During the Saturday night NBA slate, the Denver Nuggets defeated the Atlanta Hawks 128-108, with Jamal Murray scoring 41 points and Nikola Jokic recording his 18th triple-double on the season.
Jokic achieved the 94th triple-double of his career with 14 points, 18 rebounds, and 10 assists. A win puts the Nuggets at 37-16, tied with the Boston Celtics for the best record in the NBA, as Porter Jr. added 23 points. Murray made clear that his team must be prepared to deal with opposing teams’ best effort every night.
“We can’t underestimate any team. We’ve got to come prepared. We’ve got a target on our backs,” Murray said. “We’ve seen that, even today. They stuck in it for a while. We just had to lock in and we did that.”
Following the Hawks’ turnover in the final seconds of the second quarter, Murray scored 22 points in the first half, including a 3-pointer after a dime from Jokic. At the break, the Nuggets led 70-52.
NBA SCORES & NEWS: Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets & Atlanta Hawks Updates
Dejounte Murray’s 28 points led the Hawks. A 20-point contribution came from De’Andre Hunter. Trae Young was recently excluded from the NBA All-Star reserves list and was sidelined due to a non-COVID illness.
“This is a tough place to come back when you dig such a deep hole like as did in the first half,” Hawks coach Nate McMillan told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
McMillan explained further: “I thought they did a good job of making us earn everything that we got. We were making tough shots and I didn’t think we had the ball movement, but I thought it was due to their defense. They just made us work for everything on the offensive end the floor.”
Onyeka Okongwu’s tip-in in the final minute of the third cut the Hawks’ deficit to 97-86. As the third period drew to a close, Atlanta’s defenders stopped the Nuggets’ third field goal attempt.
The Hawks were within 109-101 after Hunter’s jumper with 5:49 left. In response, the Nuggets, led by Murray, shouldered a 15-2 run with 2:23 remaining to extend their lead to 124-103. With Jokic’s 10th assist of the game, Murray had 11 points during the run.
“It was such a weird game,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “If you look at quarters one and three, we played no defense. Quarters two and four, I thought our defense was really good. Most importantly, the fourth quarter, 22 points allowed, a lot of good things for us and that allowed us to pull away.”
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