Trey Lyles secured the rebound with his team down one point with four seconds to play. He dished the ball to Will Barton, who then sent a frenetic second half into a chaotic final seconds.
Nuggets players were instructed not to call timeout, they and coach Michael Malone revealed after the contest. So Barton took three long dribbles, set himself about 30 feet from the rim and elevated, firing a desperation long-distance attempt that was tipped in by rookie Torrey Craig right after the buzzer.
That’s how Monday’s thriller between Denver and Boston ultimately concluded. The Eastern Conference-leading Celtics held off the Nuggets’ furious rally from 20 points down to win 111-110 in one of the most charged environments at the Pepsi Center this season.
“When it doesn’t work, people are always gonna question it,” Barton said of Malone’s decision not to call timeout. “If we hit the game-winner — I hit the shot or make a play and someone scores — everybody’s calling coach a hero and me a hero.
“You can’t even think like that. Coach went with his gut. I respect it.”
The loss snaps a three-game winning streak for the Nuggets (26-24), who continue to cling to a half-game lead over the Clippers for the eighth spot in the Western Conference on the night Los Angeles traded star Blake Griffin to Detroit. And it’s a heartbreaking start to one of the toughest weeks of the season for Denver, which next plays at San Antonio Tuesday before hosting Oklahoma City Thursday and defending champion Golden State Saturday.
BOX SCORE: Celtics 111, Nuggets 110
Barton’s heave capped a wild back-and-forth fourth quarter in which the Nuggets built a six-point advantage early in the period and then came back from that same deficit with five minutes to play. But Boston’s Jaylen Brown delivered the game-winning bucket with 34.7 seconds to play, breaking a 108-108 tie when his 3-pointer from the left corner rattled home. After Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray, who had just hung in the air for the game-tying floater, cut Boston’s lead to one on a layup with 28.1 seconds to play, Kyrie Irving’s missed fadeaway with seven seconds remaining gave Denver one last chance to win.
The finish was a stunning shift from the first half, when “Let’s go, Celtics!” chants rang down from the green-clad fans peppering the stands as Boston built a 49-29 advantage midway through the second quarter. A suffocating Celtics defense that entered Monday leading the NBA in efficiency and opponent field-goal percentage limited the Nuggets to 32.7 percent from the floor and 5-of-16 from 3-point range while forcing nine turnovers for 11 points. The Nuggets did not help themselves by allowing the Celtics to get set on that end of the floor, thanks to a shaky Denver defense that gave up 10 Boston 3-pointers before the break.
But a 16-7 Nuggets run to end the second quarter provided a jolt of confidence. Then Denver rapidly turned tightened defense into a fast-paced offense, outscoring the Celtics 37-24 in the third quarter.
Center Mason Plumlee — who left the game in the fourth quarter with a strained calf and will not make the trip to San Antonio — scored 10 of his 16 points in the first six minutes of the third on an array of dunks and alley-oop finishes. Murray, who went 0-for-4 in the first half, scored eight of his 15 points in their period, before again thriving as a go-to option down the stretch. After recording his second triple-double of the season in Saturday’s win over Dallas, Nikola Jokic scored 15 of his 24 points in the second half and added 11 rebounds and five assists.
“What I liked most was that we got back to playing our basketball,” Malone said. “ … We had them on our heels in that second half. That’s great to see, and that’s who we need to be.”
Denver’s third-quarter surge led to a dynamite final period filled with clutch shots from both sides. And rather than take time to draw up one last play after Lyles corralled Irving’s miss, Malone opted to let his players go in the final four seconds. So Barton took the ball, glanced up at the clock and began his push.
Minutes later, Barton had already dissected the video replay of the sequence in the locker room. He wondered aloud if there had been time for him to rifle a pass to Craig underneath the basket.
But he refused to live the world of “What If?” A rematch in San Antonio — a place where the Nuggets got thumped by 32 points less than three weeks ago — was less than 24 hours away. Barton harbored no regrets about those final chaotic moments.
“Anytime you get a rebound and guys are scattered, you want to take a chance and push it and catch guys off-guard,” Barton said. “… I just didn’t make the play, and we lost. Now it’s time to move on.”
