The hall­way con­nect­ing the court and home lock­er room at Ball Are­na was occu­pied by a vibrant Jamal Mur­ray, amped up on the high from scor­ing 24 first-half points, but fun­nel­ing his ener­gy in the oppo­site direction.

Denver’s third-quar­ter defense had been dis­mal the last two games. Every­one was to blame, Mur­ray includ­ed. The Nuggets couldn’t afford anoth­er lack­adaisi­cal 12 min­utes in a con­test this close against the des­per­ate-to-win Pistons.

“I loved it,” coach Michael Mal­one said. “He’s telling all the guys in the hall­way, ‘We closed the half well, but hey, it’s not about the offense, it’s about our defense. We’ve got­ta get stops. We’ve got­ta be more con­sis­tent on that end. We’ve got­ta rebound bet­ter.’ When you have a guy like Jamal, one of your best play­ers, say­ing that to his team­mates, that is hold­ing each oth­er account­able. That is lead­er­ship. And we just need more of that.”

“We don’t have to rely on Coach to say some­thing,” Mur­ray said.

Mur­ray end­ed the night with a sea­son-high 37 points, and the Nuggets outscored Detroit 43–28 in the third to all but wrap up their 26th win. They are 18–6 when Mur­ray plays; 8–6 when he doesn’t.

Every loss can feel a lit­tle like dooms­day when los­ing becomes rare. The defend­ing NBA cham­pi­ons are start­ing to expe­ri­ence that sen­sa­tion. (Mur­ray includ­ed: His 37-point night seemed in direct response to a poor indi­vid­ual per­for­mance against Jalen Sug­gs and Orlando.)

The Nuggets expect to win. They can’t fath­om when they don’t. The search for answers after a blown 18-point lead against the Mag­ic on Fri­day led Mal­one to one semi-trend that might have felt worse than it actu­al­ly was: the 85 com­bined points his team allowed in the third quar­ters of a back-to-back.

When Mal­one rep­ri­mand­ed his team in the lock­er room that night, he said, “What­ev­er you’re doing at half­time, it’s not work­ing.” He fumed that he was beat­ing play­ers out of the lock­er room for warm-ups before the sec­ond half.

Over­all, Den­ver is ninth in the league in third-quar­ter defen­sive rating.

“I think we all as a team decid­ed to get out there a lit­tle ear­li­er,” Mur­ray said, grin­ning, when asked Sun­day what the Nuggets did to improve in the third quarter.

Jokes aside, his hall­way mes­sage was maybe more mean­ing­ful than he real­ized. In the third quar­ter, Pey­ton Wat­son deliv­ered one of his high­light blocks of the sea­son against Kevin Knox, then he used that defen­sive momen­tum — as well as the fire ignit­ed by a blind-side shove from Ausar Thomp­son — to score nine points in the last 2:22 of the frame. He had been score­less going into halftime.

“We’ve got our vocal guys on this team,” Wat­son said, iden­ti­fy­ing DeAn­dre Jor­dan, Ken­tavi­ous Cald­well-Pope and Aaron Gor­don. “They all talk a lot. But when you hear it from one of your mar­quee play­ers and some­one who doesn’t speak up a lot, that means it’s time to go, you know what I’m say­ing? We’re obvi­ous­ly all aware of our third-quar­ter defen­sive strug­gles as of late, but I think every­one was locked in this third quarter.”

As Wat­son heat­ed up, the game took ahold of him fierce­ly enough that he didn’t even know which Pis­ton shoved him while enter­ing a brief fit of rage. And not moments lat­er, he lost track of what was going on around him when he yelled out in cel­e­bra­tion of a tran­si­tion dunk. Detroit was rac­ing to the oth­er end for a layup and-one. “I need­ed to let some emo­tion out on that one, and I think Coach under­stood that,” Wat­son said.

Teach­able moments, both of them, but Mal­one did endorse the dis­play of pas­sion in gen­er­al. He’s of the belief that it’s a con­ta­gious behav­ior, and that Mur­ray is the Nugget most capa­ble of infect­ing team­mates. If that was the true secret behind Watson’s heart sud­den­ly appear­ing on his sleeve — a burst that also includ­ed scream­ing toward the crowd after a 3‑pointer — then Mal­one can for­give the side-effect of for­get­ting to retreat on defense. Just this once.

“You can read (Mur­ray),” Mal­one said. “My moth­er told me when I was a lit­tle kid, ‘I can read you like a book.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? You can’t read me like a book.’ And you can. I’d be a bad pok­er play­er. And Jamal, you can read very easy.”

From Murray’s per­spec­tive, the key to Watson’s rapid rise this sea­son hasn’t been an influx of skill or abil­i­ty, but rather, some­thing hard­er to label on film. “I think it’s more about the con­fi­dence,” he said.

Regard­ing that trait, as well, Mur­ray might be sub­con­scious­ly mak­ing an impact. He won Denver’s defen­sive play­er of the game chain against Detroit for back­ing up his words at half­time. Oth­er­wise, the chain might have gone to Wat­son. The two of them had a pregame con­ver­sa­tion about that very award, coincidentally.

Murray’s con­fi­dence was half-bril­liant, half-blind.

“He actu­al­ly said he was gonna get it,” Wat­son recalled. “He stamped it before the game. He said, ‘I’m gonna get defen­sive play­er of the game.’

“He also said he was gonna get 20 assists.”

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