The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Denver Nuggets, 123-111. Dejounte Murray recorded 20 points, 8 rebounds and 9 assists for the Spurs, while Derrick White added a team-high 23 points in the victory. Nikola Jokic tallied his 3rd consecutive triple-double as he recorded 22 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists for the Nuggets in the losing effort, his 5th triple-double of the season and the 62nd of his career. The Spurs improve to 9-15 on the season, while the Nuggets fall to 12-13.
Postgame Quotes:
Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich
(Opening Statement…)
“A little sloppy. Three or four turnovers in five or six possessions there for a period of time, but the defense held up. That allowed us to continue to play well. Turnovers on one end and not playing [defense] would’ve been a bad combo, but we avoided that. Thrilled with 32 assists. That’s really great stuff. I thought we did as good of a job as we could possibly do on Jokic. He’s amazing.”
(On Devin Vassell and Dejounte Murray…)
“I thought [Devin] was great. He’s been sitting for quite a while, now. He showed a lot of confidence in his leg. I thought he came out aggressively. We need him to score, and he did that. He drove it to the hole, he shot his threes. He did well. I thought Derrick was stupendous, tonight. Derrick White was special tonight in a lot of different ways. Made a lot of good decisions, a lot of good basketball plays that help you win. He was wonderful.”
(On Jakob Poeltl guarding Nikola Jokic…)
“That’s a tough one. ‘Go guard the MVP of the league.’ He scored 22, I think. He had his boards, he had his assists like he always does. But if he had 35 on top of that, that would’ve been a problem. I think Jakob did as good of a job as you can do, but he’s always going to work on the boards, he’s always going to bust his ass in that regard. He’s a very professional dude.”
Spurs Guard Lonnie Walker IV
(On being aggressive tonight…)
“Absolutely. That just comes with the mindset of being aggressive. I have a tendency of starting some games, you know, I’m not aggressive going downhill. I just wanted to be a jump shooter. That’s just not all my game. That’s something that me and Manu really been talking about. Just being aggressive, being confident and just playing the game.”
(On being a defender…)
“I think I always want to be a great defender. Honestly, I’ll probably take more pride defensively than offensively. When I have my mess-ups offensively, I try not to let it bother me. But if I have my mess-ups defensively, I know I got to pick it up, because if there is something I can control while I’m playing on the floor, it’s defensive effort.”
Spurs Guard Derrick White
(On how he played tonight…)
“I just try to go out and be aggressive. Teammates doing a good job of putting me in positions to succeed and just got to go out there and make plays.”
(On the team battling…)
“They were all battling. Jokic is a handful. Just battling. [Jakob] tipping the ball. Jak had a lot of second-chance opportunities for us, which led to threes and stuff like that. Just battling, working. [Keita Bates-Diop] was huge holding [Aaron] Gordon, battling, pushing him out and stuff like that. They were all huge tonight.”