Colorado University Athletics
Big Second Quarter Gives Nuggets A Runaway Win At Coors
October 09, 2015 | Men's Basketball
Ralphie the buffalo has never run across the hardwood of the Coors Events Center. She'll probably never treat Colorado basketball fans to that sight, but Thursday night the Denver Nuggets gave them the next best thing — their mascot, Rocky, charged around the court, dragging two Nuggets dancers wearing cowboy hats.
That was the first highlight of the night, and Denver provided many more in its 112-94 preseason win over the Chicago Bulls. Joffrey Lauvergne put up plenty of highlights; the French forward dropped 18 points and pulled in eight rebounds. Rookie forward Nikola Jokic was no slouch, either, scoring 14 points with five boards.
It was the kind of preseason win where you have to check yourself and remember that the games don't count yet. Still, the Nuggets looked impressive, especially in the second quarter, when they scored 14 fast-break points and pulled away with a 26-3 run.
“If I could bottle that second quarter and stretch that out to 48 minutes, you'd see a very happy man,” Denver head coach Mike Malone said.
The Nuggets held the Bulls to just 34 percent shooting, and Chicago got few contributions outside of second-year forwards Nikola Mirotic and Doug McDermott. Mirotic scored 18 points and grabbed four rebounds, and McDermott had 15 points and four boards. They were the only Bulls' regulars who shot better than 50 percent from the field.
Mirotic was hot early, and he paced Chicago to a quick lead with his versatile offensive game. He scored from deep, as the screener in the pick and roll, and on dribble-drives.
The Nuggets responded with a heavy dose of their own big men — Lauvernge, Jokic and Kenneth Faried. Faried scored only seven points, but he crashed the boards, ran hard in transition and irritated Bulls center Joakim Noah. He and Noah came down with the same rebound, and wrestled for it until Noah flung Faried to the ground. Noah picked up a foul and appeared to have tweaked his shoulder in the process.
Jokic got into it with Noah, too. They jostled and pushed on the block and had to be separated by referees. Jokic is barely 20 years old, but he wasn't intimidated by the Bulls' emotional leader and toughest player.
Jokic wasn't intimidated by anyone, really. Chicago struggled to box him out, and he had his way on the offensive glass. He also threw no-look passes and disrupted pick-and-roll passing lanes on defense.
“He's surpassed everybody's expectations,” Malone said.
Denver's other big rookie, Emmanuel Mudiay, had seven assists and five rebounds, but shot just 2-of-11 from the field.
“For him to have seven assists, two turnovers, that's where he needs to be,” Malone said.
The rest of the game was as inconsistent as players are still getting up to speed, and a lot of minutes go to young players and fringe roster candidates. That sloppiness was out in full force during the Nuggets' second-quarter run; the Bulls tried to run a dribble pitch with forward Cameron Bairstow and swingman Tony Snell, but Bairstow's pass hit Snell in the face, and Denver ran out to a huge dunk by guard Gary Harris.
That turnover was one of 36 combined during the game. It wasn't pretty. But you don't expect pretty from two teams breaking in new coaches in the preseason. The Nuggets won handily, but they have a lot of work to do.
“I'm never satisfied,” Malone said. “I told our players, 'I want us to be great.' To be great, you can't develop bad habits. I have much higher standards than that.”
