38% shooting from the field and 23.5% from three.

“Not quitting is the word of the day right now,” Jokic said.

As Malone said after Game 7, the Nuggets wouldn’t have won Tuesday if it wasn’t for Gary Harris, who came off the bench to shoot just 1 of 9 from the field in 26 minutes but played game-altering defense on Utah’s guards. Harris made his bubble debut in Game 6 where he locked up Jordan Clarkson.

In Game 7, Harris spent time on both Clarkson and Mitchell — a total three minutes and 16 seconds to be exact according to NBA.com tracking data — and the two Jazz guards combined to shoot just 1-13 when guarded by Harris. Jerami Grant also helped keep Mitchell to 22 points, his lowest-scoring game of the series.

Harris’ biggest two defensive plays came in winning time. First, Harris denied Mitchell long enough on Utah’s inbound pass with 17 seconds remaining in the fourth to force Jazz coach Quin Snyder to burn his final timeout. Moments later, Harris poked the ball away from Mitchell and into Murray’s hands.

“Even in the huddle before that last play, he knew what Donovan was gonna do,” Malone said of Harris. “He had done his work. He had prepared mentally, and he went out there and came up with a big, big defensive play.”

Jokic logging 39 minutes and carrying Denver in Game 7 will fit neatly into whatever book eventually gets written about his career and this era of Nuggets basketball. He crept in the shadows while putting up big numbers all series as Murray and Mitchell rightfully stole the headlines but confidently emerged to give the Nuggets what they needed when they needed it in Game 7.

For the series, Jokic averaged 26.3 points, 8.1 rebounds and 5.4 assists against a defensive stalwart in Gobert. The 47.8% Jokic shot from three-point range in the series on 6.6 attempts per game, three more attempts per game than he averaged during the regular season, greatly aided Denver’s offense too and drew Gobert out of the paint. Ten of Jokic’s game-high 12 field goals in Game 7 came with Gobert defending.

The Nuggets’ comeback against the Jazz should also begin to rewrite the narrative that Jokic and Denver is dead in the water against high-powered pick-and-roll offenses led by guards like Mitchell. Games 1-4 were not pretty for either Jokic or Denver’s defense. But key adjustments when it came to how the Nuggets defended the pick-and-roll and better defense at the point of attack from its guards eventually tilted momentum in Denver’s favor.

The Nuggets didn’t even have two starters for most of the series. If Denver had Harris available before Game 6 and Will Barton, who quietly had a strong defensive season, available at all, this series could have been much different.

The Nuggets will lean on Harris in their Round 2 matchup against the Clippers as Denver tries to further rewrite its narrative. But for now, as Murray did when he doused Malone with a water bath midway through his postgame press conference, the Nuggets should celebrate.

That was one heck of a comeback.