Paul Millsap's commanding first quarter sends Raptors into extinction

Through seven regular-season games, Denver’s offense had hovered around league-average. The Nuggets had shown flashes of their elite attack from last season but only for spurts, until tonight’s 129-111 win over the Toronto Raptors.

At Wednesday morning’s shootaround, Nuggets’ coach Michael Malone even said Millsap and center Nikola Jokic had to space the floor more and sacrifice for each other in order to open up the lanes needed for their offense to gell like it did a year ago.

“I think their biggest challenge is from a spatial standpoint,” Malone said of his two big men. “How do (they) play off one another and the reason that’s such an issue is both of those guys are used to being the same guy and its gotten better. Our spacing has gotten better in the last four games or so but early on it was, they’re both coming up the floor at the same time, they’re both on top of each other, they both want the ball in the same spot.”

“How do they space the floor off of each other read each other and sacrifice for each other because if one guy is up the floor, one guy has to sacrifice and stay low and vice versa,” Malone continued.

Millsap, who had struggled to shoot the ball over Denver’s first seven regular-season games and was only converting on 44 percent of his two-pointers and shooting just 31.6 percent from three, broke out. The $90 million-dollar man scored 13 points in the first quarter on a clean 4-7 shooting and finished the first-half with 19 and set the Nuggets in motion for the remaining three quarters.

The 32-year-old ignited a dormant Nuggets offense to 60 points over the first two quarters on 55 percent shooting. The spacing Malone was looking for was there and Millsap found himself wide open time and time again from beyond the arc.

Jokic was also a benefactor of Millsap’s play. Denver’s big man finished with seven first-half assists — one of which ended up in Millsap’s hands, but the Nuggets’ offense was vibing like it was last season.

Turnovers were another sticking point for Malone heading into tonight. Toronto was turning teams over 18 times per game — the third-best mark in the league — were second in deflections and also averaged 20 points off takeaways so far this season.

Denver limited themselves to 12 giveaways.

Toronto had no answer for the Nuggets’ attack. Denver jumped out to a 20-12 third-quarter advantage, stretched their lead to 24 and never looked back. After allowing just 98 points per game heading into their matchup with the Nuggets tonight, Denver reached 100 points in the third quarter.

In total, the Nuggets hit 16-32 (50.0 percent) from three-point range. Gary Harris finished with 15 points on 6-8 shooting including a trio of three-pointers. Jamal Murray, who continues to find his range from distance, scored 24 points on just ten shots and went 3-5 from three. Jokic registered eight points, grabbed 16 rebounds and tallied ten assists.

Millsap finished with 20 points.

The win was the Nuggets’ best performance of the season and a much-needed victory as they open a crucial six-game homestand.

Check out more postgame content below –

For 48 minutes, the Nuggets offense finally resembled like last year’s high-flying attack