LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Nobody weath­ers a storm like Jamal Murray.

As the Nuggets saw their mas­sive fourth-quar­ter lead melt away, their sea­son and their hopes hang­ing in the bal­ance, Mur­ray put a resound­ing stop to what felt like an inevitable Lak­ers comeback.

Murray’s two clutch 3‑pointers, sand­wiched in-between a beau­ti­ful find to Nuggets vet­er­an Paul Mill­sap for a dunk, saved Denver’s sea­son. The Nuggets sur­vived a furi­ous Lak­ers ral­ly to hang on 114–106 in Tuesday’s dra­mat­ic Game 3 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals.

Murray’s stun­ning line of 28 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds gave his team life after the dejec­tion of Sunday’s buzzer-beat­er. Now down 2–1, the Nuggets will try and even the series up Thurs­day night.

What was once a 20-point lead dwin­dled to just four with 3:33 remain­ing in the game. The Nuggets near­ly wilt­ed under the Lak­ers’ ball pres­sure and the swarm­ing, swat­ting pres­ence of LeBron James. But despite the inces­sant chaos, Murray’s shoot­ing pre­vent­ed a com­plete collapse.

Niko­la Jokic added 22 points and 10 rebounds, and the Nuggets got huge boosts from Jera­mi Grant (play­off career-high 26 points) and Monte Mor­ris (14). On Tues­day, the Nuggets got the sup­ple­men­tal help they bad­ly need­ed over Games 1 and 2.

James (30) and Antho­ny Davis (27) coun­tered with giant per­for­mances themselves.

For a moment in the third quar­ter, it looked like James would assert his phys­i­cal dom­i­nance over what­ev­er stood in his way. He had three con­sec­u­tive bas­kets after tak­ing an elbow to the chin from Mur­ray, and momen­tum was tem­porar­i­ly swinging.

But Grant’s two-way ener­gy momen­tar­i­ly changed the game. He weath­ered James’ run with 12 third-quar­ter points him­self, includ­ing an easy two off of one of the Lak­ers’ care­less turnovers. Los Ange­les had four in the quar­ter alone to break up their offen­sive rhythm and fuel Denver’s tran­si­tion game. Los Ange­les had cut the lead to just five ear­ly in the quar­ter before the Nuggets closed strong. They took a 93–75 lead into the fourth.

Coach Michael Mal­one had seen enough of his team’s met­tle over the last two months to know that the Nuggets, despite their dis­ap­point­ment, would approach Game 3 with a clear head.

“Yeah, I think they’ve earned my trust,” Mal­one said. “We’ve been down 3–1, 3–1 back-to-back series. To respond to a dev­as­tat­ing loss at the buzzer takes a spe­cial team. I think that’s what we have, a spe­cial group of guys. That was our mes­sage yes­ter­day as we ed the film. … Our group still believes. We were right there. We should have won that game, in our opin­ion. Antho­ny Davis made a great shot, give him cred­it. But we have con­fi­dence that we can beat this team.”

It began on the defen­sive end, just as it did against the Jazz and Clip­pers. With­out an engaged, con­nect­ed defense, nei­ther 3–1 come­back would’ve happened.

On Tues­day, the Nuggets forced nine turnovers in the first half, includ­ing five from James. They also made a con­cert­ed effort to dom­i­nate the glass and end Lak­ers pos­ses­sions as quick­ly as possible.

“I think our sec­ond half defense (on Sun­day), if we can try to repli­cate that for four quar­ters tonight, now we’re going to give our­selves a great chance to get our first win in this series and make it inter­est­ing,” Mal­one said.

For the first time since Game 3 of the sec­ond round, the Nuggets car­ried a lead into half­time. Rather than wal­low in Sunday’s dispir­it­ing out­come, they played with poise and pur­pose, build­ing a 63–53 lead at the break.

Jokic impact­ed near­ly all facets of the game. The degree of dif­fi­cul­ty on some of his shots was ridicu­lous, and his urgency spread through­out the team. Whether it was him push­ing the pace or prob­ing the defense with devi­ous looks, Jokic was an unremit­ting force. His 15-point, sev­en-rebound, four-assist half led the move­ment that pro­duced a lead as big as 18 points in the first half.

Out­side of strong starts from the Lak­ers’ dev­as­tat­ing front­court pair­ing, the dif­fer­ence was Denver’s bench. For the sec­ond straight game, Michael Porter Jr. played with great ener­gy and con­fi­dence on both ends. But Mor­ris cap­tained the sec­ond unit almost flaw­less­ly. Togeth­er, they hung 21 points in the first half.