The Denver Nuggets, for the second consecutive game, have thrown away a fourth-quarter lead and ended up losing to the Oklahoma City Thunder, this time suffering a 112-105 defeat in Game 5 to fall behind 3-2 in the series. To start the fourth quarter, the Nuggets couldn't buy a bucket, so they were unable to build on their lead as OKC chipped away with multiple Luguentz Dort triples, allowing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams to seal the deal in crunch time.

Some of the Nuggets' shots towards the end of the game were either short or wide of the basket, which suggests that fatigue may be catching up to them after playing such a short rotation all playoffs long. Nonetheless, head coach David Adelman admirably shouldered the blame, saying that it's his fault that his team ran out of gas if that, indeed, was the case in their second-straight fourth-quarter meltdown.

“If it is fatigue that’s on me. I'm deciding who's gonna run it, who's gonna be out there,” Adelman said in his postgame presser. “I liked the group that we had. And I thought we sustained it early. [But] we didn’t have enough in the end.”

Nikola Jokic, who put up 44 points in defeat, logged 44 minutes on the night, while his dynamic duo, Jamal Murray, played 42 minutes of his own. And with all the effort they have to exert just to create open shots for the Nuggets especially with how suffocating the Thunder defense can be, logging that heavy of a workload is no joke.

Be that as it may, the Nuggets have no choice but to rely heavily on their core players. They have assembled a roster without much depth, and they will have to live and die by the eight rotation players they have now that their season is on the line.

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Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray combined for 72 of the Nuggets' 105 points on the night, but it wasn't enough. Michael Porter Jr. was notoriously cold from the field yet again; he had a 1-7 shooting night yet again and he missed two three-pointers in the final minute of the game that could have swung the outcome of the game.

Russell Westbrook cannot barf up airballs in Game 6 the way he did in Game 5, while Christian Braun has to be more efficient from the field considering the open shots he's going to get. Maybe Aaron Gordon has to be more proactive in hunting for his offense as well.