SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With­out two of their best 3‑point shoot­ers, the Nuggets were nat­u­ral­ly going to have trou­ble keep­ing up with the Kings if they didn’t defend the perime­ter well Fri­day night.

Sacra­men­to made 17 of 34 shots beyond the arc, and the Nuggets lost a 135–106 laugh­er to the Kings at Gold­en 1 Cen­ter, miss­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take sole pos­ses­sion of first place in the West­ern Conference.

Six Kings scored at least a dozen points, while Den­ver (36–17) turned it over 20 times with just 26 assists.

Michael Porter Jr. (right knee tendinopa­thy) and Ken­tavi­ous Cald­well-Pope (right ham­string tight­ness) were both ruled out in the last 90 min­utes before open­ing tip as the Nuggets warmed up for their first back-to-back in more than a month and 10th this sea­son. This was the first game Porter has missed in 2023–24, end­ing a streak of 72 con­sec­u­tive games played dat­ing back to last sea­son. He scored 27 points Thurs­day in one of his best two-way out­ings of the season.

Porter and Cald­well-Pope are a com­bined 39% on more than one third of the team’s 3‑point attempts. On top of that, Cald­well-Pope is arguably Denver’s best perime­ter defend­er. With­out him, the Nuggets need­ed bur­geon­ing stand­out wing Pey­ton Wat­son to step up. It wasn’t Watson’s night. He com­mit­ted all three of Denver’s first-quar­ter turnovers, includ­ing a dis­as­trous inbound pass direct­ly to Malik Monk with two sec­onds remain­ing after a Sacra­men­to made three. Monk turned the inter­cep­tion into anoth­er 3‑pointer at the buzzer, cut­ting Denver’s lead to 35–32 and squash­ing an impres­sive quarter.

Wat­son then got trapped in foul jail, pick­ing up his third before he had played 12 min­utes. The Nuggets were forced to fend with­out anoth­er wing asset, and they weren’t up to the chal­lenge defen­sive­ly. They trailed by 10 at half­time and by as many as 32 in the fourth quarter.

Niko­la Jokic scored 23 points on 17 shots. He had three steals and just one of Denver’s turnovers. But Sacra­men­to cen­ter Doman­tas Sabo­nis beat him to a triple-dou­ble, amass­ing 17 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists.

Jokic land­ed hard in the last minute of the first quar­ter after com­plet­ing a fast break with Julian Strawther, who was back from his own injury. The two-time MVP briefly dis­ap­peared from the bench and down the lock­er room tun­nel, but he checked back into the game at his reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled time in the second.

Rota­tions got unusu­al due to the absent starters and sub­se­quent dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mances. Wat­son and Justin Hol­i­day start­ed. Zeke Nna­ji checked in as the four along­side Jokic dur­ing the third quar­ter after not play­ing at all in the first half.

Sacramento’s bench outscored Denver’s, 65–43. Monk, one of the best sixth men in the NBA, con­tributed 23 of those points on 9‑of-13 shoot­ing. He was a 26-point stand­out last time the Nuggets vis­it­ed. Both matchups this sea­son have come on the sec­ond day of a road back-to-back for Den­ver, while the hosts have had extra rest both times. The sched­ul­ing gods will return the favor next week, though: The Kings have to play Wednes­day at Ball Are­na on 24 hours’ rest while the Nuggets will have had Tues­day off.