On Wednes­day the Nuggets were mata­dors. On Fri­day they were ghosts.

The Nuggets had their 3‑point defense exposed once again in Friday’s loss to the Rap­tors, leav­ing coach Michael Mal­one “embar­rassed” at his team’s inabil­i­ty to defend the perime­ter. Toron­to sunk 51% from 3‑point range (18-of-35) in what’s been an ugly theme of Denver’s re-start.

Through eight games in the “bub­ble,” Nuggets oppo­nents have buried 44.8% of their 3‑point tries. If that trend con­tin­ues head­ing into next week’s first-round play­off series against the Jazz, the Nuggets could eas­i­ly be sent home early.

“We have the worst defense in the bub­ble, so we haven’t seen much progress in any area in regards to any­thing defen­sive relat­ed,” Mal­one said. “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, tran­si­tion, pick-and-roll, 3‑point, what­ev­er you want to call it.”

Now that the seed­ing games are over, the Nuggets’ coach­ing staff will turn its atten­tion to dis­sect­ing Utah, a divi­sion rival. That means all the actions the Jazz run to free up star guard Dono­van Mitchell or the pick-and-roll schemes that lead to Rudy Gob­ert lobs. But Mal­one, still hot from the loss to Toron­to, also said this week­end was about look­ing internally.

“This is just a com­mon theme,” Mal­one said. “I’m embar­rassed by it, I real­ly am. The fact that every night we’re giv­ing up 16, 17, 18 threes … I mean a year ago we were the No. 1 3‑point defense in the NBA. And right now, it’s almost com­i­cal how bad our 3‑point defense is. So we’ll look at our­selves a lit­tle bit, try to fig­ure out why it’s con­tin­u­ing to happen.”

Vet­er­an Paul Mill­sap, who only played 16 min­utes Fri­day, was more mea­sured, though he did con­cede the team’s atten­tion to detail has been lack­ing since they got to Orlando.

“I think we’re, despite these last few games, I think we’re locked in,” Mill­sap said. “I think we know exact­ly what we need to do, espe­cial­ly going into these playoffs.”

Mill­sap could’ve been cov­er­ing for the team, or he could’ve been bank­ing on the switch he’s seen teams flip once the post­sea­son arrives. It’s pos­si­ble the inten­si­ty of the play­offs could spur the Nuggets’ focus, but Mal­one would nev­er leave that sort of thing to chance.

“I’m not count­ing on that,” Mal­one said. “If it hap­pens, great. I think you play good defense because you com­mit to it, it’s a pri­or­i­ty, it’s some­thing that you want to do. We have not defend­ed in any of our eight games. … I sound like a bro­ken record. You guys must be tired of hear­ing from me because every ques­tion that I get some­how, some way, my answer is tied to two things: Turnovers and 3‑point defense.”

Between a porous 3‑point defense and care­less­ness with the ball, the Nuggets are mak­ing games much hard­er for them­selves than they need to be. Even if the Nuggets are more tal­ent­ed, a dis­joint­ed defense could under­mine what­ev­er advan­tage Den­ver has in terms of depth.

“Are we able to turn it on?” Mal­one asked. “I hope so, that’d be great to see. But I think it’s going to take our guys real­ly under­stand­ing, com­mit­ting, buy­ing in. If we want to be a team that can even com­pete in the first round against a tal­ent­ed Utah team, we’re going to have to improve our defense in a hurry.”