Murray’s game-winner snaps Nuggets skid, could it be a turning point?

The Denver Nuggets hit a low point this week, dropping three games in a row and playing bad basketball.

The skid started in a blowout win against the Rockets when the bench started faltering and the started had to come in late to keep the lead. Could the starters have rested in that game? Probably, with the win probability staying in the high 90s the whole time, but head coach Michael Malone didn’t like the trend. Then Denver took to the road and dropped in Atlanta and New Orleans before a showcase with Luka Doncic’s Mavericks that made the Nuggets look bad.

In Portland, they struggled all night until Jamal Murray caught fire in the fourth quarter, scoring 15 including the game-winner with 0.9 seconds left to win 121-120. It capped a night where back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon combined with Murray for 74 points.

The win was all the more impressive considering Damian Lillard went for 40 points, the Blazers had won two straight and are in playoff positioning, the Nuggets gave up nearly 100 entering the fourth quarter and they did it all without Michael Porter Jr. Denver has been without MPJ for eight straight games, all the while Murray has struggled since the calendar flipped to December.

The Nuggets now play 17 of their next 22 games at home with half those games coming against teams in the bottom half of their respective conference and the lone two games in a row on the road both being in Sacramento without travel in-between.

Denver has played 30% of their season and are 15-10, good for fourth place in the west. When they are done with this 22-game chunk of play they’ll be 63% done and just over two weeks away from the NBA Trade Deadline.

What we know about this Nuggets team so far is that they’re bad at defense despite their offseason pickups focusing on that. Denver’s 114.8 defensive rating is the fifth-worst in the NBA. They’re particularly bad at defending the rim, allowing a league-worst shooting percentage within a few feet.

We also know Jokic looks awesome again and has an outside chance at an MVP threepeat. Murray seems to be progressing and despite the defensive struggles, Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope have been great pickups. Bones Hyland has made a nice second-year jump but it’s not the crazy leap some thought could happen. Christian Braun was a great draft pick and is a nice rotation player already. All the while Gordon has been the team’s second-best player thus far.

But what we know already can and likely will change over the next 22 games. Simply put, the future of the Nuggets and their core of Jokic, Murray, Gordon and MPJ could be defined by the next two dozen games and the moves that do or do not happen at the deadline because of it.

The Nuggets are only a few games out of first place and only a few games above the last play-in slot. Denver needs to get hot now, making their skid-stopping game-winner all the more important in the larger context of the season. Plus, they finally have that signature win.