Denver Nuggets win Game 5 in 2OT, Dame goes “superhuman”

The Denver Nuggets have won Game 5 of the first-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers in a nailbiter that went to double overtime. Oh, and it might’ve just been the best game in the entire playoffs.

Damian Lillard scorched the Nuggets’ pick-and-roll coverage en route to 55 points with ten assists while Nikola Jokic played a leading role for Denver with 38 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists, and four blocks. He’s now the first player to ever tally those numbers in NBA playoff history.

As head coach Michael Malone told Royce Young, ESPN after the game: “Damian Lillard was superhuman tonight.”

Whether or not you thought the late foul call on Austin Rivers was deserving or not, Dame took over as only he can, hitting consecutive threes to force two overtimes and broke the NBA playoff record for threes in a game with ten.

And if the one overtime wasn’t stressful enough for Denver fans, Dame thought it’d be a great idea to do it a second time.

This time, head coach Michael Malone inserted Shaq Harrison into the game as he did a solid job defending Dame at the end of Game 2. It didn’t matter.

Regardless of whatever ‘secret sauce’ it might seem like the Nuggets figured out on Dame, if he’s going to step back and make contested threes, they will just have to live with it.

But at the end of the day, Nikola Jokic proved to be too good for the Portland Trail Blazers. With Jusuf Nurkic in foul trouble, before eventually getting fouled out in the fourth quarter, Jokic had a buffet of post-ups in front of him.

In the past few games, Facundo Campazzo has had to step up, taking on much of the point guard duties, tonight, it was Monte Morris. Morris played 41 minutes, scoring 28 points with five assists, and was a +7 on the night.

He just seemed to be everywhere, running about a million dribble-hand-offs with Jokic and getting him the ball in the post when he had a mismatch (pretty much all of the two overtime sessions).

In true Monte Morris fashion, he took care of the ball and didn’t register a single turnover. On the season, Morris had the single-lowest turnover percentage for a point guard who played at least 1,000 minutes per Cleaning the Glass.

Michael Porter Jr. had a bounce-back game after his 1-3 shooting in the last game, pouring in 26 points on 10-13 shooting as well as hitting one of the most important shots of the night.

As MPJ added after the game, he knows he has to force the issue and get himself involved:

"“I can’t let a team or gameplan take me out of a game, like what happened in Game 4. Even though they’re doing a really tough job on me, I’ve got to continue to help my team any way I can.”"

The series now heads back to Portland for Game 6 and the Denver Nuggets have an opportunity to win the series on the away floor to meet the winner of Suns vs Lakers.

Denver Nuggets Game 5 recap: Final thoughts

• Once again, Nikola Jokic got Jusuf Nurkic in foul trouble, sending him off before the first overtime. If Jokic can keep getting his former teammate in foul trouble, Portland will need more 50-point games from Dame just to stay in it.
• Robert Covington missed two very makeable dunks down the end of this game and while it didn’t end up mattering, the score should be closer than what it actually is.
• After the NBA bubble, the playoffs the year prior, and now this series, Nuggets playoff basketball is a must-watch. As ESPN‘s Zach Lowe put it: “The Nuggets are congenitally unable to play anything but insane series.”
• In this series, whichever side wins the first quarter ends up winning the game. It’s a very small sample size but it’s still the case after five matchups.
• With the chance to clinch the series in Game 6, this injury-riddled Nuggets team might even be favored in the second round without Chris Paul for Phoenix or Anthony Davis for Los Angeles at 100 percent.