Preseason Recap: Nuggets Thoroughly Dominate Suns

The Denver Nuggets continued their hot preseason play Friday night with a 106-81 rout of the Phoenix Suns at the Pepsi Center without Danilo Gallinari, Emmanuel Mudiay and Randy Foye. Denver established its lead early on and, aside from an early fourth quarter lapse, kept its foot on the gas pedal until the final buzzer, moving to 4-1 in preseason action.

Kenneth Faried set the tone early on for the Nuggets, playing motivated defense on fellow 2011 first-round draft pick Markieff Morris. Morris never found a rhythm and finished with seven points on 3-of-13 shooting, plus three fouls and three turnovers. Phoenix’s stretch 4 even got a technical foul out of frustration.

Faried, on the other hand, got out in transition frequently, crashed the boards (five offensive caroms on the night) and attacked the basket (7-of-11 from the free-throw line).

Wilson Chandler was another leader of the Denver effort, with active hands on defense and on the glass. He tallied 19 rebounds and got his hands up to deflect many passes. By halftime, the two veterans had led the Nuggets to a 63-37 lead.

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The effort of Faried and Chandler was a team-wide theme Friday night. The Nuggets’ energy was fabulous, resulting in crisp defensive rotations, quick ball movement and urgent transitions from defense to offense. Head coach Mike Malone’s defensive emphasis is surely having an impact on the team.

On the game, Denver out-rebounded Phoenix 62-40, outshot them 41 percent to 33.3 percent and earned 39 free throws to the Suns’ 25.

We mentioned Morris’ technical earlier, but Phoenix’s Tyson Chandler also got steamed about a perceived miss call early in the third quarter and earned two techs in the matter of seconds, resulting in an ejection.

The Nuggets did let their effort sag to begin the fourth quarter, allowing a 10-0 run to the Suns that closed their lead to just nine points. But Denver quickly squashed the comeback hopes, ramping the effort back up and getting hot from three to finish the contest on a 22-6 run.

Besides Faried and Wilson Chandler, some other notable performers for Denver were as follows:

Nikola Jokic– The Serbian big man scored a remarkable 19 points on just seven field-goal attempts, making all six of his free throws and his only three-pointer. He did foul out and is still learning how to use his big body, but he looked good on defense for the most part and obviously showed his excellent touch around the rim and away from it.