SALT LAKE CITY — The Nuggets went down fouling. They went down screaming. They went down missing. They went down stumbling and blundering. They went down slipping and sliding. They went down, down, down in the final 6 1/2 minutes.
But they went down trying.
The Nuggets went down hard, but they went down working hard.
“Obviously, you’ve got to have talented players, but we must have players who play harder and work harder than the other team. We will.”
So said, on Friday night, the owner of the Nuggets franchise — Enos Stanley Kroenke, named at birth for two baseball players who always outplayed, out-tried, out-worked the opposition.
The Nuggets lost because of a Jazzmatazz in the last half of the last quarter of the last game of the Denver basketball-hockey seasons.
All the Nugs and the Avs got is get ’em next year.
And Kroenke, who has been a full or part owner of teams that have won pro football, pro hockey, pro soccer, pro indoor football and pro lacrosse, still has not won one in the sports he loves best — pro basketball. But, even as the Nuggets were being beat up at the finish, Kroenke was upbeat at the conclusion.
The Nuggets could have thrown themselves under the team bus with less than four minutes remaining in the first half. They trailed by 15 points and looked lethargic, lackluster, languid and completely done in.
However, The unlikely, unbelievable Lone Ranger rode to the rescue. Hi-yo, Joey Graham.
Pal Joey?
In the previous five games of the series with the Jazz Graham had played 1:45, not at all, 2:39, 20 seconds and not a second. He had scored a total of three points.
It was as if acting coach Adrian Dantley could have thrown in the towel or throw in Green Eggs and Graham.
Graham scored 18 points in the second quarter — on a 3-pointer, on 7-of-9 two pointers, on a free throw, and he had three rebounds and a steal to become the Nuggets’ new life-force.
The Nuggets actually had a shot at the end of the first half to take the lead.
They were down by two, but not out of the series.
Utah’s Paul Millsap “likes to muscle people, and he’s been effective in the series doing it, but Graham wouldn’t let him muscle, and muscled him back,” said the Nuggets owner, who could become a color commentator or a columnist, but neither pays billions of dollars.
“Joey came in and was a good wild card for us,” acting coach Adrian Dantley said. “He gave us a lift and kept us in the game.”
With the Nuggets picking up what Graham was laying down to delay what had become a Jazz festival in the first half, the lead three minutes into the third quarter was eight points.
The Nuggets had the lead!
Keep in mind that Carmelo Anthony was having a horrendous night, and J.R. Smith wasn’t interested in getting involved whatsoever, and the Nuggets couldn’t shoot for shot, and weren’t making free throws.
But then the team began to work harder, play harder, try harder — and coach harder.
Dantley drew a technical foul, even. He was coaching for all get, and the players getting all they could.
They were 12 lead changes, 15 ties and an up-and-down pace that hadn’t really existed here or there in the series.
The Nuggets were hanging with the Jazz, and the lead was three heading into the final period. The Jazz crowd wasn’t certain any more. There was major talk in Salt Lake City on Friday that this was a Game 7, not a 6. A loss here, and the short-handed Jazz might not have won another game in Denver, and the Nuggets would have been re-energized for Sunday.
Melo hit his third straight basket in the fourth to make it a 95 tie.
That was it.
The Nuggets looked so tired they couldn’t jump. Smith was even too tired, apparently, to participate in the huddles. If he comes back next season, everyone else should walk away — fans, players, coaches and owner.
From 6:33 to to 4:18 left in the game, the Nuggets scored zero points, the Jazz 11. It was over. The Nuggets were throwing up three-pointers and just plain throwing up, and the Jazz and its loyalists finally could relax.
Like Joe Frazier against Muhammad Ali, down goes the Nuggets, down goes the Nuggets, down goes the Nuggets.
They were outshot, outrebounded, out-assisted, out-statistic-ed.
But they played hard, tried hard and worked hard — rather than hardly working.
The Jazz and the Nuggets finished in a tie for the regular-season division title. But the Jazz won the postseason playoff title over the Nuggets. The teams are as close as their two states.
The end.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
