As the
Denver Nuggets flew back from Minnesota after losing a win-or-go-home regular-season finale to the Timberwolves for the West's No. 8 seed in 2018,
Nikola Jokic rose from his seat and strode from row to row.
Jokic thanked every player, coach, and staff member for helping the Nuggets win 46 games and come within an overtime loss of their first postseason since 2013, recalled Tim Connelly, Denver's president of basketball operations. "We gave everything we had," Jokic told each person. He promised they would be back in the thick of the West next season.
"It is the kind of thing," Connelly said, "that makes your disappointment fade pretty quickly."
Talk to higher-ups within the Nuggets, and it was that stretch to end the 2017-18 season when they first realized it:
This group is tough. Fearless. On March 17, the Nuggets -- sitting in ninth -- began a seven-game road trip by falling to a
Memphis Grizzlies team carrying a 19-game losing streak. They lost again two nights later -- in double overtime against the
Miami Heat. As April approached, both FiveThirtyEight and Basketball-Reference gave the Nuggets about a 10% chance at the playoffs.
Game 7: Nuggets-Clippers, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN and the ESPN App
They won six straight, including two overtime gut checks, to set up that showdown with Minnesota. A certain resilience has been their defining quality since. It was something the Nuggets were not sure they had entering that season. They held playoff hopes after signing
Paul Millsap, but they hovered around .500 over 40 games. Michael Malone, their fiery head coach, yanked Jokic from a scrimmage in an early-season practice for loafing in transition defense and offering an excuse when Malone cajoled him, both told ESPN in the fall of 2017. Malone had often nudged Jokic -- then just 22, a starter for less than a season -- about his leadership.
"When s--- doesn't go your way, sometimes you become a baby," Malone said he told Jokic toward the end of the 2016-17 season. "You take bad fouls. You take bad shots. Your body language does this and that. You think it's just about you. But what do you think
Jamal [Murray] is looking at? What do you think
Gary Harris is looking at? All eyes are on you."
Resilience defines Denver. Now the Clippers have to find themselves -- and fast.
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