You didn’t need to see “The Last Dance” to know that NBA championship teams are often plagued by an internal drama. For the Denver Nuggets, the fight between General Manager Calvin Booth and chief coach Mike Malone played in the public forum from the moment the champagne wear the team 2023 championship of the team.
It was always going to be impossible for Nuggets to keep their list united after the title with a frugal owner and the new financial restrictions of the CBA that threatens each team. Bruce Brown and Jeff Green were the first pieces of rotation, and the game of Kentavioviot Caldwell-Pope continued a year later. Booth and Malone had different ways to solve this problem: Booth wanted to play the young people he wrote, while Malone had more confidence in the discount veterans that the team signed in the free agency.
According to reports, the tension between the two stifled everyone in the organization. In the end, they both lost. Nuggets shoot Malone and Booth the same day with only three remaining games in the regular 2025 season. It was a shocking movement at the time, but it has become clear that it was a decision that Cool Denver’s new life.
The Nuggets now go to another game 7 after beating Oklahoma City Thunder, 119-107, in game 6 of his second round in the NBA playoffs of 2025 on Thursday night. Nikola Jokic was brilliant again with 29 points, 14 rebounds and eight assists, but Denver cannot not be spent no.
Game 6 will always be known as the Julian Strawther game. Strawther Tok for the end of the third quarter with eight points in 90 seconds when Denver went from tied to eight to start the fourth quarter. Strawther had only played 34 minutes combined in the first five games in the series, and had a constant part of Denver’s rotation since February. It’s great, the firing and spacing pepitas they needed, and legitimately saved the season.
Strawther has felt how the keyletter of the “Two Timesine” approach of Denver since Gonzaga selected him with the general selection No. 29 in 2023. Nuggets needed more shots around Nikola Jokic, and that was a skill skill. He hit 40.8 percent of three as Junior in Gonzaga, including one of the most memorable March madness shots of the decade with his three logo to overcome UCLA in the Sweet 16.
For some reason, he never click Malone. Strawther’s shot only has very good bone as a three -point shooter of the NBA of 33.2 percent of his career. They were defensively fought as most of the young people offensively who entered the League, and did not affect the game much as a bouncer or creator of the game.
With Flightther Flounding, the Nuggets ended up dead at the last one at a rate of three points (percentage of three -year -old goal attempts) this season. Nuggets do them when they carry it (37.6 percent in the year, good for no. 5 in the league), but the volume is important, and Strawther was one of his few players capable of getting them in a significant way.
Strawther added four more free throws and one more triple in the room to help seal the victory. Somewhere, Booth was smiling. The small samples of the playoffs can change everything, at least from a narrative perspective.
Nuggets have shown their championship DNA in this series, even when some of the deep pieces have changed. The Thunder won 68 games that became the regular season and published by far the best defense of the League, even with their second best player Chet Holmgren only playing 32 games due to a broken pelvis injury. Denver was exhausted only to get here after surviving a hard series of seven games of the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round. The figure of OKC will have a great advantage entering this confrontation, but the Nuggets have the permanent series of the series and executing their offensive in the crunch time perfectly.
Nuggets have the best lead engine in the NBA in Jokic. In this era of the league, thought, depth and fit around a superstar feels more important than ever. In game 6, Christian Braun and Strawther had fantastic games to remove some pressure on Jokic’s shoulders. For time (!) In the Jokic-Jamal Murray era, the nuggets go to a game 7, and have the favorite of the championship favorites firmly on the strings.
Denver has needed a blow of Strawther’s offensive game throughout the season. Finally delivered in the biggest place in his career in the NBA.