Five Golden Nuggets for Paul Millsap’s five offensive rebounds in Denver’s 113-112 win over the Portland Trail Blazers
1. Welcome back Gary Harris. After missing two games, Harris returned to his place in the Nuggets’ starting lineup and scored a team-high 27 points in Denver’s win. Harris didn’t look 100 percent but was able to get to the rim at will, slicing and dicing Portland’s defense. Four of Harris’ nine baskets came in the paint.
His last bucket of the night was his biggest. With the score tied at 110, Nikola Jokic found Harris spotting up in the left corner. Harris is shooting in the low 30s from three this year — quite a bit below the 40 percent mark he hit from distance a year ago. But he’s hitting nearly 40 percent of his threes from that spot on the floor.
2. The shot was just as impressive as the pass.
Michael Malone, who coached LeBron James for five seasons in Cleveland, likes to reference a story from early in James’ career when he was criticized for passing up a late-game shot even though he was triple-teamed. Funny enough, the game, Malone said, was actually in Denver against the Nuggets. Cleveland went on the lose that night, and James received much of the blame for not forcing up a shot with three defenders draped to him.
Jokic and James share a few similarities, like their elite basketball IQ, uncanny feel for the game and general unselfishness. They’re also both going to pass up good shots for great shots. You can bet James would have made the same pass Jokic did on what proved to be the Nuggets’ game-winner.
Jokic finished with 15 points on 7-12 shooting, six rebounds and eight assists. Opposite from how his nights typically flow, he went at Jusuf Nurkic in the first half. Jokic was guarded by his former teammate for 44 possessions, according to NBA.com. He scored 14 points on 7-11 shooting when checked by Nurkic. Will Barton, positioned at the end of the Nuggets’ bench and in the upper right corner of the frame, loved the aggressiveness he was seeing from Denver’s big man.
In the second half, Jokic went into distributor mode. He only scored two second-half points on 1-6 shooting. Jokic did hand out four assists over the third and fourth quarters. Denver could have used his offense more down the stretch as the Nuggets went cold in the second half and saw their shooting percentages drop to under 40 percent from the field and as a team hit just 5 of their 15 threes.
Since Nurkic put 33 points and 15 rebounds on Jokic late in the 2017 season, put the Nuggets on the brink of postseason elimination and told his former teammates to “have a happy summer” all in one night, he’s 1-4 against Denver.
3. The early-season offensive struggles that had Paul Millsap shooting 16-43 (37.2 percent) from the field and 1-8 from three over Denver’s first five games are a distant memory. At one point this season, Millsap was shooting 44 percent from 4 feet and in and missing layups left and right. Now, he’s proving to be well worth the $30 million per year investment the Nuggets made in him two summers ago.
“Big Game P” finished with 22 points, 10 rebounds (five offensive), four assists and four steals in Denver’s win over Portland. The 33-year-old’s three-point shot is back too, and Millsap is launching from beyond the arc with confidence. He was 2-3 from distance Friday, is shooting 40 percent from three this year and hitting 50 percent of his field goals — his highest mark since 2010-11. (Headband) Millsap is shooting 28-47 from the field since he took an elbow from Karl-Anthony Towns 10 days ago in Minnesota.
4. Millsap’s offensive stats are a nice bonus, but his worth is found in Denver’s stout defense, which is still hanging tough at third overall more than a quarter of the way through the season. Millsap has completely changed the Nuggets’ attitude and demeanor. Denver is a tough-minded team who’s not going to get demoralized from a cold stretch or if they give up a quick 10-0 run. Unlike last season, the Nuggets bounce back from those types of stretches this year.
He’s also turned Denver into a different team away from Pepsi Center. Without Millsap for much of 2017-18, the Nuggets went 15-26 on the road but are already 6-4 this season with impressive wins over the Clippers on opening night, in Oklahoma City and now in Portland. Millsap addressed his teammates in a late fourth-quarter huddle as the Trail Blazers were making their comeback and stressed to his guys that if they want to be a playoff team — like they say they do — it was put up or shut up time, as Michael Malone depicted in his postgame interview.
You can’t put a price on that.
5. Denver’s defense wasn’t as stout as its been so far this season, but the Nuggets were able to hold Damian Lillard, who’s had some big games against Jamal Murray and Gary Harris in the past, to 15 points on 6-16 shooting.
Harris checked Lillard for most of Friday night, but it took a team effort to shut the All-NBA guard down.
It was another solid defensive showing from Jokic who, I’ll say it, has turned himself not into an average defender this year, but a good one. Those drills that the Nuggets had Jokic doing this offseason back in Serbia to improve his foot speed are paying off.
Look at those feet move.
