WASHINGTON — Coming down from the high of their most impressive win of the season, the Nuggets refused to let themselves experience a low-point Sunday.
Led by 42 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists, three blocks, one steal and no turnovers from an unstoppable Nikola Jokic, Denver held off the struggling Wizards for its second consecutive victory, 113-104, at Capital One Arena.
Jokic shot 15 of 20 from the field in his first 40-point game of the season.
“Proud of the guys. This was a scary game,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “Every game is scary for different reasons, and tonight’s game was scary because you’re coming off of a quality road win and you’re worried about having a letdown against a team with seven wins. And I thought for the most part, our guys did a really good job of approaching it the right way.”
The environments in Boston and Washington this weekend were a case study in polar opposites. On Friday night, the Nuggets and Celtics were the premier sporting event in the country, two championship favorites facing off for the first of only two occasions this season, and in an arena where the hosts hadn’t lost a game in 10 months. The Nuggets emerged flexing their muscles. Then on an NFL playoff Sunday, the crowd in Washington only seemed to snap out of its default daze whenever Jokic touched the ball in the post — not even when the Wizards made a couple of runs to stick around.
Jokic put on a worthy show. When a young Washington team single-covered him, the two-time MVP smelled blood. “Nikola’s seen everything,” Malone said, “so he’s got an answer for everything.”
The center took his first stroll to the Denver bench late in the first quarter already with 15 points. Slowly, his distributing became a factor as well — he conjured a diet re-creation of his recent over-the-head assist to Aaron Gordon — but the main event this time was his flawless footwork and robotic interior finishing ability.
The loudest cheer of the night was to greet him when he sauntered to the scorer’s table and checked back in with 6:39 remaining in a 97-88 game. He was sitting at 38 points. An antsy crowd wanted to see 40.
“We like when he’s aggressive and he just has a score-first mentality, when teams play him one-on-one,” Michael Porter Jr. said. “Because we know we can score every time.”
The Wizards (7-35) couldn’t get out of their own way when Denver was allowing them to stay close. They committed 10 turnovers in the first half, leading to 12 Nuggets points. With 13 seconds left before the break, Jordan Poole picked up his third foul for sneakily shoving Kentavious Caldwell-Pope out of bounds after Caldwell-Pope jumped a passing lane for one of his three steals.
But every time the Nuggets (30-14) seemed to put them out of reach, the Wizards lingered. Denver opened up a 16-point lead early in the second half; Washington responded with a 9-2 run to get back within single digits. Porter and Caldwell-Pope hit consecutive 3s in the fourth to extend the advantage to 109-92; Washington scored the next eight.
Porter finished the night with 19 points, six rebounds and two blocks in an impressive showing that helped cancel out a less efficient Jamal Murray game (19 points, 23 shot attempts) than what he pulled off in Boston.
Zeke Nnaji was Malone’s backup center in Denver’s first sequence of substitutions, but he collected three fouls in 5:05, planting him back on the bench. DeAndre Jordan played Jokic’s rest minutes in the second half. Nnaji has only played seven or more minutes in two of the Nuggets’ last 13 games.
Against teams with losing records — excluding Houston, a team that was high in the standings for all four matchups with Denver — the Nuggets are now 18-0 this season.
“If you want to be a really good team, you have to win the games you’re supposed to win,” Malone said. “And we never play records. We don’t go into a team meeting and say, ‘They’re seven and whatever.’ We talk about Kyle Kuzma and Jordan Poole. … But the fact that we’ve won the large majority of the games against teams below .500 speaks to understanding who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. That’s what happens when you’re the reigning world champs. You have to be up for those games.”
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