The Nuggets won their sev­enth con­sec­u­tive game against the Los Ange­les Lak­ers, 114–106, on Thurs­day night at Crypto.com Are­na, where Kobe Bryant was hon­ored pregame with a fresh­ly unveiled stat­ue. Here are three obser­va­tions as Den­ver (36–16) moved into a two-way tie for first place in the West­ern Con­fer­ence with Minnesota.

Nuggets are different in clutch time

The Lak­ers, flaws and all, are a pret­ty good clutch team. Their eight wins in games decid­ed by three points or less are the most in the NBA. But the Nuggets boast the No. 1 clutch defense in the league, and it showed up again Thurs­day night. Los Ange­les made only two shots from the field in the last five min­utes as Den­ver engi­neered a late, tie-break­ing 10–0 run.

At 94.7, Denver’s clutch defen­sive rat­ing was already 3.3 points bet­ter than the sec­ond-best mark in the NBA and 5.3 bet­ter than third place enter­ing this game.

Lakers’ coverage shows respect for Murray

Los Ange­les blitzed Jamal Mur­ray on prac­ti­cal­ly every ball screen while Mur­ray wasn’t shar­ing the floor with Niko­la Jokic — a defen­sive strat­e­gy that implied respect for the Nuggets point guard who aver­aged 32.5 points on 50/40/90 shoot­ing dur­ing the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals last spring. The Lak­ers were intent on mak­ing any­one else beat them when Mur­ray was stag­ger­ing with the sec­ond unit.

A few times through­out the night, Mur­ray forced bad miss­es, but he also respond­ed to the cov­er­age with a hand­ful of impres­sive pass­es, includ­ing a per­fect find to Pey­ton Wat­son for a wing three at the end of the first quarter.

Jokic had a most­ly shaky game for his stan­dards — 24 points on 20 shots, six turnovers, gen­er­al­ly out­played by Antho­ny Davis — but Mur­ray had him cov­ered. It was Murray’s third con­sec­u­tive dou­ble-dig­it assist game, and he made the shots that count­ed most with a go-ahead three and tran­si­tion floater on back-to-back late pos­ses­sions. He fin­ished with 29 points, sev­en rebounds, 11 helpers, two steals and three turnovers.

Per­haps the best news of the night? Mur­ray came away unscathed from a scary col­li­sion when Jax­son Hayes went fly­ing into his legs in the sec­ond half.

Porter gets off on the right foot, but the wrong footing

Michael Porter Jr. might lead the league in shoot­ing per­cent­age with a foot on the 3‑point line. He was inte­gral in Denver’s fast start that stuck, scor­ing 11 of his 27 points in the first quar­ter. He was clear­ly in a rhythm with his jumper, but he robbed him­self of two extra points by fail­ing to get his toes behind the arc twice on makes. That’s a bit of a trend with Porter, who is one of the best vol­ume 3‑point shoot­ers in the NBA but could be even bet­ter if a few long 2s count­ed toward his percentage.

Regard­less, Porter had an effec­tive over­all game. His defen­sive activ­i­ty was notice­able, he lobbed a per­fect alley-oop to Aaron Gor­don in tran­si­tion, and he reg­is­tered one of his best blocks of the sea­son. When Austin Reaves gam­bled for a steal against Jokic late, Porter pun­ished him with an open cor­ner three to end the Lak­ers’ chances. The Nuggets are 9–3 when Porter scores 22 or more.

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