The Phoenix Suns won for losing Friday.
The Denver Nuggets, not so much.
The Suns and Nuggets will meet in the resumption of regular-season play Saturday in Phoenix in different stages of an NBA Cup hangover.
The Suns lost at Oklahoma City 123-119 in a game to determine the Group A winner on the final night of the Cup knockout round, and the result was good enough for Phoenix to secure a place in the Cup quarterfinals as the Western Conference wild card.
The Suns and Group B runner-up Memphis Grizzlies finished 3-1, and the Suns won the tiebreaker based on point differential.
The Nuggets’ 139-136 home loss to San Antonio spelled the end of their Cup run, the third straight year they have not advanced past the knockout round.
Suns guard Collin Gillespie had career highs with 24 points and six 3-pointers to lead six players in double figures against the Thunder. He added four assists and three rebounds but had four turnovers.
The Suns trimmed a 15-point deficit in the first minute of the fourth quarter to one at 115-114 on Gillespie’s sixth three with 2:27 left, and Gillespie’s layup brought the Suns within two with 14 seconds left.
“Playing in this environment against that team with some stakes on it and responding … competitive, resilient, tough,” Suns coach Jordan Ott said. “Just couldn’t quite get over the hump.”
They will have another chance Dec. 10, in a rematch against the Thunder in a Cup quarterfinal in Oklahoma City.
Gillespie, a product of Jay Wright’s NBA preparatory academy at Villanova, made his second straight start after coming off the bench in the first 18 games. The Suns again played without Grayson Allen (quad) and Ryan Dunn (wrist).
“At some point it will be the norm instead of a new career high, a new career this,” Ott said. “He just continues to set a new standard for himself. He just never stops. He’s like an Energizer Bunny. He just keeps going and going and going.
“His pace. What he brings on both ends. His intensity. He’s a winner. Every night he straps them up and goes out there and gives everything he has.”
Nuggets guard Jamal Murray had 37 points in the loss to San Antonio on Friday, continuing an four-game, eight-day run in which he has 115 points (28.8 per game) and 34 assists (8.5).
Murray became the fifth player in franchise history to score 10,000 points, joining teammate Nikola Jokic and franchise legends, Alex English, Dan Issel and Carmelo Anthony in the club.
Jokic was one rebound short of a triple-double, with 21 points and 10 assists.
Nuggets wing Peyton Watson had 15 points and six rebounds in his seventh straight start he continued to fill the gap left by the absences of Christian Braun (ankle) and Aaron Gordon (hamstring). The Nuggets have played four of the past five games without both.
“To see him improve is what I expected,” Murray said of Watson.
Watson has tripled his scoring average to 16.4 while averaging 33 minutes as a starter.
“I got no better people to learn from than Jok and Jamal,” Watson said. “They go out there consistently, produce, and put up numbers every night — and they look at it as another day in the office. I’m trying to approach it the same way.”
The Nuggets have won six straight road games.
–Field Level Media
