"We'd love to break that drought,": Nuggets hoping to end three-year playoff absence

DENVER — The Denver Nuggets could be playoff-bound for the first time in three seasons.

There’s still 41 games to play, the regular season is only halfway over, but the feeling around the Nuggets is that they’re in position to grab the final playoff spot in Western Conference.

“It’s something that when we started training camp in Omaha we said, ‘hey it would be great to be a playoff team,'” Michael Malone said at shootaround Saturday. “It’s been three years since the Nuggets have been in the playoffs, we’d love to break that drought. But we’re not all consumed by it. It’s not like everything we do is scoreboard watching. Because we still have our own job to do.”

A large reason why the Nuggets might be able to sneak into the playoffs is because the eighth seed in the West could come in at under .500 for the first time since the 1996-97 season when the Los Angeles Clippers made it with a 36-46 record. Denver now finds themselves a full game up on Portland for the eighth seed as of today after the Trailblazers lost in Philadelphia Friday night on a Robert Covington three-pointer that handed Damian Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Co. their fourth-straight loss.

“I think you need to know where you’re at,” Nikola Jokic said. “We’re the eighth seed, one game up in front of Portland, Sacramento, New Orleans, but I don’t think we can think about that. We just have to think about our game.”

“It’s definitely too early to look at the standings every day,” Danilo Gallinari added. “It’s a long season, we still have a lot of games to play.

There’s going to be a significant amount of unforeseen bumps in the road that the Nuggets must overcome between now and a potential postseason berth. Injuries, which have already plagued Denver this year will pop up out of nowhere and other obstacles will have to be navigated.

Still, the Nuggets are excited to be in this position at the halfway point of the regular season but are cautious not to look too far ahead. It’s not a science, but according to 538.com Denver has the best chance out of all the eighth seed contenders to make the playoffs.

“41 games to go, it’s a lot of games,” Malone said. “It’s not like we’re in the last week of the season.”

Regular season game No. 42 | Denver Nuggets (17-24) vs Los Angeles Clippers (29-15)

Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado  | 7:00 PM MST | TV: Altitude

The Clippers were winners of seven in a row before suffering a loss Thursday to Minnesota. They’re without Chris Paul (thumb) after the point guard underwent surgery and will miss the next 6-8 weeks, and Blake Griffin (knee) who is still sidelined after undergoing arthroscopic surgery just over one month ago.

“They are still able to win, still a really good team,” Jokic said. “I think we need to play like we did the last four games and even the last game in San Antonio, I thought we played really good, we competed for 48 minutes and that’s our goal to compete and give ourselves a chance to win.”

As for keys to the game, it’s all about sticking the script that’s led Denver to the seventh-best Net Rating in the league over the past four games.

“Just play with pace, if they score on us, just play the next play,” Jokic said of the keys to a win tonight. “Play with pace, play together, play selfless.”