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Warriors lose dogfight (and tooth) to Nuggets in potential first-round matchup

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If the NBA playoffs started Saturday night, the Warriors would find themselves pitched against a young and hungry Denver Nuggets team in the one-eight matchup of the Western Conference. It would take an alignment of the stars for the Nuggets to knock the champions off their perch, but Saturday showed that’s not out of the realm of possibility.

The signs were there that the Warriors were feeling the travel on what Bob Fitzgerald called, “The most difficult back-to-back in the NBA,” – when teams are tasked with playing a mile above sea level in Denver in the second game of a back-to-back. Zaza Pachulia threw a lazy outlet pass that got intercepted. Durant got pick-pocketed in a fast break that looked like two easy points. Stephen Curry lost the ball with an errant dribble with little to no defensive pressure.

Maybe the most telling sign that the Warriors didn’t bring 100 percent energy was when Draymond Green got called for what looked like a 50-50 offensive foul, and the talkative power forward had nothing to say to the official and accepted the call.

But that’s not to say the Warriors were playing poorly early in the mile-high city.

The Splash Brothers started the game 4-for-4 from beyond the arc. Curry had a nice right-handed finish at the rim with contact. Klay Thompson found himself in a 1-on-4 fast break and buried a right-wing three.

The Denver Nuggets also came to play Saturday, as so many NBA teams do when they host the defending champions. Denver’s young star Jamal Murray missed most of the first quarter with a right thigh contusion on an unintentional knee from Stephen Curry 90 seconds into the contest, but Will Barton came in and played well, scoring 13 points in the first quarter.

Kevin Durant had a quiet start to the game. The former-MVP a few nice assists early, but didn’t attempt a shot in the first quarter. The Warriors identified this, and got Durant an iso on the first offensive play of the second period. With Curry and Thompson cooling off after their fast start, the Warriors kept feeding Durant, and Durant kept scoring. KD started the game 4-for-5, including three straight offensive possessions for the Dubs at one point in the period.

But Denver was up to the task, and stayed with Golden State the entire second quarter. Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic, Gary Harris all played well, and the Nuggets kept finding themselves (and knocking down) open jumpers with good floor spacing and ball movement. The Warriors went into the half nursing a 56-55 lead.

“We knew the circumstances,” Kevin Durant told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Kerrith Burke at halftime. “We knew we wanted to fight through it. This is a game where we got in late and everyone was expecting us to mail it in.”

Golden State came out at half and did what they do so well – methodically build a double-digit lead. The Warriors defense locked down in the third quarter, headlined by JaVale McGee’s impressive defensive game. After getting tagged for three fouls early, McGee blocked four Denver shots on the night.

Golden State put together a 17-3 run, and found themselves up a dozen with half the third quarter remaining. But the Nuggets just kept pounding away. Denver cut the lead to six, knocking out half of Kevon Looney’s front tooth in the process.

Damian Jones saw some minutes early in the fourth quarter with Looney sitting on the bench after loosing a tooth, where you saw the good with the bad. The Vanderbilt product had a bad foul at the rim soon after entering the game, but followed that up with an extremely athletic baseline block.

The Nuggets didn’t shoot particularly well in the second half, but kept grabbing offensive boards to get second and third chances on offense. Will Barton hit a three-pointer for his 23rd point of the night to cap off a 11-2 Denver run, and the Warriors found themselves down 102-99 late in the fourth quarter.

Clean execution from the Nuggets down the stretch, along with missed free-throws by the Warriors (nine), sealed the second the loss to Denver on the year for the Warriors.

After an incredibly hot start on the road to the year, Golden State dropped 2-of-3 on their mini road trip, only beating a lowly Sacramento Kings in a flat game.

Warriors return to the friendly confines of Oracle Arena to host Russel Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder Tuesday night.