DENVER — The Nuggets have the NBA’s biggest home-court advantage.
Last night, the Nets found out the hard way.
Denver, using its fleet of athletes and the altitude to its advantage, improved to 33-3 at home this season with a 109-87 victory over the Nets in front of a sellout crowd of 19,155 at the Pepsi Center.
The loss dropped the Nets (42-30) to 4-2 on their eight-game, 17-day Circus Trip, as they fell three-and-half games behind the Atlantic Division-leading Knicks — four games behind in the loss column — with 10 games remaining in the regular season.
“They came out and put a beating on us from the jump, really,” said Deron Williams, who led the Nets with 19 points. “We were close at the end of the first, but after that it wasn’t really close at all.”
After the Nets managed to keep things close in the first quarter, as they trailed 26-23 despite shooting just over 40 percent from the field, the Nuggets (50-24) opened the second with a 19-5 run to push their lead to 45-28, capping the run with a Danilo Gallinari jumper with 5:23 remaining before the half.
The Nets did little to help themselves, opening the quarter 2-for-14 from the field and 1-for-5 from the free-throw line, while the Nuggets used their deep bench to keep attacking, and eventually went into thebreak with a 55-38 lead, maintained a double-digit lead throughout the second half and went on to win their 18th straight game at home.
“They were just switching a lot of things, and took us out of our offense,” Williams said of the scoring drought to open the second. “They pushed us farther and farther away from the basket, and made things tough on us.
“They were trapping me, they were trapping Brook [Lopez] and we had a lot of turnovers. We had a lot of things go wrong in that second quarter.”
The Nets struggled from all over the floor, shooting 40 from the field, 25 percent (5-for-20) from 3-point range and 50 percent (18-for-36) from the free-throw line. In addition, they committed 21 turnovers, and allowed the speedy Nuggets to turn those mistakes into 29 points.
Denver’s biggest strength at home is the combination of their deep and athlete-heavy roster along with their familiarity dealing with the altitude in the Mile High City.
The altitude, in particular, proved to be a factor that worked against the Nets.
“Oh, did I,” said Andray Blatche, who scored 16 points on 8-for-11 shooting, when asked if the altitude bothered him. “I thought my lungs were going to explode. It was tough.
“They’ve definitely got an advantage. I came out there the first two-three minutes [and] I thought I ran about 10 miles.”
Reggie Evans was one of the few bright spots for the Nets, finishing with 15 points and 16 rebounds, while Lopez struggled, scoring 11 points on 4-for-15 shooting, to go along with a dismal 3-for-9 from the foul line.
The Nets head to Utah to face the Jazz, as they try to improve to 5-2 on this odyssey.
“It’s just important for us to come back and beat Utah [tonight],” Nets interim coach PJ. Carlesimo said. “We’re not getting any style points for how we do on the trip.
“We’ve got a game [tonight] to win or lose. We’ve just got to go into Utah [and] we need to play the way we’ve played for most of the trip.”