OKLAHOMA CITY — Mason Plumlee sent away Jerami Grant’s shot at the rim, and then he sent away something else afterward: the idea that making the playoffs is an unobtainable goal. The odds of snapping a four-season playoff drought aren’t in the Nuggets’ favor even after they earned a 126-125 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder to move two games back of the No. 8 Pelicans and No. 7 Jazz out West.
Denver has only six games to make up that ground. FiveThirtyEight is giving them a 22 percent chance to do so. Plumlee still thinks Denver can get there — especially with four of its final six games in the Mile High City.
“We’re believing,” Plumlee said. “We’re all believing. We love ourselves at home. We’re going to run off some games back there.”
The Nuggets are 27-10 at Pepsi Center this season. They host the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday, the Pacers on Tuesday and the Timberwolves on Thursday. Five of Denver’s final six games are against teams in line to the make the playoffs. The sixth game is against the Los Angeles Clippers, a team that’s neck and neck with Denver in the standings.
One key during this final stretch: Not letting pressure weigh Denver down.
“We feel like we’re a playoff team,” Paul Millsap said Friday after scoring a season-high 36 points. “We’ve just got to get there. We can’t get there being stressed. The best thing we can do is be free and go out there and play our game.”
The Nuggets blew a 10-point lead to Philadelphia on Monday and an eight-point lead to Toronto on Tuesday. They were up by as many as 15 in Oklahoma City before allowing the Thunder to take back control of the game. The Thunder were up by six with 2:22 to go. The Nuggets got some clutch baskets from Millsap and Will Barton to force overtime. Plumlee’s block and some timely free throw shooting sealed the win.
“They took control of the game,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “We had enough courage to go out there and answer that, handle the adversity on the road, execute free throws and come up with timely offensive stops. I think a lot of people have given up on us. Who cares? It’s about all those guys. They still believe, and I think how hard they fought tonight shows that.”
Belief was the common thread in the Nuggets’ locker room after they pulled out another wild win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. Qualifying for the postseason is still an uphill battle — especially with starting shooting guard Gary Harris sidelined for “another week at least.” But Denver isn’t giving up hope yet.
“It’s a good win,” Millsap said. “Especially the way we executed down the stretch. The way we did it was special because we’ve been struggling on this road trip of closing games out. To get a win like this against a really good team and beat them in the fashion that we did is special to us.”
