Renck: With Christian Braun, Russell Westbrook providing jolt, David Adelman shows he should be Nuggets’ next coach

Gags to riches With the world watching and everyone who matters playing the Nuggets delivered confirmation of something that has been percolating for a month They are back In a little over two hours Saturday night they exorcised the demons of last spring s -point Championship collapse against the Timberwolves and proved something we have been feeling since their coach and GM were fired They care More than the Denver fans whose tickets were purchased by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer on the secondary field to import The Wall of Clippers boosters behind the basket The first thought is that they were paid actors A Nuggets fan standing in section advanced that notion blurting They look too ugly to be Angelenos They inspired anger though anyone who surrendered their seat deserves more of your wrath Beat L A chants reverberated during timeouts Nice try paper Clippers The only Wall that can leave someone comfortably numb is Pink Floyd Another axiom was also proven on Saturday night The Nuggets are really good when they play defense Weird isn t it They throttled the Clippers despite Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray missing their first nine shots So convincing was this beatdown Jokic sat the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter with five fouls How did this happen Everybody brought something When you do that you know that your two best players are going to get going And they did I am really proud of the guys interim coach David Adelman commented Crazy series Fun to win The Nuggets did not improve their roster on Friday No one returned from injury or suspension If anything it manifested the value of staying in the moment of playing with emotion but not becoming emotional Their experience in the postseason over the last three seasons revealed Related Articles Renck File Two ugly streaks Broncos must snap to reach prospective offensively Renck TV schedule is heck for Event heaven But let s savor Nuggets Avs moment Renck Jamal Murray blitzed Clippers but Russell Westbrook catalyst behind Nuggets rout Renck vs Keeler Who will emerge as sleeper pick of Broncos NFL draft class Renck Big winner in Broncos draft Vance Joseph not Bo Nix The Nuggets buried the Clippers with a - run bridging the second and third quarters With Jokic cast as a player-coach we haven t seen him this vocal and animated since Serbia s Olympic bronze medal run Russell Westbrook and Peyton Watson provided a jolt combining for points in the second quarter Aaron Gordon who had more fouls than points in the season-ending loss to Minnesota delivered a series of wows from blocks to put-backs to alley-oops to reverse slams Christian Braun scored a series-high points Denver widened its lead to - after three quarters Even the the greater part pessimistic among us realized this cushion was safe OK I know what you are thinking UFC KFC OKC in five That could very well play out when the Nuggets face the Thunder in the second round beginning Monday night in Oklahoma City But the Nuggets proved us something We are sticking together Westbrook revealed Nuggets-Clippers Challenge -pointers Christian Braun wins the Harden matchup once and for all This file is auto-generated function d l use strict l querySelector d addEventListener undefined typeof URL d wp d wp d wp receiveEmbedMessage d wp receiveEmbedMessage function e var t e figures if t t secret t message t value a-zA-Z - test t secret for var s r n a l querySelectorAll 'iframe data-secret ' t secret ' ' o l querySelectorAll 'blockquote data-secret ' t secret ' ' c new RegExp https i i i