Eight nuggets for the eight points Isaiah Thomas scored in his Nuggets debut. Denver beat Sacramento 120-118 Wednesday in its final game before the All-Star break.
1. An hour and a half before Nuggets-Kings got going, Michael Malone tried to temper the expectations surrounding his mighty mite point guard. It’d been 11 months since Isaiah Thomas suited up in an NBA game, he pointed out. He preached patience.
“It’s going to be a process for him,” Malone said.
The odds that Thomas was going to pop in his first game back from a devastating hip injury didn’t seem great. Surely, he’d look a step slow after all this time. Surely, it’d take a few games for him to look comfortable in a new system, right?
Apparently, not.
Doubting Thomas only makes you look foolish. The 5-foot-9 bucket getter has made a career out of proving skeptics wrong. Thomas, the 60th overall pick in the 2011 draft, developed into a 20-points-per-game scorer by his third season. By year six, he became an MVP candidate. He was the lifeblood of a Celtics team that made a surprise run to the Eastern Conference Finals before a torn labrum derailed all the work he’d put in.
If Wednesday marked the start of Thomas’ next act, it was a fun one. He jolted the Nuggets to life in the third quarter, scoring eight points in a 1-minute, 47-second span. Thomas hit a transition 3 from the left wing, a pull-up 3 from straight away and an 11-foot stepback, crucial shots that helped Denver pull out a come-from-behind win.
“I didn’t even expect to play that much,” Thomas said.
Thomas received a standing ovation when he subbed in in the first quarter. Despite the circumstances, Thomas said he didn’t have any butterflies.
“Nah, I don’t get nervous,” Thomas said. “The hoop is 10 foot. The ball is round. I’ve been doing this my whole life.”
2. When Thomas checked into the game, he did so alongside a player he’s spent much of the season mentoring. Monte Morris, who’s exceeded all expectations filling in at backup point guard, has leaned on Thomas for advice. The undersized second-round picks have developed a bond.
“He’s embraced me since day one with open arms and said, ‘Let’s get better,'” Morris said. “I was just happy for him tonight.”
Both were on the floor when the Nuggets fought their way back into the game in the third quarter, when they outscored the Kings 35-22.
“I was in college the year he was doing that in Boston,” Morris said. “Going out there tonight, it’s crazy to play alongside him, see his first shot go down and see the arena erupt. There’s so much that guy has been through, so many naysayers who say this, who say that about him being a bad teammate. He’s a hell of a person, an amazing person. I don’t know where that came from.”
There are no egos on this Nuggets team. When listing the reasons why they’re 21 games above .500 at the All-Star break, that one belongs high on the list. Morris was ecstatic to see Thomas return, and Denver’s bench was going ballistic when he found his rhythm in the third quarter.
“That’s half the battle when guys are happy for someone else,” Thomas said. “In this league, there are so many egos. A lot of guys are selfish, but on this team everyone just wants to win and get further.”
3. Thomas did his part in helping the Nuggets overcome a 19-point deficit. They got down by so much in the first place because of an issue that’s cropping up a lot lately: a lack of effort and discipline on the defensive end. The Kings scored 41 points in the first quarter.
“I jumped them at halftime,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone, who got tossed late in the second quarter in what was perhaps an attempt to emotionally jumpstart his team. “I was not happy with how we played. I got on a couple of our players pretty hard and challenged them.”
The Nuggets responded by holding the Kings to 49 points in the second half. Overall, they’ve been a much better defensive team after halftime than before. In the first half, they’re allowing 112.8 points per 100 possessions; that number drops to 103.1 points per 100 possessions in the second half.
4. Malone might’ve been angry about a few calls and his team’s defensive performance, but he made sure to snag a pick-me-up on his way out from Nuggets super fan Vicki Ray.
Mike Malone, accepting a fucking Hershey’s bar from a woman after being ejected in the 2nd quarter. pic.twitter.com/TVp4zi5qqH
— Alexander (@balancedvision) February 14, 2019
Sometimes you just need to decompress with a Hershey’s bar.
5. Wednesday’s game turned into a track meet, with Denver scoring 23 fastbreak points to Sacramento’s 20. There were 108 total possessions. There are 98.41 possessions in the average Nuggets game this year. Sacramento is much more accustomed to playing up and down like that, but Denver still got it done.
6. On Denver’s first possession of the game, Paul Millsap curled off a screen and finished at the rim. It was a sign of things to come. Millsap scored 25 points, tying a season high, on 10-of-16 shooting and grabbed 13 rebounds in 31 minutes. It was one of his most impressive performances of the season.
7. In Nikola Jokic’s Jordan Year, he tied the GOAT in triple-doubles. The 23-year-old Serbian center recorded his 28th career triple-double Wednesday, which moves him into a tie with Michael Jordan and John Havlicek for 12th all time.
Jokic tipped in the game-winning basket with 0.8 seconds to go. It was the capper to a 20-point, 18-rebound, 11-assist evening. Every night, he makes something impossible look easy.
8. At 39-18, the Nuggets appear to be on the verge of snapping a five-season playoff drought. They need to go 11-14 over their final 25 games just to get to 50 wins. As Thomas said afterward, this team wants to do more than just make the playoffs.
“I want to show them it’s an environment you always want to be a part of once you get there,” he said. “I think we have a talented group that’s not just able to get there but make some noise once we get there.”
Malone expects to have his full rotation at his disposal after the All-Star break. The Nuggets have gotten this far while being among the most banged-up teams in the league. Finding out what they look like at full strength down the stretch should be fun.
