The Denver Nuggets may have lost yet another tough game at home, but head coach Michael Malone took away a ton of positives from the contest.
“These are teaching moments.” Malone said. “These are the lessons we must learn from … The execution was there, so thats an improvement.”
Denver fell 132-129 in overtime to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Nuggets were up 11 with under four minutes to go, but folded to the MVP-caliber play of Thunder guard Russell Westbrook, who ended up with a triple-double, recording 36 points, 18 assists, and 12 rebounds.
At the end of the day, Malone realized that his players were gassed due to the fact that they only had 10 active players in the contest and was proud at the effort they put fourth.
“That’s one thing I said to myself walking off: I ran that unit a lot.” Malone said. “I’m sure fatigue at some point did come into play there.”
This is a young Nuggets team that showed a lot of fight against the defending Western Conference finalists, and that is something to be proud of.
“[We’re a] young team,” Malone said. “We got a lot of guys down. I love the effort that we gave tonight, a lot of fight. No quit, we forced overtime after we gave the lead away … We will be back and we will learn from it.”
Denver was without Danilo Gallinari again on Friday night and Gary Harris has missed extended time with a foot injury. Both were projected starters and expected to play big roles this season.
“When you’re down as many guys as [we] are, we need people to step up. Jameer [Nelson] had 13 assists. Jamal Murray has a decent shooting night, but gets you seven rebounds. So, there were some good individual performances.”
Overall, it’s just another learning experience for a young Nuggets team. One with positives to consider, despite the loss
