PHILADELPHIA — If you were a Nugget from Philadelphia, or played college in the Philly area, this game was for you.
It was for you, Jameer Nelson, who played high school and college in the area.
It was for you, Randy Foye, who played at Villanova.
And they made it a day for the Nuggets.
Nelson’s shooting and playmaking and a couple of game-clinching free throws from Foye led the Nuggets to a come-from-behind, 108-105 victory over the 76ers on Saturday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center.
It was not easy.
“I ripped our guys at halftime,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone, whose team trailed 59-52 at the break, said. “I hated our effort, hated our defense. Just not ready to play for whatever reason. You end an eight-game losing streak and win one game, and you go, ‘Hey, we’re okay.’ No we’re not. I told them don’t play their record. You have to play this team hard because they compete.”
For three quarters, Philadelphia not only played harder, it played better, and led 85-77.
The Sixers (1-20) were steadying to grab their second victory of the season when they took a nine-point lead with 9:35 to play.
But the Nuggets chipped away.
“To our credit, in the fourth quarter we finally got our defense into the game,” Malone said.
The Nuggets outscored Philadelphia 27-15 from that point on.
Nelson, who had more than 100 people at the game to support him, put smiles on all of their faces when he nailed a 19-foot jump shot with 1:26 left to tie the game at 102. Seconds later, Nelson drove baseline and dropped off a pass to Danilo Gallinari for a dunk with 47.9 seconds left that gave the Nuggets the lead. It was their first lead since 5:25 of the second quarter.
They never relinquished it.
“We got stops,” Nelson said. “That was the most important thing.”
Philadelphia had a chance to tie when Robert Covington took a 3-point shot with 14.8 seconds to go. He missed. Foye rebounded the basketball and was fouled.
He knocked down two at the line to put the game out of reach.
“I’ve been struggling with my 3-ball, but if you give me some free throws? C’mon, man,” Foye said. “I probably took that shot over a million times. I was telling myself, ‘It’s time, you can put them away.’ So I put them away.”
In the process, the Nuggets put away all of the frustrations from early in the road trip with consecutive victories to end it.
“We were in a bad place for about two weeks,” Foye said. “But we’re coming out of that.”
Gallinari led the team with 24 points and added seven rebounds. Will Barton added 16 points from the bench and a team-high nine rebounds, and the Nuggets survived 15 made 3-pointers from Philadelphia and their own inability to make free throws (23-of-38).
“It’s great,” Gallinari said. “We didn’t start very well on the road, but we finished strong.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or @dempseypost
