The Denver Nuggets finished out their time overseas in Abu Dhabi with the second straight game against the Boston Celtics. The Nuggets elected to sit several veterans, including Michael Porter Jr and Aaron Gordon, and only gave Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray only one half of play. That ended up leading to a third quarter performance that was not only an insult to the game of basketball, but also entertainment in general. Boston separated in the second half behind Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Sam Hauser and never looked back. The Nuggets head home winless after falling to Boston 130-104.

The game began with both teams getting production from their guards. Murray scored seven of Denver’s first nine points while Derrick White scored the majority of Boston early points. Sans Gordon and Porter, Denver’s starting unit struggled with defensive rebounding but kept pace with the Celtics while Brown started to assert himself. The Nuggets offense stagnated a bit which let Boston build a small lead and Michael Malone took a timeout with just over four minutes to go. The first two players off the bench for Denver were Hunter Tyson and Zeke Nnaji, meanwhile Tatum led Boston’s offense while they maintained their lead. To close out the first Malone went with a lineup that didn’t feature a traditional point guard and naturally the offense looked a bit hesitant. After one Boston led 34-29.

Jalen Pickett joined the reserves plus Strawther to start the second quarter. Dario Saric made the most of finding some mismatches on offense but the Celtics still maintained a small lead. Denver’s defense started to get lax, the Celtics started dropping threes and Malone took a timeout with the Boston lead up to nine. Jokic and Murray checked back in to restore order, meanwhile Saric continued to play well. He got a rest as Denver started bringing the starters back in and Boston’s lead was back down to four. Sam Hauser was canning threes left and right though which prevented Denver from closing the gap entirely. The lead went back up to eight with the Nuggets struggling to score but Jokic was an unstoppable force and kept Denver within striking distance. They continued to play no defense though and that allowed Boston to maintain a lead near double digits. At the half it was Boston 67, Denver 60.

Jokic and Murray opened the second half on the bench, ending their run in Abu Dhabi, and Malone went with Strawther, Braun, Tyson, Vlatko Cancar and Saric. The Celtics still had most of their starters in (Jrue Holiday was out with Payton Pritchard in instead) to open the third. Denver looked pretty overmatched and Boston’s lead quickly moved to double digits. It got all the way up to 18 by the time Strawther made a nice and-1 drive to the basket (he didn’t convert the free throw). The Nuggets managed to score just eight points in the first half of the quarter and called a timeout once Boston’s lead was up to twenty-three. They came out of that TO, Pickett chucked a three (clank), Denver turned the ball over, Boston got an easy bucket and Malone called a rage timeout. It didn’t help. The lead kept growing, Denver stayed stuck on 68 points for several minutes and with four and half minutes left the Celtics had scored 101. Trey Alexander got in and finally scored some points. Malone started emptying out the bench with Spencer Jones and Jahmir Young joining Alexander on the floor. The third quarter came mercifully to an end with Denver trailing 76-109.

Both teams played full reserve groups to start the second half. Denver had Strawther, Tyson and Zeke Nnaji on the floor with Young and Alexander. They didn’t get off to a great start in the fourth and Malone used up his last timeout with about ten minutes still left in the game. Strawther and Young started attacking to give Nuggets fans at least a little something to cheer for. They led the bench group and kept pace with the Celtics bench group with Young in particular looking good (at least against NBA reserves). Alexander fed P.J. Hall for a nice transition oop towards the end of the quarter and the offense looked better but the defense was still questionable at best so the reserves never really cut into the massive lead Boston built in the third. The game finally ended with the Nuggets losing big, 130-104

Best matchup: Nikola Jokic vs Jaylen Brown

Jokic and Brown obviously didn’t play one on one vs each other much tonight but both looked the part of superstars on championship teams. Jokic looks like he is ready go right now and honestly if it weren’t for the uniqueness of his game and making sure everyone is comfortable playing off him there’d be no reason for him to play another minute this preseason. He clearly does not need the reps. Neither does Brown, he looks like a man primed to have the best season of his career. Jaylen has fully developed into a complete player, complementing his A+ defense with an offensive game that includes deadly outside shooting and the ability to get to the basket at will. There was a lot of garbage today, but Brown and Jokic had no part of it.

Main thing I noticed: It’s over for Jalen Pickett

It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that the abysmal third quarter largely happened with Pickett playing the point. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to keep him on the roster anymore. The Nuggets will have the pay out his contract whether he’s on the roster or not and there’s plenty of evidence to show that he’s not only not good enough to be impactful against NBA rotation players, but he’s also not good enough to be impactful against guys who are going to spend their seasons in the G-League. You can’t say the same about Alexander and Young who certainly aren’t close to being ready for real rotation minutes, but at least show ability to score and be dynamic against reserves. Alexander is on the roster on a two-way but Young has nothing more than an exhibit 10 contract. I’d much rather have Alexander on a full NBA contract and Young occupying the two-way spot instead of continuing this sunk cost fallacy with Pickett.

This is why you don’t bet preseason games

Two of Denver’s starters didn’t play at all, two more played only a half, meanwhile Boston’s starters played well into the third. It’s impossible to account for that variance and so if you were looking at that 3.5 point spread pregame and thinking there was something to read into then you were hopefully humbled by the randomness of preseason basketball.