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The Denver Nuggets organization has had to resort to drastic measures over the past few days; they decided to fire their head coach of a decade in Michael Malone and cleaned house even further with the firing of general manager Calvin Booth. And it looks as though this has reinvigorated something within the locker room, as the Nuggets have won their last two games with interim head coach David Adelman at the helm — including an all-important 117-109 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night.
In the Nuggets' win over the Grizzlies, as expected, it was Nikola Jokic who once again did the heavy lifting for his team. Jokic put up his 34th triple-double of the season, tallying 26 points, 16 rebounds, and 13 assists, and in so doing, made some history for himself.
As pointed out by Tim Reynolds of ESPN, Jokic has now managed to secure a season-long triple-double average; he is a lock to average over 10 assists per game this year, which was the only stat that was in doubt. Entering the Nuggets' Friday night contest, Jokic needed to record just four more assists on the year to lock up the feat, and he wasted no time doing so.
Jokic is only the third player in NBA history to accomplish this feat, joining Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson and current Nuggets teammate Russell Westbrook as the only players with this incredible triple-double accomplishment.
With the Nuggets still in the middle of a dogfight for an outright playoff spot, this was the exact kind of performance the team needed out of Jokic. They needed to mount a comeback against the Grizzlies, and that's exactly what they did. And now, they head into their regular-season finale against the Houston Rockets in a much-better position, especially when it's likely that the Rockets rest their key players having already locked up the two-seed.
Nuggets handle business, send Grizzlies to play-in tournament
This was as close a regular-season game can get into having a playoff atmosphere. A loss would have put the Nuggets in grave danger of being in the play-in tournament, and heading into the fourth quarter on Friday night, they were behind after finding themselves down by as many as 15 points earlier in the game.
But the Nuggets' defense, a pain point over the past few months, locked in; they held the Grizzlies to just 14 points in the fourth quarter, earning them their 49th win of the season in the process. If Denver wins their season finale against the Rockets, they will earn the four-seed, as they hold the tie-breaker over the Los Angeles Clippers.
