Mike Malone, head coach of the Denver Nuggets, did everything he could to beat Jayson Tatum in their 122-120 win over the Boston Celtics on January 19. This included putting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on No. 0 so that his minutes directly matched Tatum’s.
“We tried to match Pope’s minutes with him,” Malone gave help (thanks to The Denver Post). “Around the seven-minute mark of the first half, they took Tatum out. Pope stayed in the game. Tatum was now playing against one of our bench players. Jayson Tatum is a first-team All-NBA player, and we talked about that at halftime of the second half. Let’s try to record and copy Tatum’s minutes with KCP. He’s our best matchup against him.”
Bennett Durando of The Denver Post said that Malone changed his game plan to fit the intensity of a playoff game. Aaron Gordon slammed the NBA Knicks for a low score, and Nugget even played a double-double for a while.
Durando began by saying, “It wasn’t supposed to be a playoff simulation. DeAndre Jordan was supposed to play backup center.” The hours and rotations were made standard practice. The game was part of the normal season. The 43rd game of the regular season. “But when Michael Malone acts on his fierce competitiveness, the Nuggets coach can become a risk-taker.” Or maybe just a crazy person.”
Basketball: The Celtics lost to the Nuggets, and Nikola Jokic had an MVP performance.
After the game, Kristaps Porzingis praised Jok��, calling the Serbian center “the best player in the world” after he scored 34 points, grabbed 12 rebounds, and gave out no assists in the C’s first home game of the 2023–24 season.
The Celtics need to figure out how to get any of their players to have MVP-level games while keeping the balanced attack that has helped them have the best record in the league so far this season.
It won’t be easy, but the leaders across the league will figure out how to beat a team that doesn’t want to give up when they have a good hand. They might have done that against Denver after Porzingis scored 21 points, but only 19 in the first half.