DENVER — Back-to-back. At altitude. Against Nikola Jokic and the champs.
On the schedule, this always looked like a loss. On the court, it turned into a rout.
The leggy-looking Nets suffered a 124-101 beating at the hands of Denver before a sellout crowd of 19,636 at Ball Arena.
“Tired group. Yeah, tough back-to-back,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “I don’t like to use excuses, but I told our group I thought our intent was good coming into the game. We just didn’t have it, and on a team that was rested and ready for us, tough back-to-back the emotional and mental part of it. Just didn’t have it.
“I’m not going to use excuses, I’ll say that. I’ve done this plenty of time before. It is a tough trip … getting in at a time you get in, being able to play after an emotional game [Wednesday], physically and mentally — yes, it’s part of it. Part of the job, everyone does it at some point in the schedule. Just got to live with it and play through it.”
The Nets (13-11) were coming off arguably their best victory of the season, spoiling the debut of Kevin Durant’s new Big 3 with Wednesday’s win in Phoenix.
But they predictably ran out of gas the next night against the Nuggets.
Their shots fell short, their passes went awry and they trailed by as much as 28 en route to a tired-looking loss.
Spencer Dinwiddie had 17 points and eight assists, but Mikal Bridges scored just nine on 3 of 8 shooting with four turnovers.
Since the 2018-19 season, foes coming into Denver on the second game of a back-to-back had gone just 8-27, per Elias Sports Bureau.
Now, make that 8-28.
“Obviously we played two of the best teams in the league back-to-back: That’s always going to be tough. And then … the altitude,” Dinwiddie said. “I feel like we came in with the right intention, just didn’t execute, had too many turnovers and they shot the ball really extremely well as well.
“I mean, if you look at the schedule obviously this would probably be a scheduling loss, right? So for all intents and purposes, we’re kind of 1-1 on the trip right now, and we go into Golden State and Utah and try to get two wins.”
Against the defending champs, the Nets shot just 8 of 30 from 3-point range and 41.1 percent overall — including 37.3 percent through three quarters when they trailed by 23.
The bench played the fourth and made a cosmetic run to make it look closer than it was.
The Nets coughed up 17 turnovers to give Denver 22 points. With Jokic’s dominant triple-double — 26 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists for a plus-21, all game highs — the Nuggets hardly needed the help.
“That’s why he won MVP. It’s not rocket science, he’s a phenomenal player. He can hurt you at pretty much any phase of the game: in the short-roll, posting up, initiating the break, obviously we all know his vision’s amazing,” Dinwiddie said. “He’s probably the center version of Luka [Doncic] in a sense.”
And Jokic put all that on display.
After the Nets forced him to take jumpers early, and he missed several, the Nuggets started posting him. Nic Claxton (10 points, nine rebounds) couldn’t slow him, and Denver’s perimeter players started punishing them on kick-outs.
“Tough group to double team, but I think we helped them early by turning that basketball over, and so they were able to get out in transition, get early buckets at our rim,” Vaughn said. “A big part of that for a team that doesn’t force turnovers, we gave them too many.”
After Bridges had Brooklyn even at 17-all on a 3, the Nets conceded a 9-2 run and never responded.
The deficit steadily grew from there. It was 52-39 at the half, and ballooned.
Brooklyn trailed 90-67 after three, and it swelled to as much as 28 in a garbage-time fourth quarter.
Reserve Peyton Watson (18 points) hit a layup to make it 101-73 with 9:04 left, before the battle of the backups saw the final score get less ugly than the game that preceded it.
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