After all the incongruity and awkwardness of this Nuggets season, it almost doesn’t feel right for it to be punctuated by an unprecedented win streak.
There were too many injuries, too many different lineups, too many untimely freak plays and clutch conundrums. The story of their year seemed well established by mid-March as one of repressed talent.
Yet here they were, pulling away from Memphis after halftime for a comfortable 136-119 win Wednesday, their tenth in a row for the first time in Nikola Jokic’s illustrious 11-year NBA career. The Serbian big man has won three MVP trophies. He has shepherded Denver to a championship. But never to a win streak this prolonged. The limit was always single digits. Until now, with two games to go in the 2025-26 regular season.
“I didn’t know that,” a surprised Jokic said afterward.
“I had no idea that was the case, and I’ve been here for (almost) all those years,” coach David Adelman added. “I don’t know (why we haven’t). I’ve been around aggressive losing streaks before in Minnesota, and they just last forever and ever. So this has been unique. This whole season has been unique, man. I feel like we played really well at the start, and then we survived for three months, and now we’re playing really well again. … Cool way to close it out with three to go. Hopefully momentum-building. It feels like it is, with the vibe of the group.”
The Nuggets (52-28) started their surge from a sixth-place vantage point in the Western Conference. They’ve spent three weeks riding the wave all the way to third, which they suddenly control by a game and a half over the ailing Los Angeles Lakers.
“I don’t think we cared about the standings,” Aaron Gordon said, “so much as we cared about how we were playing.”
Adelman was adamant his team was playing well before the streak even started brewing. In the most daunting week of their schedule, the Nuggets went 2-2, playing four games in four cities against four Western Conference playoff teams. Both losses were at the buzzer, decided by MVP candidates. Missed opportunities left a bitter sting. Players vented in the locker room about defensive inconsistency and situational decision-making after Luka Doncic’s game-winner in Los Angeles. Four days later, they stumbled out of bed into a back-to-back at Memphis and lost a dud.
That was their most recent defeat. Since then, a more friendly schedule — eight home games in the last 10, only one back-to-back, one top-six opponent in the West — has helped prove Adelman right. The signs were already there. The results were delayed.
“Anxiety was felt in the locker room that week,” Adelman reflected. “We knew what we were about to play against. And to have the game in LA end so crazy … you leave that week feeling like, OK, we’re where we’re supposed to be. We’re up there with this group of teams. Now let’s join them. Let’s go win some games and put ourselves in a good spot.”
Jokic amassed 14 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists by the end of the third quarter Wednesday. He didn’t touch the court in the fourth. It was his 34th triple-double of the season, tying last year’s career high, and the 198th of his career. With two games remaining, he has a chance to join Russell Westbrook as the only players in NBA history with 200. Westbrook reached the milestone at 36 years old as a Nugget. Whether Jokic does it this week or has to wait a few more months, he’ll be 31.
He’s also within two triple-doubles of Westbrook for the most in league history including playoff games (221 to 219).
“We just wanted to play good. … We need to play good and feel good about ourselves,” Jokic said of the streak, “just because the league is so talented. Anybody can beat everybody.”
The Nuggets have won six games involving clutch time during the streak, correcting a trend of fourth-quarter execution issues. (Jamal Murray has cited their rediscovered floor-spacing consistency, now that Gordon is back in the lineup.) They’ve gotten their turnover rate under control — an NBA-best 10.9% over the last 10 games, with three assists per turnover. Their overall offensive rating has also been tops in the league by a resounding 3.1 points per 100 possessions.
Defensively, they’ve been better situationally, yet they still rank 20th during the streak. They’re still stubbornly selective about when and for how long they care to exert maximum effort. They offered almost no 1-on-1 resistance in the first half Wednesday against a severely depleted Memphis team that’s counting down the days to the offseason. But their offense has been so unstoppable that their defense could afford to be lackluster, to a point.
Does that qualify as peaking at the right time? Does the timing of the win streak matter? Denver’s players and coaches remain acutely aware of the flaws that have lingered throughout these 10 games and are unlikely to go away in a playoff series.
“I think good teams kind of hang their hat on defense and force teams to play bad, and I think we need to do a better job of that,” Christian Braun said. “But peaking at the right time is probably a (real) thing, especially with health. For us right now, I think guys are starting to get healthy. … We want to peak at the right time health-wise.”‘
“Every season is different, you know?” Jamal Murray said. “I feel like we’re just trying to get everybody healthy. That’s the priority. This year, it’s just get everybody healthy. Get the defense right and get everybody in rhythm offensively. That’s what it is this year.”
Peyton Watson and Spencer Jones are the last to be playing catch-up from a health standpoint as Denver prepares for its final regular-season meetings with Oklahoma City and San Antonio. In the meantime, 10 is a round number worth appreciating in Adelman’s eyes. If nothing else, it’s a token of the Nuggets’ resilience at the end of a season that has felt longer and weirder than most. He remembers watching Houston’s 22-game win streak in 2008, when his dad was the head coach.
“They never looked at it like ‘the streak,'” he said. “They looked at it like, ‘We need to win the next game.’ That’s how these guys have been.”
