The Nuggets didn’t celebrate after their 108-90 Game 5 win over the Spurs. They barely even smiled.
Jamal Murray sat serenely at his locker with his right shoulder wrapped in ice and scrolled through his phone while a pair of noise-canceling headphones drowned out the commotion coming from the center of the Nuggets’ locker room where the media had congregated. Monte Morris donned a turquoise and creamsicle orange Jackie Moon jersey, reflected on Murray’s 23-point outing with the Nuggets’ starting point guard sitting five feet to his right and shared why he knew a competitor like Murray would bounce back in the series based on the edge he plays with during the two’s never-ending series of 1-on-1 games played on the Nuggets’ upstairs practice court. Paul Millsap, stoic as always, quietly dressed and then offered this description of what the Nuggets should expect from the Spurs in a potential closeout Game 6 Thursday evening.
“They’re going to fight. They’re going to lay it all on the line,” Millsap told BSN Denver. “It’s going to be tough. If we come out and continue to play like we’ve been playing, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Millsap knows what it will take for Denver to close out the Spurs in Game 6, something the Nuggets unquestionably want to accomplish Thursday to avoid a do-or-die Game 7 against Popovich’s bunch back at Pepsi Center on Saturday. The 34-year-old was on the losing end of a six-game series in 2017 when his Hawks fell to the Wizards in the first round of the playoffs but closed out Isaiah Thomas’ Celtics in six in the Boston Garden a season earlier.
To capture this Game 6, the Nuggets will need a defensive effort similar to the ones they gave in Games 4 and 5 when Denver held San Antonio to a combined 44% shooting from the field and the most-accurate 3-point shooting team in the league during the regular season to 29% from beyond the arc. Winning the rebounding battle, which the Nuggets finally did in Game 5 for the first time all series, will help too. The Spurs will be in desperation mode, as will San Antonio’s raucous home crowd, which is the message Michael Malone drove home to his team in the locker room following the Nuggets’ most impressive performance of the series.
“This will be the hardest game of your careers,” Malone told his team. “Closing out an opponent like San Antonio in their home gym is going to be one of the hardest things we’ve ever tried to do.”
The fact that the Nuggets have the ability to send the Spurs packing on their home turf after how Denver began the series is nearly unimaginable. The Nuggets looked lost at times in their series opener and parts of Game 2, excited that the playoffs were finally upon them but frantic and forgetful of the habits that helped them get to that point. But the Nuggets have grown years over the course of the last four games while crossing off a lot of boxes on their playoff debut checklists, like their first postseason win and their first playoff road victory. The next box is their first series win.
“I think our guys understand what’s at stake,” said Malone.
You believe what Malone is selling for a few reasons. The tone of Denver’s locker room after a dominant playoff win wasn’t that of a team looking to bask in what it just accomplished but one that was aware of the test that lies ahead in San Antonio. When asked what they expect in Game 6, Morris, Will Barton and Nikola Jokic all uttered Malone’s gospel verbatim, that Thursday’s matchup will be the toughest of their respective careers. The Nuggets have also shown a level of maturity over the last few games that’s impressive for such a young group that lacks playoff experience outside of Millsap, Thomas, Barton, and Mason Plumlee, a sign that they’re fully comfortable in a playoff setting and shaken the anxiety that they played with for portions of Games 1 and 2.
Denver has also shown consistency for the first time all series over its last two wins, the No. 1 thing Malone wants to see from his team in these playoffs. The Nuggets strung together their first back-to-back complete quarters in Game 4 in San Antonio and followed that stretch of impressive two-way basketball up with a convincing Game 5 win. The Nuggets have outscored the Spurs 193-153 since the second quarter of Game 4 and after shooting 21.4% from 3 in Game 1, Denver has converted on at least 40% of its triples in every matchup since.
By the time Game 6 typically rolls around, there’s a certain level of comfortability that both teams exude, even ones facing elimination. The Nuggets and Spurs both know each other’s plays, they know what one another is trying to do on offense and mismatches they’re both trying to exploit. By Game 6, the defense immediately calls out what actions are coming as soon as their opponent signals in the play or set they’ll run on offense. By now, all the secrets you entered the series with are out.
That should bode well for the Nuggets, who on paper are more talented and on the court have outplayed the Spurs in every matchup over the last two games. Based on the workmanlike and level-headed attitude that seeped out of Denver’s locker room following its Game 5 win, the Nuggets seem confident they’ll have a similar performance in Game 6.
