Playoffs Game 1 Round 1: San Antonio Spurs (7) @ Denver Nuggets (2) - 10:30 PM ET

[ducler]

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[NuggetsWY]

Sure do hope Denver gets a good start - that seems important to their winning.
Denver has had great defense in the 4th quarter and that's probably very important.

Aldridge & DeRozan pretty much dominate San Antonio scoring but if the rest of the Spurs don't score much, Denver would be most likely to win.

Jokic, Murray, and Beasley seem most likely to be the Nuggets' top scorers.

[THE J0KER]

I think this is probably the most important game of whole series! Nuggets arguably biggest problem is lack of playoff experience, and when that problem should be most exposed if not in very first game?

I have big expectations from Jokic, but also from Murray which should have best matchup, and from Millsap, our only player with notable playoff experience.

[NuggetsWY]

I think this is probably the most important game of whole series! Nuggets arguably biggest problem is lack of playoff experience, and when that problem should be most exposed if not in very first game?

Love this take!

I have big expectations from Jokic, but also from Murray which should have best matchup, and from Millsap, our only player with notable playoff experience.

Jokic - I expect quite a bit from him and truly believe he will do something like 15-8-8.
Murray - he's my fav but I'm not convinced he's ready to perform like that. He does too much up-and-down. I'm hoping he does something like 22-5-8 but wouldn't be surprised if he did more like 15-3-5.
Millsap - I hadn't thought about him as you did and that's a very good point. The Spurs don't really have anyone that can matchup with him and with his playoff experience, he should perform quite well - maybe around a double-double with 15 or so points.

[Darklight]

Man I am excited for the playoffs but I think we are a more regular season team this season IMO. I have several question marks when it comes to the PO. We don't have anyone who is near a semi legit second option on this team and have murray who is like the most inconsistent player on the team, he can have like 1 good game and 4 bad ones and if you can't even trust him in the regular season then what about the playoffs? That doesn't mean he won't step up and perform but that's a legit concern, gary hasn't been himself and he is huge for us can't trust him either, then there is barton who is straight up trash this season and a massive liability on both sides we are lucky that missed shot he had ended up in millsap's hands and a murray 3, dude is simply a choker.

I expect Pop to coach circles around malone but even though I am as big of a malone hater you can find, I will give cred where it's due and he has been very good this season, didn't like how much TC got playing time early in the season, he used him like he was covington when the dude shot lik 18% for 2 months and has nowhere near his defensive prowess, but gotta give him props for cutting IT as fast as he did, since he loves vet player I was pretty suprised gotta admit. We got a good shot to make the WCF but also go out in the first round hard to say.

My body is ready for some playoff Jokic, let's go nuggets!

[THE J0KER]

Jokic - I expect quite a bit from him and truly believe he will do something like 15-8-8.

With all (dis)respect to Malone, but I don't think he is that crazy to put Jokic under 30 minutes in a playoff game of this importance.

[THE J0KER]

Man I am excited for the playoffs but I think we are a more regular season team this season IMO. I have several question marks when it comes to the PO. We don't have anyone who is near a semi legit second option on this team and have murray who is like the most inconsistent player on the team, he can have like 1 good game and 4 bad ones and if you can't even trust him in the regular season then what about the playoffs? That doesn't mean he won't step up and perform but that's a legit concern, gary hasn't been himself and he is huge for us can't trust him either, then there is barton who is straight up trash this season and a massive liability on both sides we are lucky that missed shot he had ended up in millsap's hands and a murray 3, dude is simply a choker.

I expect Pop to coach circles around malone but even though I am as big of a malone hater you can find, I will give cred where it's due and he has been very good this season, didn't like how much TC got playing time early in the season, he used him like he was covington when the dude shot lik 18% for 2 months and has nowhere near his defensive prowess, but gotta give him props for cutting IT as fast as he did, since he loves vet player I was pretty suprised gotta admit. We got a good shot to make the WCF but also go out in the first round hard to say.

My body is ready for some playoff Jokic, let's go nuggets!

Your concerns about Murray are legit, but there are no strict rules about young players. Last season playoff some young guys even overperformed, playing better than during regular season (Celtics Tatum and Brown, or Jazz Mitchell).

On the paper, our worst matchups in this series are Barton-DeRozan and Malone-Popovic... in everything else advantage is on our side. One of our biggest advantages is home court advantage in this series because this is an h2h between two teams with the biggest gap in home and road wins two seasons in the row! So we can't gamble with that, and we have no right to have a bad night in the Pepsi Center.

[FilNugsFan]

I think this is probably the most important game of whole series! Nuggets arguably biggest problem is lack of playoff experience, and when that problem should be most exposed if not in very first game?

Couldn't agree more. We need to capitalize and secure Ws in our home games because playoff pressure might just be too much to handle for the inexperienced Nugs when the series shifts to San Antonio tied at 1-1 or worse, we're down 0-2.

[U hova]

Rough 1st quarter, we're heating back up.

[THE J0KER]

This is a really bad 1st half. Defense was bad, bench was bad, 3pt was awful, Jokic have just 3 FG attempts, Malone played that 4-guards rotation when Spurs take full control of the game. It can be even worse, but Aldridge has foul troubles.

In 2019 we have big number of the games where we played much better in the 2nd half than in the 1st. Let's hope the same will happens today.

[eathb_au]

Biggest fears confirmed.

The media tried to push the playoff experience narrative but everyone knows that is horse ****. Unfortunately our players read that and it got to their heads.

What a **** season this has turned out to be. Legitimately no #2 seeds in the West loses games like this. We are the worst #2 seed in NBA history.

[manchambo]

Biggest fears confirmed.

The media tried to push the playoff experience narrative but everyone knows that is horse ****. Unfortunately our players read that and it got to their heads.

What a **** season this has turned out to be. Legitimately no #2 seeds in the West loses games like this. We are the worst #2 seed in NBA history.

WTF? You don't have to look very hard at history, only back three hours or so, to see a two seed lose a close game.

[manchambo]

This is a really bad 1st half. Defense was bad, bench was bad, 3pt was awful, Jokic have just 3 FG attempts, Malone played that 4-guards rotation when Spurs take full control of the game. It can be even worse, but Aldridge has foul troubles.

In 2019 we have big number of the games where we played much better in the 2nd half than in the 1st. Let's hope the same will happens today.

They did play better, but not quite enough. We have to hope that some jitters were worked out in the youngsters and they will hit more shots in the next game.

[THE J0KER]

Murray should be hero of the game with 6 steals, but in last 5 seconds he managed to miss easy shot for Nuggets lead, and loses ball when we have attack to tied game. Aldridge and DeRozan was nothing special tonight, Jokic scoring passivity was disappointing, but he is still man of the match with 10-14-14 TD, so it is Malone who should be blamed. He have 3 bigz players, 2 should be always on the floor, but about 10 minutes we played with 4-guards rotation when Spurs dominate.

San Antonio is now clear favorite to win this series, but we are clearly better team, so it is not over yet.

[NuggetsWY]

Well, we played defense for one quarter.
We had two good offensive quarters but in both, the Spurs had better offense.
The only statistical category where we exceeded San Antonio was steals. The rest were fairly even; except for their dominance in 3pt shooting over our anemic 3pt shooting (we took twice as many and hit roughly the same number).

Jokic had a nice triple-double with 15-14-14.
Millsap only had 4 boards.
Barton had 10 boards plus 15 points
Harris had a nice 20 points.
Murray was not shooting well but he also wasn't afraid of taking the big shot.

Other than Jokic, our starters had 3 assists.

Our bench only scored 22 points and I was surprised to see all four of them in the game at the same time in the 1st quarter (which didn't work out too well).

Beasley had 10 points but only took 5 shots.
Morris had 5 assists but a poor shooting night.
Plumlee only took 4 shots but did manage 6 boards.
Craig only took 4 shots but managed to grab 4 boards.

Solid games? Jokic, Barton, Harris
Disappointing? Millsap, Murray

[skywalker33]

Our shooting sucked tonight, Murray getting a wide open shot to take the lead and missed ????? Then gets his pocket picked at the end.....hopefully all that was jitters, Good Lord !!

[skywalker33]

Have we ever shot that bad from 3-pt ?? And not that he played bad, but Jokic HAS to take more shots

[NuggetsWY]

Have we ever shot that bad from 3-pt ?? And not that he played bad, but Jokic HAS to take more shots

Yes, we've shot that bad from 3pt range and many of us have complained that Jokic needs to take more shots. He doesn't even look at the basket when he's open or has a smaller guy on him. He's so strong he could post up more.

But let's go back to one other issue - too much standing around, not enough pass-and-cut. When was the last spectacular Jokic assist? Those come when guys are moving.

[eathb_au]

Have we ever shot that bad from 3-pt ?? And not that he played bad, but Jokic HAS to take more shots

We've shot very poorly since post ASB

Getting more shooters may actually be something we need to do over the offseason.

[skywalker33]

Have we ever shot that bad from 3-pt ?? And not that he played bad, but Jokic HAS to take more shots

We've shot very poorly since post ASB

Getting more shooters may actually be something we need to do over the offseason.

M-P-J M-P-J M-P-J