The truth of the matter was Wednesday night’s game meant so much more to the Nuggets than the Portland Trail Blazers or any other team providing the opposition. At least it should have.
Five straight Denver losses. A 1-5 record. A chance to get things headed in the right direction.
The Nuggets blew that chance. Big time.
They allowed the second highest-scoring first half in Portland’s history — 84 points, each one of which stung more than the previous as it went through the net. After 24 minutes, the Nuggets’ sixth consecutive loss was a lock. What’s not a lock after a 130-113 defeat at the Pepsi Center is the immediate future of this team.
At this point, the Nuggets are a mess. The talent is not playing up to par. The little things that had cost the Nuggets games in what was a somewhat acceptable fashion have ballooned into big things that are getting them blown out.
“I think it was pretty obvious,” Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said about what went wrong. “We ended up giving up 39 points in the first quarter, followed by a 45-point second quarter. Got booed by the fans, which we deserved, based on the effort that we gave out there on the floor.”
They have lost the last five games by allowing an average of 119.4 points. On Wednesday, Portland torched them to the tune of 51.1 percent from the field and 16 more 3-pointers to add to the 16 they nailed on the Nuggets on Sunday.
Defending without fouling was an original problem, but now so is getting back in transition, getting out to shooters and seemingly everything in between. The Nuggets gamble on defense when they shouldn’t — and pay for that.
In short, they’re doing things that bad teams do.
The fool’s gold part of Wednesday night was the Nuggets’ start. They played well and with energy right out of the gate, sprinting out to a 9-2 lead. But the Blazers caught them in a blink of an eye. And before they knew it, Portland hit them with a 26-8 run to take a 28-17 lead with 3:33 left in the first quarter. The lead inflated all the way up to 36 points in the early stages of the third quarter.
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“It was up and down,” Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari said of the team’s effort. “We have to be more constant during the game. We have good stretches and bad stretches. Unfortunately, the bad stretches were really bad.”
Shaw shook up the lineup in the second half, benching regular starters Arron Afflalo, Kenneth Faried and Timofey Mozgov in favor of J.J. Hickson, Alonzo Gee and Darrell Arthur.
Those defensive-minded players provided a bit of a spark, outscoring Portland 26-13 about halfway through the third quarter, but the Trail Blazers regained their foothold and pushed the lead back up.
“I started a different group in the second half, a group that I thought was going to at least fight and go out fighting, regardless of what happened,” Shaw said. “So we go from a 45-point second quarter to a 46-point second half that we gave up. So I commend the guys — Ty (Lawson), Alonzo Gee, Wilson (Chandler), D.A. (Darrell Arthur) and J.J. (Hickson), who started the third quarter and didn’t give up, kept fighting. And just showed what a little bit of effort can do. There’s nothing else that needs to be said other than the guys who give that kind of effort will be rewarded by being on the floor and playing.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or
