DENVER _ To get through the physicality of Memphis and the emotion in Oklahoma City, the Warriors looked like a team that had caffeine flowing through its veins for 30 hours and two impressive wins. But caffeine highs lead to eventual lows.
The Warriors crashed hard in Denver, slogging their way through a 132-110 blowout loss to a short-handed but far more energized Nuggets team, who tied an NBA regular-season record with 24 made 3s.
Golden State was without Klay Thompson, who has a sore right heel, Shaun Livingston, who was back in the Bay Area attending the birth of his child, and the injured David West and Zaza Pachulia. But the Nuggets were also without a batch of key rotation pieces like Danilo Galinari, Kenneth Faried and Emmanual Mudiay.
So the Warriors were still favored. But they were quickly overwhelmed.
Led by rising star Nikola Jokic _ who finished with a 17-point, 21-rebound, 12-assist triple-double _ Denver came out and physically battered the Warriors' frontline, while dropping 3s over the top of their perimeter defenders.
Denver had five offensive rebounds in the first four minutes and outrebounded the Warriors 31-12 in the first half. Jokic slugged JaVale McGee and Draymond Green out of the way for a pair and then took one away from an unaware Kevin Durant. Will Barton skied in for two. The Nuggets jolted up 14-9.
Then Juancho Hernangomez, a 21-year-old gunner from Spain, got hot from deep and the rest of his teammates followed. Hernangomez nailed three 3s in the opening minutes, stepping into wide open looks as the Warriors failed to identify hot shooters or crisply rotate back out of their help assignments. It would remain a theme.
The Nuggets hit seven 3s in the first quarter and an unbelievable 16 3s in the first half (two shy of the NBA record), planting 79 first half points on a typically sturdy Warriors defense that was springing leaks on the regular.
The Golden State offense wasn't that much better. Steph Curry went 4-of-18 shooting and made only one of his 11 3s. On the first possession out of halftime, Curry tried to spark the Warrior offense with a quick corner 3. But he shot it four feet past the rim, a massive airball.
Durant made 10 of his 16 shots, one of the few offensive bright spots. Patrick McCaw had a career-high 17 points, leading a mildly intriguing run by the Warriors' mop-up crew to start the fourth quarter. But most of the night, the Warriors looked tired and disengaged.
Perhaps the play that summed it up best came in the second quarter. Coming out of a timeout, the energized Nuggets pressed the Warriors, who couldn't get open. James Michael McAdoo was forced to call a second straight timeout to avoid a 5-second violation.
But this night was about the Nuggets incredible marksmanship. Right after the Warriors' backups climbed back within nine briefly at the start of the fourth quarter, Hernangomez and the rest of the Nuggets sprinted back ahead with a barrage of long bombs. They made four in the final minutes to pump their tally up to 24, tying a regular season record for the most made 3s in a game.
