The NBA world was left stunned when the Denver Nuggets pulled off a miraculous comeback in the waning moments of Game 1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder to go up 1-0 in their second-round series.
Many were worried that the deflating defeat would be the sort of loss that took the wind out of Oklahoma City’s sails for the rest of their series. Such fears were proven to be unfounded in Game 2.
“Basically, it was one team playing tonight,” Nuggets star Nikola Jokic said of his teams 149-106 loss, according to ESPN. “They were aggressive; they were going by us. They were much, much better than us today and that’s why the score is so bad.”
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault looked at Game 2 as a return to form for his team.
“I didn’t really look at tonight as a response as much as I looked at tonight as just us being who we are,” he said. “And that’s how we’ve been all season. We don’t really respond to the last game when we win, we don’t have more confidence.
“When we lose, we don’t have more urgency. I think this team has a really good baseline that we just try to return to every day when the sun comes up.”
“I think it’s important to take the emotion out,” Thunder star and MVP-favorite Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Winning by a hundred or winning by two, it’s still 1-1, and I think that’s very important. Like I said, especially in the series, every game’s going to look different.
“People are going to make adjustments. It’s going to be a different crowd, a different feel. You’re going to start hot; you’re going to start cold, everything’s going to look different. It’s important to turn the page.”
