The Denver Nuggets have already played six back-to-back games this season so they’re happy to welcome a team that finds itself in that situation.
The Brooklyn Nets continued their five-game Western Conference road trip with a 116-112 win at Phoenix on Wednesday night and now take on a relatively rested Nuggets team in Denver on Thursday night.
Brooklyn split the first two games of the trip and has won seven of nine after Wednesday’s victory. It was an emotional game for Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, who were traded from the Suns to the Nets in the Kevin Durant deal last season.
Bridges scored 21 and Johnson had 15 against their former team.
One of the bigger reasons for Brooklyn’s recent surge is an improved perimeter defense. The Nets have focused on protecting the paint but it has allowed teams to succeed from deep. In a 131-118 loss at Sacramento on Monday night, the Kings made a franchise-record 25 shots from 3-point range — indicative of Brooklyn’s earlier struggles against the long ball.
Phoenix was 9-for-28 from deep on Wednesday.
“We’ve just got to execute our game plan. Knowing when to rotate, we’re helping trying to get the ball out of the paint,” Bridges said after the 13-point loss on the first game of the road trip. “So, we’ve got to be just locked in on knowing when to step up. And when one guy is helping you, he’s trusting his brother to step up, and if he doesn’t, it’s going to be wide open. So we’ve just got to just follow the game plan and lock in on it.”
The Nets will have to defend Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, who is expected to return from missing Denver’s most recent win — in Chicago on Tuesday night. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is in the concussion protocol and will not play. Caldwell-Pope was injured when he slammed into Nikola Vucevic in the first half and didn’t play after intermission.
Neither did Nikola Jokic, but it wasn’t due to injury. Jokic was ejected with 1:08 left in the first half after directing an expletive at a referee over a foul that he thought should have been called. It was his second ejection of the season — the other one occurred Nov. 20 in Detroit — a game the Nuggets also won.
“We won both games so maybe that’s the key,” Jokic said after Monday’s win. “Maybe that’s the way to go.”
It helped that the reserves stepped up. Denver was without three starters in the second half — Murray, Jokic and Caldwell-Pope — but the bench scored 50 points and Reggie Jackson, starting only because of Murray’s injury, had a team-high 25 points.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone has stuck with the bench in order for the young players to develop but one who has fallen out of the rotation is Zeke Nnaji. Nnaji signed a four-year, $32 million extension in October but has lost playing time to veteran Deandre Jordan.
Jordan had nine points and 10 rebounds in the win over the Bulls. After playing in only one of Denver’s first 16 games, he has played in eight of his team’s past nine games.
Nnaji, on the other hand, has played only once in the last six games after playing in each of Denver’s first 19 games.
–Field Level Media