It was the moment Jamal Murray dreamed about as a young hooper growing up in Kitchener, Ontario. The lights were bright, the crowd was packed, the stage was international. He had finally arrived in the playoffs.
His first defensive possession developed exactly to plan. Murray opened the game guarding Spurs’ guard Derrick White and his outstretched left hand poked the ball free on White’s errant bounce pass to teammate DeMar DeRozan. Five long dribbles later, Murray was at the opposite 3-point line. He rose and fired. Clang.
There was more of that to come. Murray and the Nuggets wore out Pepsi Center’s rims in the arena’s first playoff game since 2013. Denver shot a miserable 6-28 from 3-point land and fell to the Spurs 101-96. The Nuggets will head back to the drawing board but won’t take much red ink to their game plan.
“Make shots,” Michael Malone said in regards to the adjustments he’ll make for Game 2 Tuesday in Denver. “I think it’s simply stated.”
Denver missed everything it threw up Saturday. Bunnies around the rim, wide open runners that Monte Morris makes in his sleep, and uncontested 3s that Morris, Murray and Malik Beasley, who all shot it 37% or better from 3-point range this season, hit with regularity all year long.
It was Denver’s nerves, right? This was Murray, Morris, Beasley, Gary Harris, and Nikola Jokic’s first ever playoff games after all. A young, nervous team getting overpowered by the grizzled veteran club that has been there before. That’s the narrative that was supposed to write the story of Game 1.
“No,” Murray said when asked if nerves were a factor. “We were just really excited. For a lot of us it was our first playoff game. We came out with a lot of energy. A lot of defensive energy, a lot of intensity. All of that played a factor. I don’t think it was nerves. I just think we were just overly excited.”
His coach agreed. So did most who were canvassed for their opinion inside Denver’s locker room. Perhaps some nervous energy rose to the surface during the opening few minutes of the first quarter, including on Murray’s wild game-opening 3-point attempt. But “that’s natural,” as Paul Millsap put it. If there were any nerves, they were quickly gone after a few times up and down the floor.
Instead, the Nuggets just missed, and then missed some more. According to Second Spectrum’s shot quality metric, (the likelihood of an average player converting the shots in question), Denver generated better shots than San Antonio. The Nuggets scored a 49.3 to the Spurs’ 46.1 The difference between the two team’s shot probability and actual Effective Field Goal Percentage? Minus-3.9 for Denver. Plus-6.3 for San Antonio. The Nuggets missed one open look after another that are usually made.
“I think we were playing loose for the most part,” said Monte Morris, who shot just 1-6 from the field. “We just didn’t make a lot of shots. When we don’t make shots we tend to struggle. That’s just basketball.”
Morris came into his first playoff game calm, cool and collected thanks in part to a post-shootaround huddle where Malone instructed Millsap, the Nuggets player with the most playoff experience under his belt and Denver’s “vet” and “leader,” according to Morris, to address the team about the road ahead. Millsap drove home a message that the intensity in the playoffs will heighten, but at the end of the day, it’s just basketball and continued to pound that notion into the brain’s of the second-youngest roster in the league throughout the night, calling impromptu huddles during timeouts and breaks in the action.
The Nuggets’ 3-point struggles were just part of a disturbing trend that’s followed Denver this season. Ever since the All-Star break, the Nuggets haven’t been able to find their collective rhythm from beyond the arc. Post mid-February siesta, Denver ranks just 22nd in 3-point shooting. Sure there could have been some nerves that played a part in Denver’s defeat, but the Nuggets haven’t been able to make their 3s for months whether it’s a Wednesday in Minnesota or their much-anticipated 2019 playoff debut played in front of millions.
Denver’s inability to shoot from 3 has become a puzzling trend because at their core the Nuggets are a quality shooting team. Morris was rock solid all year from beyond the arc, converting on better than 40% of his 3s. Murray had lacked inconsistency from deep but still wound up at 37% from distance this season. Injuries have robbed Gary Harris and Will Barton of their seasons, but they’ve still made their triples even when banged up before this year.
It’s why Denver is still confident heading into a must-win Game 2. The Nuggets were in unison postgame, dejected at the loss especially because they were one Murray elbow jumper away from capturing a come-from-behind win, but also because they saw everything the Spurs threw their way coming. They thought the Spurs would send double teams Jokic’s way all evening and force the ball out of the All-Star’s hands. San Antonio did just that. They generated open looks too. The Nuggets’ coaching staff tracks how many “paint 3s” Denver attempts each game. Essentially, it’s any 3-point attempt that comes off a pass from the paint. The assistant coach on the bench assigned to tally that stat may have needed a fresh sheet of paper by halftime based on how many of those Denver manufactured through two quarters.
Jokic recorded a 10-point, 14-rebound, 14-assist playoff triple-double in the loss. He could have had 20-plus assists if the Nuggets shot just their season average from beyond the arc.
“They didn’t do nothing different defensively, to be honest,” Morris said. “They were doing the same thing they did the game where we beat them. We just didn’t make shots.”
Murray didn’t hide his frustration after his 8-24 shooting performance. Around 30 minutes after most of his teammates had left the arena, he entered the Nuggets’ locker room drenched in sweat from a postgame shooting clinic with his dad, Roger, on Denver’s upstairs practice court. His answers were short and to the point, but put forward a similar message to many of his teammates and his coach that the Nuggets just need to keep shooting.
“We’ll regroup, we’ll watch film, we’ll clean some things up and most importantly in the playoffs, you never get too high, you never get too low,” Malone said. “It’s the first one to four. We look forward to coming out in Game 2 and going to San Antonio with the series tied 1-1.”
