BOSTON — It wasn’t supposed to be a playoff simulation.
DeAndre Jordan was supposed to play backup center. Minutes and rotations were supposed to be standard protocol. It was a regular-season game. The 43rd regular-season game.
But when Michael Malone acts on sheer competitive instinct, the Nuggets coach can become a daring gambler. Or maybe just a madman.
“We we were all in,” he said Friday night. “We put all of our chips in.”
In a gutsy game of on-the-fly adjustments from Malone and unexpected endurance from his players, the Nuggets turned the 43rd regular-season game into their most impressive win of the year — a 102-100 tactician’s dream to thwart the Celtics’ bid for a perfect home record.
Only eight Nuggets played (excluding Justin Holiday’s brief appearance). Only seven played after halftime. Jamal Murray and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope never left the floor in the fourth quarter. Aaron Gordon never rested the entire second half.
For a coach whose third-most common five-man lineup this season is an all-bench unit with a minus-16.3 net rating — the Nuggets’ competing priorities are to repeat as champions while also developing young draft picks — this was a departure from the script.
Sometimes win-now wins out.
“You’re playing against the best team in the NBA,” Malone said. “It was like a playoff game.”
Gordon was used as Denver’s impromptu backup five after Malone decided to abandon the Jordan plan because Gordon was defending too well to take off the court. That was the first indication that pulling off a win in Boston mattered to the Nuggets (29-14) more than a normal January game. Gordon staggered with the second unit as a center during the playoffs last season, when it was natural for Malone to shorten his bench. But so far this season, Gordon had only played the five by necessity — for instance, the two occasions Jokic got ejected before halftime.
“It takes a little second to get back, re-acclimated to it, back used to it,” Gordon said. “But if I know that’s what we’re doing, it’s a little bit easier to adjust. But I like it. It’s fine. Pick-and-roll. Get to switch one through five. We get rebounds, we get runs. We’re really fast in that unit. So it’s fun. I think that’s something we can go to a little bit more as we get closer to the playoffs.”
If the Nuggets are prepared to return to that system, then it means they’re comfortable with the idea of not adding a new backup center who can feasibly hang in Malone’s playoff rotations.
On the other hand, playing Gordon for entire halves won’t be sustainable if Denver is anticipating another deep run. As the third quarter ended Friday, Malone was in a pickle. Neither Jokic nor Gordon had rested during the frame. It was time for Jokic’s regularly scheduled recharge on the bench. Who was going to play center for the first five minutes of the decisive quarter?
Gordon.
“He’ll be a little bit tired tomorrow, a little bit sore tomorrow, but if you want to beat good teams, you’ve gotta play your guys,” Malone said. “And that’s what we did tonight. That’s not a conversation you need to have with AG. He wants to be out there. … But you start asking people about that, you give them room to give you an answer, and I wasn’t gonna hear that answer. He was playing the whole second half.”
“I feel fine,” Gordon said. “I could play another 48. I’m not tired. I’ll let everybody else be tired.”
A loss would have stung, especially with three games remaining on Denver’s road trip. But this turned out to be the best 0-for-6 shooting game of Gordon’s career: 41 minutes of defensive excellence, containing Jaylen Brown one-on-one, switching onto Kristaps Porzingis (15 points in the first quarter, six the rest of the game), shepherding Denver’s cross-matching tactics in the second half and collecting 10 crucial boards to help the Nuggets out-rebound the Celtics 47-38.
Brown and Jayson Tatum combined for 35 points — half as many as Denver’s star duo — on 15-for-43 shooting. Their struggles revealed another element of how Malone might coach a playoff (read: NBA Finals) game against Boston. The reason Caldwell-Pope played the whole fourth quarter is because Tatum did.
“We tried to match Pope’s minutes with him,” Malone said. “In the first half, they took (Tatum) out around the seven-minute mark. I kept Pope in the game. So now (Tatum) was going against some of the guys on our bench. I think Jayson Tatum is a first-team All-NBA caliber player, so in the second half, we talked about it at halftime. Let’s try to monitor and mirror Tatum’s minutes with KCP. He’s our best matchup on him.”
Ideally by the playoffs, the Nuggets would like to feel comfortable enough with Peyton Watson’s defense to unleash him as the primary matchup any time an opposing star player is staggering with the second unit. That would allow Malone to divide Caldwell-Pope’s and Watson’s minutes similarly to how he divides Jokic’s and Murray’s: One shall be on the floor at all times. KCP and Watson could be the perimeter defense equivalent of that mindset.
Watson had flashes of solid defense against Tatum, but Tatum’s only dangerous stretch of scoring occurred between the first and second quarters when Watson was guarding him. Watson ended up playing only 9:48 in the second half. This might have been an indicator that when push comes to shove, there’s at least some hint of lingering trepidation.
Yet Watson’s minutes still ended up over 20, compared to Christian Braun’s five, seemingly firmly stapling Watson as Denver’s seventh guy for now.
Between Caldwell-Pope’s last-shot contest of Tatum, Gordon’s elasticity and even Michael Porter Jr.’s two offensive rebound put-backs in the fourth quarter, the result was more of a team win than statistics illustrated. Then again, that was another sign of playoff vibes: Murray and Jokic creating at the top of their game in clutch moments.
“That should be every night,” Murray said of his 35-point (15 for 21) outing.
But if it can’t be every night, at least it’s illuminating for him to be at his best on a playoff night. Even if it’s a fake one.
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
