The

The Welcome to Lockdown Nuggets, your daily Denver Nuggets podcast, part of the Lockedon Network.

I'm your host, Matt Moore, senior NBA writer for the action network, and Nuggets Insider for 1043, The Fan in Denver.

So the Nuggets got absolutely railed on Wednesday night versus the Houston Rockets. No surprise. So in the NBA, I typically

have said that there's a letdown effect, that starters are out certain guys will step up now this

fades over time it gets harder and harder to get that kind of emotional boost i talked to coaches

about the summer and they backed up that same discussion point saying you know look before the game

uh if a guy is out if a starter's out and a guy's going to step up and start in his place,

like the agent will be on the phone with that guy and saying, like, look, you're going to get heavy minutes tonight.

This is a good chance for you to boost your value.

You can boost all your numbers.

You need to have a good game.

Like really pushes on them.

Teammates are there for him.

It's an emotional lift. lift, they want to win for the guy that's out, et cetera. It gets harder over time, though, because you've got to do it consistently.

And then you look at it, like, look, we know Houston's a bad matchup for Denver, unless they

have an absolutely full strength roster.

They got that win earlier this season by catching hard and off guard with the double teams,

but they had all of their personnel available for that.

Particularly, look, that was a defensive ball game. Gary Harris and Paul Millsat played that game and played well, and they were able to make

enough plays.

They found some things in the second matchup with containing the lob that even though Houston

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