ORLANDO, Fla. — Life on the road continues to be hard on the Nuggets, even around the holidays.
Paolo Banchero made a lucky-bounce 3-pointer with just under two minutes remaining for a 118-115 lead, and Denver never caught up in a 124-119 loss to an impressive Magic team Wednesday night at Amway Center.
Nikola Jokic notched a 30-point, 13-rebound, 12-assist night that was a triple-double with more than six minutes left. He also had three steals and just one turnover.
But the Magic scored 42 points in the fourth quarter, propelled by an 8-0 run midway through the frame to take a 112-108 lead with 3:36 remaining. The Nuggets answered with an excellent after-timeout play to get Kentavious Caldwell-Pope a three, and Aaron Gordon scored a driving bucket on the next possession to give Denver the lead back for the last time. They couldn’t keep it, just as they couldn’t keep an eight-point advantage late in the third.
Asked about the team’s fourth-quarter defense, Jokic told The Denver Post, “It didn’t exist.”
In an NBA social media series in which star players predicted the teams that would advance out of the group stage, Jokic predicted the Magic as an underdog wild card. His instinct for sleeper teams might be as good as his intelligence on the court — Orlando completed a perfect back-to-back and moved to 10-5 with the win Wednesday — but as Nuggets coach Michael Malone put it, “if you’re gonna give yourself a chance to beat a team like the Orlando Magic, you can’t beat yourself.”
“We didn’t help. One-on-one defense was bad. Even when they missed, they got a couple offensive rebounds, so it was real easy to see why we lost the game,” Jokic said.
The Nuggets (10-5) got a stop trailing 118-115 and called their penultimate timeout with 27.3 left. They designed a post-up for Jokic instead of trying to immediately tie it, and he succeeded at cutting it to one. When Orlando made its free throws, Jokic repeated with a drive for two. But the Nuggets had no remaining timeouts with 4.3 seconds left as Jalen Suggs made more foul shots, and Aaron Gordon threw the inbound pass directly to Franz Wagner for a game-sealing turnover.
“It was a really tough shot, so just (drove) to give us a chance,” Jokic said. “Maybe they were gonna miss a free throw. Who knows?”
Wagner finished the game with 28 points to lead the Magic. Banchero added 23. The Nuggets never attempted to tie the game with a 3-pointer.
“It didn’t come to that last play,” Malone said, displeased with Denver’s defense down the stretch.
“That’s a game we should have won.”
Michael Porter Jr. scored 25 on 5-of-9 shooting beyond the arc, but the Nuggets subbed in Christian Braun with 1:12 remaining with Denver about to get the ball out of a timeout. Porter, who checked back in after the next timeout with 27 seconds left, was hunted again on switches late in the fourth.
For the first time this road trip, the Nuggets avoided a bad start, getting ahead 10-3 in minutes. While Porter and company shot the lights out early, the only thing that prevented Denver from keeping control was poor interior defense. The Magic shot 18-for-23 in the paint and 6-for-7 after an offensive rebound in the first half, outscoring Denver 36-20 in the paint even as the Nuggets led by six at the break.
Wagner heated up for Orlando with a 15-point third quarter, while every Denver player who scored double figures in the first half went quiet — Jokic generated two points, Jackson none, Porter four, Gordon two. Two scoreless players at halftime suddenly stepped up instead. Caldwell-Pope and Julian Strawther contributed seven a piece to ensure the team broke even in the quarter.
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