The Denver Nuggets losing streak continued on Friday night. After a hot start, the Nuggets offense cooled off while the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry stayed hot. Too much settling for jumpers in the second half and too little defense ended up dooming Denver while the Warriors used a big third quarter run to put the game away. Nikola Jokic had thirty-three points but Curry out did him with thirty-six while Brandin Podziemski scored twenty-six and put Denver away 118-104.

The Nuggets were a bit sloppy to open but crashed the offensive glass and got points in the paint to hang tight with the Warriors who weren’t facing much resistance from the defense. Michael Porter Jr. had a good stretch early in the game that eventually got Denver the lead and forced Golden State’s first timeout. The Nuggets stayed in front but the continued lack of defense prevented them from building a significant lead as the quarter moved past the halfway point. Golden State worked their way back with three pointers and took the lead briefly but the Nuggets continued to pour it on offensively. They grew their lead in the back half of the quarter, pushing it to ten with just under two minutes to go. Denver kept running the offense through Jokic to close the first and after one led 44-34.

The Warriors battled back to start the second quarter while the Nuggets offense went completely stagnant without Jokic on the floor. It took them nearly three minutes to get a field goal. It remained clunky after a timeout, and once Golden State had whittled the lead down to one Malone was calling his players back over to the bench to talk it out. The Warriors tied it shortly thereafter and the Nuggets offense once again started running into struggles, even with Nikola back on the floor. They hit a couple threes to stay tight with Golden State going down the stretch of the half. Steph was doing Steph things to close it out. He got the Warriors a small lead in the final minutes and Denver went to the locker room trailing 66-60.

Jokic was hitting threes to open to third quarter while Golden State got their offense from Jimmy Butler. The Nuggets continued to offer little defensive resistance while Jokic (and the team in general) just kept jacking up threes. He was knocking them down at a high clip which kept Denver in it but they couldn’t put together stops with any sort of consistency. Curry continued to be unconscious on offense while Draymond Green looked like a DPOY on the other side of the court and the Nuggets looked like the team on a second night of a back to back rather than the Warriors. A 10-2 run stretched Golden State’s lead to double digits. Podziemski had a good night, particularly closing the quarter. Denver finished the third trailing 96-84.

The Nuggets offense was painful to watch opening the fourth while the Warriors knocked down some threes. Denver clawed out some points to keep themselves within striking distance but inconsistency continued to doom them. Jokic came back in with the Nuggets trailing by thirteen. Surprise, surprise, Curry got cooking again while the Nuggets offense was anemic outside of Nikola. The lead was fifteen halfway through the quarter. Denver locked in a bit more on defense after that and got back within eleven points. Podziemski stopped the run with a three and Denver started turning the ball over again. Curry got an and-one with two minutes left and that was all Golden State needed to wrap it up. The Nuggets got a few more turnovers in there while the Warriors burned clock and the teams combined for zero points in the final two minutes. Nuggets lose 118-104.