Jameer Nelson, shown here in a preseason game, scored a season-high 16 points against New Orleans on Wednesday. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
NEW ORLEANS — With only three truly good shooting nights under his belt, this season was living in a gray area for Nuggets guard Jameer Nelson. It wasn’t horrible. But it also wasn’t what he wanted to be. He’d already chatted with Nuggets coach Michael Malone about it.
“He keeps on telling me, ‘Coach, I warm up, I get going,'” Malone said, then grinned. “I was wondering when the hell it was going to happen.”
The answer: Tuesday night in New Orleans.
Nelson turned in his best shooting performance of the season, making 6-of-11 shots, including 4-of-6 from the 3-point line en route to a season-high 16 points. What’s more? Nelson provided the offense when the Nuggets needed it most.
Nelson scored his first points with 2:10 left in the third quarter. By the time he nailed his final shot, a 3-pointer with 39.5 seconds left in the fourth to seal the game, he’d scored all 16 of points in a compact and efficient span of roughly 13 minutes, 30 seconds.
Danilo Gallinari, for one, appreciated the timing, saying Nelson made shots “when we needed them. We were up by 10 and they were (cutting) the lead to four, five, six, and he was always able to hit the shot to go back and get the lead back at eight or 10. So it was great for us.”
Nelson was largely unimpressed with himself, saying it was all in a day’s work..
“As a point guard you have to know time and score,” he said. “You have to know what your team needs and when they need it.”
Barton continues to impress. Will Barton was just being Will Barton again. Against New Orleans, that meant doing a little bit of everything and doing it with high energy. He scored 17 points with seven rebounds on 7-of-12 shooting from the field, including 3-of-4 from the 3-point line.
Barton has been the best early season story on the team. In fact, the fourth-year guard has been so good — 14.5 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.6 assists on 48 percent shooting from the field, 45 percent from the 3-point line and 90 percent from the 3-point line — it led Nuggets coach Michael Malone to give him as significant an endorsement as a player can expect.
“Will Barton, you can make a case that Will’s been our most complete basketball player,” Malone said. “Will’s been terrific, and he plays with such confidence and aggression.”
Solving the back-to-back. The second leg of back-to-backs have so far been as difficult for the Nuggets to solve as a New York Times crossword puzzle.
Trying to find that solution against the Spurs, is a whole other problem.
“They have a culture, they have a system that has been working for decades,” Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari said. “So the system and the way that they play — unselfish, they move the ball and find the right man at the right time. It makes it very, very hard to play defense against them.”
But that’s what the Nuggets are tasked with Wednesday night.
“We’ve got to come out and compete,” guard Will Barton said. “Can’t come out flat. Can’t come out with no energy. We’ve got to be ready to play, point blank. Nobody is going to feel sorry for us because we’re coming off a back-to-back. Good teams find a way, and that’s what we’re trying to be, so we’ve got to do it.”
Also, expect to see more of big men J.J. Hickson and Nikola Jokic against the bigger Spurs. The duo saw limited minutes in the win over New Orleans, a game that featured so much small ball that Nuggets coach Michael Malone called it a “6-5 and under league.”
“(Wednesday) is going to be (Tim) Duncan, (LaMarcus) Aldridge, David West off the bench, so they’ll have a lot more big guys,” Malone said. “So, J.J. and Nikola, specifically, will get a lot more minutes and we’re going to need them big-time.”
Follow Chris Dempsey on Twitter @dempseypost or email him at cdempsey@denverpost.com
