TORONTO — In the aftermath of a second consecutive stinging defeat, the Nuggets openly discussed the reasons they have dropped two winnable games but they didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it.
“You look at the last two years, sometimes we’re not even in games like this,” said. “Or after a game like this we kind of melt down. So, with the team that we have — all of the young guys, guys missing time and coming back, itap positive that we are in games. We’ve just got to figure out how to win those games.”
The kicker? They already know how.
Monday nightap 105-102 loss to the at the Air Canada Centre wasn’t a mystery in any way. The Nuggets know what beat them — a lack of physicality and defensive execution for two quarters. Two quarters of blah are enough to get a team beat.
“They punked us in that first half,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said of the Raptors. “They got whatever they want, they dropped their shoulder and bullied us. We’re not going to stand for that. I thought in the second half we had a much more physical tone to us; we became the aggressor.
“But as I told them, just like the Portland game … we want to be a playoff team? We can’t play two quarters. You can’t wait until the third quarter to outscore them. Hopefully we understand that. … It is required to play 48 minutes in the NBA.”
The Nuggets’ biggest deficit was 19 points. They were down by 13 at halftime. But in the third quarter, they rallied and were down just four going into the fourth.
The Nuggets had the game where they wanted it after a 15-5 run to start the fourth quarter gave them the lead. But just as the Toronto crowd was starting to get restless and starting to fret, Kyle Lowry heated up.
He made big shot after big shot, bringing the Raptors back to take the lead, and then keeping them in the lead with more all-star-caliber plays. He scored 12 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter. The Nuggets had a shot to tie it, but ‘s 3-pointer rimmed off at the buzzer.
For a while it seemed the Nuggets (1-2) had things figured out.
Their second-half rally was built on the things that failed them two nights earlier, the biggest of which was execution. Gone were the errant passes in critical moments. Gone were the major defensive breakdowns. But they could never get control of Lowry or DeMar DeRozan, who scored a game-high 33 points. This was the second consecutive game the Nuggets faced high-octane guards — Portland’s Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum were the others — and it was rough in both games.
“Give them credit,” Malone said of the Raptors. “Their all-star guards showed out.”
The Nuggets were led by three players who scored 16 points apiece — Gallinari, and . contributed 13 points, a career-high 18 rebounds and five blocked shots. Barton left the game in the third quarter because of a sprained ankle.
“We just need to be more together with the defensive and offensive side,” Nurkic said. “I think we have a great team, and we are very close to figuring out all four quarters.”
