Nuggets Know: Wins—Not Margins—Matter Most

“You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again.”
– Pat Riley

There’s a certain kind of loss that’s hard to wrap your head around in the moment. Not just because of the scoreboard, but because of how car-crashy loud it was on the way there—how out-of-hand it felt, how fast the unraveling happened, how impossible mounting the comeback felt by the time you realized how quickly the other team was running away from you. Once, long ago, Denver was on the winning side of one of those games…

Wednesday night in Oklahoma City, the Denver Nuggets were on the other side of the blowout. A 149–106 dismantling at the hands of the Thunder. An NBA playoff record for points in a first half. A night where the home crowd finally turned against former star Russell Westbrook with a boo or two, where Shai Gilgeous-Alexander turned into a conductor of chaos, and where Denver’s MVP and its identity both disappeared before the end of the third quarter.

The box score looked like a glitch. Eight Thunder players in double figures. An 87-point first half. Nikola Jokic fouling out before anyone had time to catch their breath. Nothing worked. Nothing felt grounded. It was a beatdown that had a beat OKC could dance to.

A beatdown that is still a single beat, and means exactly as much as Denver lets it.

Because the beauty, or cruelty, or maybe just the simplicity of the NBA playoffs is this: you can lose a game by 43 points, and it still only counts as ONE loss. Oklahoma City doesn’t get bonus credit for being dominant. Nor do they currently have home court advantage. And Denver doesn’t carry over any deficit except the sting of having to fly home (hopefully) angry.

The Nuggets are tied 1–1 in this second-round series. They need to win three more games to advance. They can lose two more along the way—by one point, by 50 points, by whatever Oklahoma City can throw at them—and if they win those three by the slimmest of margins, they move on. That’s the magic marginal math. The entire mission. Point differential? Immaterial.

Three. More. Wins. They’ve done it before. They know what this looks like.

Game 1 was Denver’s. Barely. A comeback win sealed on a catch-and-shoot three from Aaron Gordon with just 2.8 seconds left. The Thunder had their chances—most notably when Chet Holmgren missed a pair of free throws late with a one-point lead—but the Nuggets did what champions do. They stayed close. They stayed ready. And when the door opened, they walked through it.

Nikola Jokic had 42 points and 22 rebounds in that win. Gordon, as he’s done recently before, made a play that lives in Nuggets lore forever. Jamal Murray chipped in 21, and Russell Westbrook—once the heartbeat of the Thunder—delivered a vintage reminder of his MVP-caliber play with a killer game and an assist on the game-winner.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was enough. It was One.

Game 2 was the opposite in nearly every way. From the jump, Oklahoma City played like a team possessed, or at least one that hadn’t slept since Monday night, and wanted to give the Nuggets nightmares instead. They came out blazing, scoring 45 (to Denver’s 21) in the first quarter and never letting up. Gilgeous-Alexander barely missed a shot. Chet Holmgren was everywhere. The Thunder were rolling at every juncture. And Denver? They looked disjointed, discombobulated, and disoriented.

Joker fouled out late in the third, finishing with 17 points, 8 rebounds, and a bucket full of frustrated stares at the officials. The Thunder’s lead ballooned to 49 points at one point. The game was effectively over by halftime. But as pointed and decisive as the outcome was—it was still just One.

In a loss that counts the same as a one-point overtime heartbreaker, the truth is this: Denver’s goal hasn’t changed. They’re heading back to Ball Arena tied at 1–1, with home-court advantage now in their favor. They’ve won ugly games and lost blowouts before. What matters now is finding three more wins before the Thunder do.

There’s something revealing about how a team responds after a loss like this one. Interim coach David Adelman didn’t sugarcoat it. “We got punked,” he said. “We didn’t play well enough, and they came out with the right intensity.”

Pretty straightforward. Oklahoma City played the best game of their young season. Denver played one of its worst. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that blowouts rarely linger when the calendar flips and the location changes. You don’t carry the scoreboard with you. Hopefully, the only thing you carry is the lesson.

For Denver, that lesson is probably less about strategy and more about urgency. Wednesday showed that you can’t let down for a moment against this Thunder team. Not even for a possession. They’re fast, young, fearless, and historically efficient when rolling downhill. SGA is capable of dictating the entire flow of a game with a handful of shots. If you’re a step slow, it’s already too late.

The Nuggets know that. They knew it before Wednesday night. But boy, do they KNOW it now. Now they feel it. There’s a difference. Losing by 43 forces self-reflection in a way that Game 1’s narrow escape didn’t.

The bright side for Denver is that this banged-up roster has always responded to adversity. They’ve won series where they were down 3–1. Twice in a row, to be exact. They’ve bounced back from double-digit road losses and taken control the next night. Even against these Thunder, this season. Jokic doesn’t get rattled. Murray finds rhythm when he’s counted out. Gordon’s identity isn’t built on the stat sheet—it’s in the tough minutes, the rebounds in traffic, the bully-ball plays that don’t make highlight reels.

And they’ve been here before over the playoff years. Coming off losses that led to an ultimate win. Against Phoenix. Against Minnesota. Against Miami. Championship runs are not built on dominance alone. They’re built on resilience. On the ability to shake off the worst and find your best, even if only for three or four crucial games.

This series, even now, feels destined to go long. The Thunder are too good, too confident, too deep to go quietly. And the Nuggets? Well, they just watched a 43-point ass-whupping become One the moment the final buzzer sounded.

All it takes now is three wins. They don’t have to be pretty. They don’t have to be dominant. They just have to be.

If Oklahoma City wins two more games by an ungodly amount of points each, and Denver wins three games by a single point, it’s still the Nuggets who advance. That’s the beauty of the playoffs. Style points? Stuff ’em. Control doesn’t matter if you give it away at the wrong time. See Game 1. There are no rollover points. Just wins and losses. Survive and advance.

One-one. That’s the series. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Oklahoma City can keep the playoff scoring records. Let them hold dear the 87-point half and this wire-to-wire embarrassment. Only one of these teams has a recent ring. Nuggets Nation just needs three more wins. However they come. However ugly. However close.

Because in the end, the only number that matters is 4.