"That guy has got some balls": The Nuggets have a warrior in Torrey Craig

For the first time all season, a united Pepsi Center crowd chanted for someone other than Nikola Jokic.

“M-V-P”, “M-V-P” was replaced with “TOR-EY”, “TOR-EY” as the Nuggets’ small forward stood near Denver’s bench, nose still bleeding from a first-half fall that sent him to the locker room. The chants grew louder as Craig approached to the free-throw line.

“That guy has got some balls,” Michael Malone said. “He’s got toughness. I’ll go to war with that kid any day.”

Craig jumped for a rebound early in the second quarter, and as he fell to the ground, his face hit the back of Monte Morris’ leg. Blood spilled on the floor as trainers rushed to Craig with a towel over his face and eventually took him back to the Nuggets’ locker room.

Malik Beasley started the second half in his place, but Craig returned to the bench later in the third quarter after he was fitted for a mask.

“If you can’t go, you don’t have to be Willis Reed for us,” Malone told Craig referencing the Knicks’ center who wasn’t expected to play in a 1970 playoff game but surprised the fans by walking onto the court during warmups scoring New York’s first two field goals. “We got Game 3 coming up on Friday.”

But Craig walked to the scorer’s table a few minutes later. He immediately collected a defensive rebound and drained one of the Nuggets’ six 3s on the evening as Denver trimmed Portland’s lead to 14 points by the end of the period. Craig finished with seven points and four rebounds and shadowed Damian Lillard for most of the 20 minutes he spent on the floor.

Torrey Craig comes back to the game with a mask after sustaining a nose injury

Grinding it out for the playoffs 🙏 pic.twitter.com/YSPVyXHUKM

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 2, 2019

“I think Torrey Craig is the unsung hero of the game,” Malone said. “He leaves it all on the floor every night.”

The Nuggets couldn’t channel Craig’s aggressive mentality for 48 minutes Wednesday. Denver shot just 6 of 29 from 3 in the 97-90 loss and only 16 of 26 from the free-throw line. Postgame, Malone stated he would have liked for his players to attack the basket more instead of settling for 3s when their shots weren’t falling.

“We were getting such open looks that I understand our players shooting the shot,” Malone said. “But when you’re not having a night where you’re making shots consistently, you got to attack the basket, you have to put pressure on the rim, you have to think attack instead of settle and I thought in the first half we didn’t have that mindset.”

Craig wasn’t available for comment postgame and said he was having trouble breathing but flew with the team to Portland Wednesday night. Game 3 is Friday, and Craig is expected to be in the lineup where he’ll once again line up across from Lillard, who he helped limit to 14 points on 5-of-17 shooting in Game 2.

“That’s him. He’s a fighter,” Jamal Murray said. “He goes out there, plays his heart out defensively, makes those shots, gets to the rim. He’s one of these guys that is so crucial to our team for that reason when he’s on (Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard) throughout the whole game and he’s just trying to make it tough on him. Kudos to him and all the credit. You can tell by the way the fans appreciated him. He was doing well.”

Murray came to Craig’s defense in the fourth quarter when he went to the floor again after colliding with Enes Kanter while the Trail Blazers’ center turned to run up the floor after a Portland free-throw. Murray and Kanter had to be separated at mid-court as a timeout was called and both players were assessed technical fouls.

“I thought he hit Torrey, again,” said Murray, who sat out the final 53 seconds of regulation after he reaggravated a thigh injury by running into a screen that he suffered in the first round against the Spurs. Murray is also dealing with a sore shoulder. “It is what it is.”

“It was a free-throw box out and then this dude just literally pushed me into his teammate and then I knocked somebody down,” said Kanter when asked about the incident. “Then they started getting into my face. I’m like ‘I didn’t do anything. Your teammates pushed me into you.'”

The Nuggets aren’t panicking after dropping Game 2, especially in the fashion they did. Denver shot its second-worst percentage from 3 of the playoffs in the loss, and the Nuggets generated one open look after another. The ball refused to go through the rim. Nikola Jokic also struggled to have the same impact he did in Game 1, finishing with 16 points on 7 of 17 shooting, 14 rebounds and seven assists.

Tuesday’s loss played out in similar fashion to the Nuggets’ Game 1 defeat at the hands of the Spurs in their first-round series. Denver shot 6 of 28 from 3 that night.

“We’ve been here before, like against the Spurs and I feel like the Spurs have a little more firepower. The Spurs probably have more depth, and their bench is deeper,” Monte Morris told BSN Denver while adding that he’s missed all 11 of his 3s in the playoffs. “Portland’s a good team. We’ve just got to do what we do. We missed shots. It happens.”

Just as the Nuggets needed his defense on DeMar DeRozan throughout their series against the Spurs, Denver will call on its defensive ace’s lock-down ability in 48 hours for Game 3 to once again check the Trail Blazers’ All-Star point guard.

“He’s a warrior, man. He fights. He’s a fighter,” Paul Millsap said of Craig. “I hate to see something like that happen but for him to come back and be inspiring like he did, it was unbelievable.”