The Den­ver Nuggets have some cock­roach in them. You bet­ter make sure they’re buried or they’ll come back to haunt you.

Left for dead with their sea­son on the brink, the Nuggets refused to back down Fri­day night. After trail­ing by as many as 16, the Nuggets ripped off a stir­ring sec­ond-half come­back that fought off elim­i­na­tion for the fourth time this post­sea­son. Denver’s 111–105 win over the Clip­pers guar­an­teed a Game 6 on Sun­day in the West­ern Con­fer­ence semifinals.

“I know there’s not a lot of belief (out­side our lock­er room),” Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one said. “But we believe in ourselves.”

After Paul Millsap’s sea­son-sav­ing third quar­ter made the mar­gin man­age­able, Niko­la Jokic (22 points, 14 rebounds) and Jamal Mur­ray seized the fourth quar­ter. First a screen freed up Mur­ray at the top of the key, cre­at­ing some air­space he’s rarely enjoyed through­out a gru­el­ing series. Mur­ray buried the 3‑pointer, per­haps serv­ing as an ember for the fire to come.

“Most of the night, I got where I want­ed,” Mur­ray said, his 26 points on 25 field goals an indi­ca­tion of the offen­sive slog he faced on near­ly every possession.

Then a momen­tum-tilt­ing alley-oop from Michael Porter Jr. to Mason Plum­lee cut the deficit to 82–80. More impor­tant­ly, it revealed a dan­ger­ous unselfish qual­i­ty that tends to ele­vate the Nuggets to anoth­er gear. The loose, self­less play trick­led into the defen­sive end, where the Nuggets scrapped and made the Clip­pers work for everything.

It was more or less what L.A. had done to the Nuggets the pri­or two games.

Soon, Jokic and Mur­ray were trad­ing 3‑point dag­gers and unfil­tered roars, alter­nat­ing which super­star threw the next debil­i­tat­ing punch. By the time their indi­vid­ual fire­works were over, the Nuggets had peeled off a 14–2 run that gave Den­ver a six-point cush­ion with under six min­utes left. By the end, Jokic and Mur­ray had 20 of the team’s 38 points in the fourth, while the Clip­pers man­aged just 25 total.

“Niko­la start­ed find­ing his rhythm, Jamal found his rhythm, Michael Porter made some big plays for us,” Mal­one said. “But it always starts with our defense.”

Not that Kawhi Leonard or Paul George was going to con­cede with a spot in the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals on the line. Both stars kept charg­ing, forc­ing their relent­less offense on Denver’s wings. The Clip­pers drew to with­in 102–100 with 1:58 left before Porter drained a 3‑pointer that must’ve lift­ed the weight of the world off him. All sev­en of Porter’s points came in the final two min­utes but it was a huge block fol­lowed by a clutch rebound that may ulti­mate­ly engen­der more trust than his buckets.

“Every­body knows it wasn’t the best shot selec­tion, but some­thing made me shoot it, so I shot it,” said Porter, beam­ing after the game.

Mill­sap almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly kept the Nuggets afloat in the third quar­ter as the Clip­pers threat­ened, mul­ti­ple times, to pull away. Mill­sap scored 14 of his 17 points, drain­ing one 3‑pointer to com­ple­ment his steady march­es to the free-throw line. Den­ver trailed by as many as 15 just min­utes into the sec­ond half before claw­ing its way back and saw­ing the mar­gin to just 80–73 head­ing into the fourth.

“‘Sap won us that game,” Porter said, refer­ring to the Nuggets’ aging pow­er for­ward. “We were down and he kept claw­ing away.”

The Nuggets also showed some momen­tary resis­tance when Mill­sap and Mar­cus Mor­ris got tan­gled up fight­ing for a rebound late in the sec­ond quar­ter. Their effort – and per­haps their pride – was indica­tive of the same out­fit that fought back from a 3–1 deficit against Utah.

Mal­one said his team “briefly” dis­cussed Porter’s crit­i­cal postgame com­ments fol­low­ing Game 4 and remind­ed the rook­ie how imper­a­tive it is to keep those feel­ings in-house.

“Obvi­ous­ly dur­ing the play­offs, the last thing you want is any type of dis­trac­tion, and if those frus­tra­tions are there for Michael or for any­body, it is much bet­ter to keep those con­ver­sa­tions inter­nal, in the lock­er room and amongst our­selves,” Mal­one said.

It wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear how those crit­i­cal com­ments land­ed among Porter’s teammates.

The Nuggets took a day off Thurs­day to decom­press and process their sec­ond 3–1 deficit in the play­offs. After a day to think about it, Mal­one briefly re-vis­it­ed Game 4 and diag­nosed what need­ed to change.

“How we can help our­selves is, if the defense stays where it has been, get out and run, attack, get to the rim, get to the paint, put pres­sure on them,” Mal­one said. “Don’t stand, make sure the ball is mov­ing, make sure bod­ies are mov­ing. Have to set bet­ter screens.

“I under­stand – I don’t lis­ten to it, but I hear that peo­ple back home are crit­i­ciz­ing Jamal because of his play, which I think is just out­landish,” Mal­one con­tin­ued. “Please con­sid­er who is guard­ing him and how they’re guard­ing him.”

On Fri­day, the waves of Clip­pers defend­ers didn’t mat­ter. Mur­ray and the Nuggets brought a will they couldn’t stifle.