Michael Malone explodes on ‘soft’ Nuggets after team blows big opportunity

Nikola Jokic returned Tuesday after missing three games with a calf injury. Sadly for the Denver Nuggets the two-time MVP looked like a shell of himself and the rest of the squad followed their leader. The Nuggets were hammered by the bottom-feeding Houston Rockets 124-103, blowing a chance to clinch the West’s No. 1 seed.

After the loss head coach Michael Malone went off on his team in the postgame news conference.

“I’m definitely gonna say something, that’s my job as a head coach. I’m not gonna just say ‘it’s okay guys bring it in.’ No, that’s BS,” Malone said. “When we don’t do our jobs, there’s accountability. I speak to truth and me calling us soft tonight isn’t something I’m saying to you. I just told our team that and I dared somebody to challenge me that it wasn’t true. And no one did. Because we as a group were soft tonight. I’m not saying we are soft, but tonight we were. ”

On the surface, the loss looks bad, but it’s not horrendous given the circumstance. It was the Rockets final home game of a tanking season and their tank has been so good that it doesn’t matter if they win anymore, they’re still atop the lottery. And they beat the playoff-bound Celtics, Lakers and Pelicans at home last month. While the Nuggets lost to the lousy Spurs a few weeks back before getting right back on track.

“They were the more physical team, and really disappointed in terms of our effort and our approach tonight, Malone said.”

Digging into how the Nuggets played is what made the effort embarrassing.

Aside from the turnovers and undersized upstart Rockets team grabbed eight more rebounds and just out-hustled the Nuggets.

“We had a chance to clinch number one tonight and we talked about it this morning, the opportunity at hand,” Malone said. We definitely did not take that opportunity seriously, because the way we played tonight was so unacceptable playing like that this late in the year. If that’s how we’re gonna play, we’ll be out in the first round, easy, easy.”

Jamal Murray left Tuesday’s game against the Rockets early, with a right thumb sprain that has bothered him for a few weeks. Without the Nuggets point guard, they struggled to handle the rock and turned it over 20 times led by eight from Jokic. Reggie Jackson and Bruce Brown were thrust into PG duties but struggled.

“Whether Jamal was in there or not, what does that have to do with them getting 20 offensive rebounds? Malone asked. “So the guys that were available, we didn’t get the job done. Myself included. You know this is not me against my players. This is us winning together and losing together and we as a collective unit did a crap poor job tonight.”

Meanwhile, Peyton Watson had some nice moments and Michael Porter Jr. cashed six threes but that was the end of what was nice.

With the Nuggets loss and Memphis win over Portland Denver’s magic number for home-court advantage until the NBA Finals is still one. The next chance for the Nuggets to clinch comes Wednesday when the Grizzlies travel to New Orleans. It’s one of their final three games and they’d need to win them all and have the Nuggets lose out in order for the seeds to switch. The Nuggets are at Phoenix again on Thursday then travel to Salt Lake City before finishing their season at home against the Kings.

So the No. 1 seed will have to wait at least another night. And while Joel Embiid put up 50 on national TV against Boston, Jokic’s struggles in returning from injury combined with the rough loss will not do him wonders.

Overall, it was a bad night in Nuggets nation. But yet again the team has been on autopilot for a month and this likely doesn’t mean much—so long as Murray is actually healthy.

***