Nuggets botch golden opportunity to secure top seed in West with loss to Spurs

The Denver Nuggets’ path to the first seed in the Western Conference was laid out perfectly. With a monster win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on April 10th, all the Nuggets had to do was win their final two games of the season against the San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies and the first seed would be theirs. Unfortunately, the Spurs would play spoiler. Thanks to a converted floater by Devonte’ Graham with 0.9 seconds remaining, the Spurs would beat the Nuggets 121-120.

The loss was incredibly disappointing, as they were the heavy favorites to win the game. At one point, Denver even had a 23-point lead. It even looked like the Nuggets offense was toying with the Spurs. But Nikola Jokic and Co. would get complacent and allowed the Spurs to score a whopping 71 points in the second half.

“We didn’t defend at all,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said, via The Denver Post’s Bennett Durando. “… The very few times they did miss in the fourth quarter, we gave up eight offensive rebounds for 13 points. So give San Antonio a ton of credit. They stayed with it. We were up by 23 at one point, and just, too many blow-bys, too many 3s, too many leaving our feet on shot fakes. Just a lot of things that I would say did not go our way down the stretch.”

Jamal Murray did his best to power the Nuggets offense with a team-leading 35 points. Jokic had 22 points, but he also had some uncharacteristic missed shots in the waning minutes of the game.

“We had our chances,” Jokic added. “I missed an open look on the last shot. It’s something that I need to make. I missed, and they had a fast break.”

Nuggets playoff seeding in limbo