Jamal Murray shines, Nikola Jokic bounces back, Nuggets limp across finish line to snap losing streak in Atlanta

ATLANTA — Even MVPs need a lit­tle affir­ma­tion from their coach­es some­times, maybe. Or maybe the Nuggets’ last two games were just a brief glitch in the cheat code that is Niko­la Jokic.

After Jokic’s sec­ond con­sec­u­tive poor shoot­ing night Fri­day in Den­ver, Michael Mal­one checked on his star cen­ter “to make sure that he is not los­ing any con­fi­dence — which know­ing him, I know he won’t,” Mal­one said. “But I want to make sure he’s not.”

That con­ver­sa­tion might as well rep­re­sent the over­all state of the defend­ing NBA champs after their third con­sec­u­tive loss. Jokic, Aaron Gor­don and Jamal Mur­ray have all faced set­backs or slumps ear­ly this sea­son, but the full trio briefly resem­bled its 2023 play­off form Mon­day night dur­ing a 129–122 Nuggets win over the Hawks at State Farm Arena.

Jokic bounced back from his 18-for-58 shoot­ing stretch with 25 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, three steals and two blocks. Gor­don, whose scor­ing has been down with 12.5 points per game enter­ing Atlanta, got back to being a bat­ter­ing ram with 17 points and 12 rebounds. Mur­ray, in his third game back from injury, shined the most with 29 points includ­ing key threes as Atlanta tried to erase a big deficit late.

The three com­bined to shoot 28-for-38 from the field.

But for the Nuggets (15–9) to snap their skid and pick up their sixth road win of 2023–24, they need­ed a spark from a rook­ie. That’s what Julian Strawther seems to be best at. Den­ver trailed by as many as 11 in a defen­sive­ly lack­lus­ter first half, but the late first-round pick led a come­back going into half­time with one of his increas­ing­ly rec­og­niz­able heat-check games. Strawther made his first five 3‑point attempts to score 19 of his 22 points in 16 first-half min­utes, also pro­vid­ing much-need­ed defen­sive ener­gy with four steals by the intermission.

Out of one Den­ver time­out dur­ing the ral­ly, Strawther scored dri­ving via a designed drib­ble hand­off from Michael Porter Jr., stag­ger­ing again with the sec­ond unit. In their first pos­ses­sion after anoth­er time­out lat­er in the quar­ter, the Nuggets drew up a Jokic hand­off that result­ed in the rookie’s fifth 3‑pointer. They mus­tered a 65–62 lead going into the lock­er room, then they rode their starters to a 20-point advan­tage in the third quarter.

Den­ver was also on the receiv­ing end of tech­ni­cal foul free throws this time, three days after mount­ing frus­tra­tion with offi­ci­at­ing result­ed in a Mur­ray ejec­tion. Atlanta star point guard Trae Young was thrown out of the game when he received two swift tech­ni­cals late in the third, as the Hawks were attempt­ing to slow­ly climb back. With­out Young, they closed the gap to five with 32 sec­onds left as Den­ver got hap­haz­ard with the ball and slop­py defend­ing the perimeter.

Bog­dan Bog­danovic scored 40 on a remark­able 10-of-17 out­side shooting.

Jokic and Gor­don did most of their work bul­ly­ing Atlanta’s front court in the paint, where they’re gen­er­al­ly at their best. When they sat, Zeke Nna­ji was back in the line­up as Denver’s back­up cen­ter after Mal­one opt­ed for DeAn­dre Jor­dan four con­sec­u­tive games. Nnaji’s 12 min­utes were large­ly pro­duc­tive, with learn­ing moments. He got iso­lat­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter against Young, who crossed him up for an easy floater. At the oth­er end, he repent­ed with a put-back and-one. He also blocked a Bog­danovic three, but Bog­danovic recov­ered pos­ses­sion and scored a pair, leav­ing Nna­ji frus­trat­ed. The fourth-year big end­ed with four rebounds and two blocks.

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