Nikola Jokić burned the Kings for 35 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists and two steals in Tuesday’s win.
SACRAMENTO – The Denver Nuggets brought their 7-2 start and four-game win streak to California’s capital city to tip off a three-game road trip and a run of five road games in six games.
They also brought Nikola Jokić, who has been brilliant to start the season. The three-time Kia MVP entered the game with six triple-doubles and averages of 25.2 points (tied for 15th), 13 rebounds (second), 11.9 assists (first) and 64.4% shooting (seventh) through Denver’s first nine games.
Three of those stats got a major boost on Tuesday night as Jokić led the Nuggets to a 122-108 win, only Denver’s second win outside the Mile High City.
The Nuggets will look to keep the road success going when they visit the Clippers in LA (10:30 p.m. ET, NBA League Pass) on Wednesday. The Kings, meanwhile, will look to end a three-game skid when they host Atlanta on Wednesday (10 ET, NBA League Pass).
Here are four takeaways from Denver’s fifth straight win.
1. Jokić shows off his shooting touch
In a game that features three of the top 10 players in career triple-doubles – Russell Westbrook (204, first), Jokić (170, third) and Domantas Sabonis (68, 10th) – Tuesday’s game did not see any of those players add to their total.
However, Jokić had a standout performance, finishing with 35 points on 16-for-19 (84.2%) shooting, with 15 rebounds and seven assists in under 33 minutes of work.
Nikola Jokić’s shot chart Tuesday vs. the Kings.
It was the first career game for Jokić with at least 35 points, 15 rebounds and 80% shooting.
Jokić only made one shot outside the paint – a 3-pointer to ice the game with 1:04 remaining – but he still showed off a bag full of tricks. There were jump shots, turnaround hook shots, tip-ins, putbacks, layups and a half dozen floaters that saw Jokić display his soft shooting touch around the rim.
“It reminds me of years back,” said Nuggets coach David Adelman of Jokić’s touch. “He had some wrist issues the last couple of years and it just seems like he’s really comfortable right now. [Shooting ]16 of 19 is absolutely insane. He did it all over the floor. There’s not a lot of words to describe what he’s doing right now.”
This season, the NBA Stats team introduced shot difficulty stats, which measure a player’s actual stats compared to the average NBA player. Jokić leads the league in Field Goal Percentage Above Expected with his actual field goal percentage (now 66.9% after Tuesday’s win), 16.6% higher than his 50.3% expected field goal percentage.
2. Murray leads game-changing run
As great as Jokić was on Tuesday night, this was not a one-man show. After Sacramento closed the third quarter on an 8-2 run to make it a three-point game entering the final 12 minutes, it was Jamal Murray who led Denver’s second unit on a 16-2 run that broke the game open – all with Jokić on the bench.
“That second unit was incredible with Jamal to start the fourth quarter,” said Adelman. “You talk about defensive intensity and flying around – that was fun to watch.”
Murray scored 10 of Denver’s 16 points during that run as he finished with 23 points, eight assists and four 3-pointers in the win. It was his sixth 20+ point game in Denver’s first 10 games of the season.
This is the first time in Murray’s nine-year career that he’s averaged 20-plus points over the Nuggets’ first 10 games of the season. He’s routinely gotten off to slow starts and found his way over the course of the season. Murray’s fast start this season – coupled with Jokić’s all-around brilliance – has Denver 8-2 and tied with San Antonio for second in the West.
“It just was the summer; him figuring out what he needed to be prepared for the season,” Adelman said of the key to Murray’s start. “In other summers, maybe he worked too hard, and then in other summers, he thought, if I take time off, like the old vets back in the day, he’ll I’ll be fine.”
Nikola and Jamal were in their bag 😤 pic.twitter.com/c38V4UfVdy
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) November 12, 2025
“This summer he had a really good balance, and it’s not just the physical, [it’s] the mental, too, just had a very clear mind, leadership was great all summer, and it’s just kind of continued into the season.”
“I just feel like it’s not fighting, it’s just playing. What’s there is there. And it’s fun to watch him play right now. He’s just seems loose and free out there.”
3. Adelman back where it all began
On April 8 — with three games and five days remaining in the regular season — the Nuggets parted ways with Michael Malone and named Adelman as interim coach.
Adelman took over a team on a four-game losing streak that was in danger of falling from fourth place to the SoFi Play-In Tournament in the tightly packed Western Conference standings.
His first game as a coach came on April 9, in Sacramento, and it ended up being his first win, the first of three straight wins to close out the regular season. That run helped Denver earn the No. 3 seed in the West.
“It was chaotic,” recalled Adelman before Tuesday’s game. “It really was but [Team President] Josh [Kroenke] talked to the team and then me getting a chance to talk to the guys in the airplane and kind of take a break from it for a second – take a deep breath, talk to the staff, get people calmed down and just try to get ourselves focused on what we could control which is just to win the basketball game.”
“So yeah, [Tuesday’s game] is still stressful – it’s a game that counts – but that was a day I will never forget.”
The Nuggets eventually beat the LA Clippers in the first round before falling to the eventual champion Thunder in Game 7. Four days after their season ended in Oklahoma City, the Nuggets promoted Adelman to full-time coach.
At 8-2 in the first 10 games of his first full season at the helm, Adelman is now 11-2 for his career, with more room to grow.
“I think you just learn as you go,” he said. “You get in these situations that you haven’t been in before in this role. I would say what helped me was with Coach Malone, we were we talked every time out [about] situational basketball — timeouts, how you control them, the substitutions.”
“That helped me a lot to have that opportunity with him, and with Frank Vogel, Sam Mitchell, Flip [Saunders], my father [Rick Adelman] — these a lot of people that coached a lot of NBA games.”
“So, to be around those people does help you … But, I know, I’m new. I can learn on the fly here.”
4. Kings’ tough road continues
Adelman isn’t the only coach in his first full season in the lead chair. Sacramento’s Doug Christie took over last season after the Kings parted ways with Mike Brown. Similar to Adelman, Christie had his interim tag removed in the offseason.
Coming off back-to-back losses at home by 25-plus points, Christie made an impassioned pregame statement to the media. In it, he reiterated the organization’s pillars, empathized with the pain Kings fans are feeling from the team’s slow start, vowed that the team will get things right and challenged the team’s naysayers.
“This is about us playing at a high level for 24 minutes tonight, maybe 30, it’s not enough,” Christie said after Tuesday’s loss. “We need a 48-minute effort to win in this league, especially against a team like that – a championship-level team.”
Sabonis had 19 points and eight rebounds before fouling out in under 26 minutes. His backup, Drew Eubanks, had a season-high 19 points and somehow managed to outshoot Jokić, finishing 8-for-9 (88.9%) from the field.
“No one wants to start like this, playing this way, especially with our home crowd, I feel like they definitely deserve better … We just have to figure this out,” Sabonis said. “It’s tough. We’re a lot of different talented pieces and we just have to put it all together.”
Westbrook nearly had his 205th career triple-double (14 points, 11 assists, eight rebounds), while DeMar DeRozan added 18 points in the loss, Sacramento’s second to the Nuggets in eight days.
The Kings have faced one of the NBA’s toughest schedules to open 2025-26, as only one of their 11 games has been against a team currently below .500. Their nine opponents – they’ve faced Denver and OKC twice – have a combined win percentage of .678 (82-39) after Tuesday’s games.
The schedule doesn’t get any easier: their next four opponents all above .500 — Wednesday vs. Atlanta (6-5), Friday at Minnesota (7-4), Sunday at San Antonio (8-2) and next Wednesday at Oklahoma City (11-1).
