The Nuggets began their post-All-Star Weekend portion of the schedule with a game that had a familiar feel to it — play hard, play well for stretches, but lose in the end.
The Nuggets dropped an 89-81 decision to the Milwaukee Bucks, one of the NBA’s most-improved teams, Friday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. The difference was a second half in which Milwaukee was able to find itself offensively, keep the Nuggets out of the lane defensively and hold them off in the end.
For the Nuggets, the second half got away from them as soon as they were no longer able to get high-percentage shots in the paint or at the rim. In a first half in which the Nuggets led 44-42, they lived in the paint, scoring 24 points.
In the second half, the Nuggets only got 14 points in the paint.
That meant jump shots became the norm. And the Nuggets did not shoot well enough to justify a final 24 minutes of attempts that mostly came from the perimeter. They shot 7-of-26 from 3-point range, and a 5-of-24 spurt in the second half ultimately led to their demise.
“I thought our offense’s inability to really get any penetration made us settle for trying to do stuff off the dribble,” Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said. “We’re not an (isolation), off-the-dribble team. We ended up shooting a lot of 3s, a lot of contested shots with the shot clock winding down because the ball wasn’t moving.”
The Nuggets played the game without point guard Ty Lawson, who was held out after an unexcused absence from practice Wednesday, missing the session because he could not make a flight back to Denver from Las Vegas in time.
So veteran guard Jameer Nelson started in his place, but it was rookie center Jusuf Nurkic who was the catalyst for the Nuggets’ productive first half. But he could not find the range in the second half.
Nurkic scored all 11 of his points in the first half. For the game, he finished with 15 rebounds and three blocks.
Wilson Chandler led the Nuggets with 19 points.
“Our shooters didn’t shoot the ball as well tonight,” Shaw said. “But just that big third quarter that we gave up and we started fouling a lot towards the end of the game, that was the difference.”
Khris Middleton led a balanced Milwaukee lineup with 15 points. Six of the eight Bucks players who played scored in double figures.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or
