While Nikola Jokic had an off game by his lofty standards, his rejuvenated supporting cast took the Clippers to school and helped Denver pull out a massive Game 5 victory.
Jamal Murray, who dropped 43 points, came off screens aggressively all night, hungrily looking for the smallest crack of daylight to launch from his quiver of blue arrows. In a vintage game, "Playoff Murray" was the best player on the court, and it wasn’t even close.
Aaron Gordon punished smaller defenders and anchored a defense that wasn’t perfect, but good enough to get stops when it mattered. Michael Porter Jr. spaced the floor, showing no hesitation to launch his bread and butter jumper.
Russell Westbrook drove to the cup and hit open jumpers, doing his best Bruce Brown impression, while Christian Braun harassed and outhustled a lifeless James Harden.
The Nuggets are not the team they were two seasons ago. But on Tuesday night, they did an amazing impersonation of the 2023 championship team, and buried the Clippers behind an avalanche of shotmaking to take a decisive 3-2 series lead.
Denver should be pleased, for a variety of reasons. However, the job is not finished, and if their ceiling is any higher than just winning a round, Thursday night’s Game 6 at the Intuit Dome has to be a must-win, for a couple of reasons.
Nuggets have historically not fared well up 3-2 in the Jokic era
While the Jokic and Murray-led Nuggets have typically been dynamite with their backs against the wall, they have struggled with series leads, particularly when up 3-2 in this exact spot.
In 2019, they went up 3-2 versus the San Antonio Spurs after blowing them out in Game 5 in Denver. But in Game 6, the Spurs creamed Denver, and then in Game 7 back in Denver, they nearly came back from a 15-point second-half deficit in Game 7. It took a crazy Jamal Murray floater to seal the victory late in the game and prevent the Nuggets from blowing the first series of the Murray-Jokic era.
A round later, the Nuggets were up 3-2 versus the Portland Trailblazers after blitzing Portland by 26 points in Game 5. The Nuggets failed to close out a series on the road in Game 6 again, and then Portland came back and stole the series by beating Denver on their home floor in a heartbreaking Game 7, where Denver choked away a 20-point lead.
Fast forward to last year. The Nuggets beat Minnesota in Game 5 by 15 in the Mile High City behind an absolute masterpiece from Nikola Jokic. Going into Game 6, the Nuggets had won three straight games and had a chance to go to Minnesota and finish off the inexperienced T-Wolves in six.
Instead, Denver got humiliated by 45, which led to (gulp) last year’s Game 7. The Nuggets got off to a massive start, led by 20-plus points, and then Minnesota, well, we all know what happened.
If the Nuggets don’t want a repeat of the traumatizing history lessons from prior years, they need to go into Los Angeles with a purpose and intensity of a team that doesn’t want to play with fire in a Game 7, where anything can happen, and usually, pressure mounts on the home team. Homecourt advantage definitely matters, but I’ve also seen the Nuggets go 1-2 at home in Game 7’s with Jokic.
The Nuggets can’t let this series go to seven games if they want to beat OKC
The Nuggets can most definitely lose Game 6, and then come home to Denver to protect homecourt and win Game 7. That may be the most likely outcome. But while Denver and the Clippers are beating each other up and running their starters 40+ minutes, the young and hungry Oklahoma City Thunder are at home, resting, watching film, and licking their chops at whatever wounded animal limps out of this series alive.
The Nuggets are a team already at risk of wearing their starters into the ground, and the Thunder have more depth than the Nuggets could ever dream of.
If Denver can’t close this series out in six games, they’d have an extremely quick turnaround between Game 7 and Game 1 of the second round, which would give another advantage to the Thunder, who are already going to be big favorites versus whoever they play.
Denver might win this series even if they can’t pull out another road dub, but they would be much better off finishing off the Beard and the Klaw sooner, rather than later.