The Denver Nuggets hosted a Game 7 on Sunday afternoon, led for the entire first half, held superstar point guard Damian Lillard in check and were still unable to advance past the Portland Trail Blazers. With the Blazers winning on the road to end Denver's memorable season, the Nuggets already have some regrets — namely head coach Michael Malone.
Leading to the Nuggets' elimination over the weekend, Trail Blazers shooting guard CJ McCollum picked up the slack in a big way en route to scoring 37 points in Game 7. As a result, the aforementioned Malone regrets that he didn't send some help when defending McCollum late in the game.
With the Nuggets down just one point with under 20 seconds left, McCollum put the icing on the cake with this field goal.
Michael Malone on the McCollum pull up that put Portland up 3: "All summer long, I’m gonna probably be second guessing myself. … Right after I’m saying, ‘We should have sent somebody at him.'" pic.twitter.com/GwvrezZxDQ
— Christian Clark (@cclark_13) May 13, 2019
Even with Malone and the Nuggets only winning one postseason series this time around, the future in Denver definitely remains bright. With both big man Nikola Jokic and shooting guard Jamal Murray serving as the team's young core, they will no doubt enter the 2019-20 campaign as one of the favorites in the Western Conference.
Despite losing prematurely come playoff time, the Nuggets did win an impressive 54 regular season games. Thanks to the team's strong regular season effort, Denver finished only three games behind the No. 1 seeded Warriors. The team won 54 regular season games before adding another seven wins during the postseason. However, it remains to be seen as to whether or not they can hang with the Warriors, who will be battling it out the Blazers with a fifth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals on the line.
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