All at once, home is starting to look a whole lot like home again for the Nuggets.
Thirty-point quarters. Fifty- and 60-point halves. The Nuggets are getting to those levels again for those who have shown up to the Pepsi Center of late.
And Wednesday night’s was their most impressive victory yet.
They dismantled the Eastern Conference-leading Atlanta Hawks 115-102, a game that was in no way as close as the final score looked, but turned out cozy after Hawks reserves mounted a big comeback in garbage time.
“We knew they weren’t going to give in,” Nuggets interim coach Melvin Hunt said. “We just had to keep fighting.”
After losing 10 straight at home, the Nuggets have now won three of four at the Pepsi Center, they’ve scored at least 100 points in all of those games, and, on Wednesday, put an effort on the court that was too intense for even the normally high-energy Hawks to handle.
Sure, the coach has changed. But what else has been going well for the Nuggets at home?
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“We’re going,” guard Randy Foye said. “Ty (Lawson’s) pushing it. Kenneth (Faried) is running for alley-oops and dunks. And then you have those 3-point shooters. It’s basically pick your poison, and that’s the difference. It’s more of a sense of urgency to run — and to get our fans those tacos if we score 110.”
Unfortunately for the fourth meal-craving fans, the taco promotion is no longer. But winning at the Pepsi Center and scoring a bunch of points while doing so hasn’t completely fizzled out.
Defense and sizzling 3-point shooting sparked the rout Wednesday. The Nuggets kept the energy high, successfully chasing the Hawks off the 3-point line in the first half and then challenging the midrange or layup attempt at the rim. The Hawks didn’t score more than 22 points in either of the first two quarters.
Then there was a shooting touch that never cooled off.
“I don’t think we are doing too many things different, but I think our chemistry is coming around,” Hunt said. “Guys are getting used to playing with each other. It all comes down to execution and guys playing hard while having discipline.”
It started with Danilo Gallinari. He has played well recently anyway, but Gallo was particularly dialed in against the Hawks, scoring 18 of his game-high 23 points in the first half. He led a tidal wave of Nuggets 3-point shots. Gallinari hit 4-of-5, and the Nuggets tied a season high with 13 as a team.
“I thought everybody did a great job,” Gallinari said. “Everybody was in a very good rhythm from outside.”
And no, this wasn’t a fast-breaking exhibition.
The Nuggets had just one fast-break point — that’s right, one — going into a fourth quarter in which the outcome was never in doubt.
“They were committed to playing well for 48 minutes,” Hunt said. “It’s a really good win against a really good team.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or
