If you split-screened Nuggets coach Brian Shaw and Sacramento coach Mike Malone, their pregame news conferences would have proved to be nearly identical.
Both coaches praised their team’s early-season defense.
Both coaches loathed their early-season offense.
And so, similarities out in the open for the world to see, the Nuggets and Kings put into action what their coaches had expressed with words. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was worse than anyone could imagine, the missed shots being jacked up by players on both teams. Personal fouls piled up as well. Almost seven minutes into the game, the score was 8-7.
Did it matter who was ahead?
The shooting never reached acceptable levels, and neither did the result for the Nuggets, a 110-105 loss to the Kings on Monday night at the Pepsi Center. When the Kings needed them most, they made the plays down the stretch that sealed the win.
“We’ve got to shoot the ball better, particularly from the 3-point line,” Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said.
The Nuggets, meanwhile, couldn’t put consistent basketball together for any significant stretch of the game. Not enough to see them through, for sure. As a result, they were handed their second straight loss.
In the final two quarters, the Nuggets and Kings traded sloppiness for better shooting, so the field-goal percentages and turnovers both went up. The Nuggets could live with that. Their 31 points in the third quarter were a welcome sight. Now they just had to find a way to slow the Kings, who had a similar cobweb-clearing quarter and found a more effective shooting stroke as well.
That set up a fourth quarter to watch, if not savor, the overall quality of basketball. And it is in this environment that the Nuggets had thrived in this early portion of the season. They’re working on more aesthetically pleasing basketball, but they had won before in a game like this. And in a results-oriented business, that’s worth something.
PHOTOS: Denver Nuggets vs. Sacramento Kings, Nov. 3, 2014
But the result wasn’t there Monday night.
Wilson Chandler found something to build on in the fourth, scoring 12 points when the Nuggets needed them most in what had become a back-and-forth affair. His three free throws with 25.6 seconds left brought the Nuggets within two points at 105-103.
But the Kings answered throughout the fourth with their star, Rudy Gay, who had done next to nothing the entire contest but found his way to nine points in the final quarter. He made two free throws with 22.5 seconds left to answer Chandler’s.
The Kings’ Darren Collison made three free throws after that to keep the Nuggets at arm’s length.
Overall, the Kings went 40-for-47 at the free-throw line. And Shaw noted that statistic in the box score.
“We’re not going to win very many games at all if we give up 47 free-throw attempts,” Shaw said. He added: “We scored enough points to win, as ugly as we played offensively. We just couldn’t overcome the 47 free throws.”
And ultimately, Gay’s late-game effectiveness, combined with huge efforts from a number of players off Sacramento’s bench, provided the difference.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypost