The Denver Nuggets have been good at bouncing back all season.

Not even a draining four-overtime defeat could keep this team down.

Nikola had 21 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists for his second straight triple-double and fourth of the playoffs, and the Nuggets evened their Western Conference semifinal series against the Portland Trail Blazers at 2-2 with a 116-112 victory Sunday.

It was less than 48 hours after Portland’s epic 140-137 quadruple-overtime victory to take a 2-1 lead in the series. It was only the second game in playoff history that went to four OTs. The other was in 1953.

„I think it’s not quitting. We have a lot of competitive guys who don’t want to lose. I think we don’t want to lose more than we like to win — which is weird,“ Jokic said. „We just didn’t want to have the excuse that we lost because of four overtimes, because we were tired.“

„We just said to ourselves, `If we win today then the last game doesn’t really matter that much,“ Jokic said. „Yes we played a four-overtime game, it was exhausting, but we won tonight so the last game doesn’t really matter.“

SCARE

Jokic went to the bench late in the game holding his right knee, but later came back and appeared fine. Asked about it later, he said it was a bit numb. „I just got hit on the side of the knee but it’s OK,“ he said.

21/12/11– Četvrti u post sezoni.

ESPN