When the fourth quarter of match 6 between Denver’s Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder started on Thursday, the best player in the world was not on the ground. This was relatively surprising in the context of the rest of this qualifying series. Whenever Nuggets coach David Adelman said he absolutely needed a victory – on the 4 against the Clippers, Match 5 against the Thunder – he played Nikola Jokić all the final setting.
The results were mixed. Denver won the match 4 against the Clippers … but blew up a 22 -point lead in the process. Denver lost match 5 against the Thunder, but Jokić was sensational with 13 of the 19 Denver points. It is a despair of despair, only one fact because of evil that the Nuggets fought without him for fundamentally his entire career. Denver would at least love it for a minute or two in these critical games. Their bench just overall did not make this possible.
But Adelman was comfortable taking the risk of withdrawing Jokić from the ground on Thursday evening because the reserve barely used Julian Strawther may have come from the best seconds of his life. With the 80 -year score, Strawther scored eight points at the last 1:37 in the third quarter. This gave Adelman an unexpected cushion, and he used it to give Jokić a well -deserved break. Strawther finally scored 15 points in victory, all in the second half.
With 10:29 am to play in the fourth quarter, the Nuggets had extended their advance at 11 on a pointer at 3 Jamal Murray. It would have been a logical moment to bring Jokić back on the ground. Denver had succeeded 90 seconds of playing time without him. But Adelman, once again, trusted his bench. The wheels were almost removed. Oklahoma City scored four fast points and had a chance for a transitional dunk to cut it five. Peyton Watson denied them this chance with a vicious block from Jalen Williams. A few possessions later, Watson pulled a critical offensive rebound on a 3 -point pointer missed Russell Westbrook who set up free throws. This fault was the judgment which brought back Jokić on the ground.
As a general rule, it would not be worth it to be set in a series with perhaps the two best players in the world and several future famers. But this match, for the most part, has summed up that Denver’s support distribution could or not give Jokić, Murray and Aaron Gordon, even a support tape.
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Denver managed to win the match 3 despite a 3 -point shooting evening 0 for 10 of Jokić because Michael Porter Jr. had his first good shooting game for the playoffs. They lost games 4 and 5 because Nuggets did not appoint Jokić fired 6 out of 31 on the ground and 1 out of 19 from the 3 -point range in two fourth quarters in which they held large tracks. For the series entering match 6, Jokić had accumulated 74 assists, but only 26 assists because his teammates continued to miss the shots he created for them. The starting program had outlined the Thunder with 31 points, but they lost the series because all the other units they put on the ground beaten.
In this specific series, an exploding bench player for 15 points is considered a major development. These two huge Watson games killed Oklahoma City rallies that could have swung the game, and therefore the series. We have not even arrived at Christian Braun, who collected 23 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and three interceptions yet.
The former director general of Denver, Calvin Booth, bet the window of the franchise championship on these young players growing in time to give Jokić the affordable support he would need to continue. He was dismissed, in part, because they had not won the confidence of former coach Michael Malone by April. This is not lacking in organizational friction, but on the basis of what we had seen before the two layoffs, Malone was not exactly false. There was simply not much evidence in the 2025 eliminatory series that Strawther and Watson would be viable bench players. Braun, even after having broken out in the regular season, had a hard time offensively for many of these playoffs.
But in the biggest match of the season to date, these young players have delivered. Whether Adelman’s confidence was ultimately rewarded or if it was a stroke of a match, the Nuggets are still alive because of some of their most criticized players. Jokić doesn’t need much to keep his team in a match. No one asks Strawther to score 30 or Watson to lock Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for a full match. However, if the support casting can simply give him what they did on Thursday, it can potentially take the nuggets the rest of the path.
