NBA Game Summary - Indiana at Denver
Denver, CO (SportsNetwork.com) - Danilo Gallinari scored a season-high 19 points to lift the Denver Nuggets to a 76-73 win over the Indiana Pacers on Saturday.
Ty Lawson deposited 15 points with 10 assists and J.J. Hickson added 10 points off the bench for Denver, which has won two straight on the heels of a three- game skid.
Timofey Mozgov pulled down a game-high 15 rebounds and tied a career high with five blocks in the win.
"Well before I met my wife, most of the women I encountered were as hot as this game was tonight. Sometimes you have to take down the ugly ones," Nuggets coach Brian Shaw joked. "We'll take it. Now we have (won) two in a row heading on the road."
David West led the Pacers with 19 points to go with 10 rebounds and C.J. Miles netted 16 points off the bench in the loss. Indiana has dropped 10 of its last 11 games.
The Pacers scored the first five points of the fourth quarter to make it 60-55. Denver then ripped off a 10-0 run highlighted by Mozgov's putback slam off a Kenneth Faried miss.
Indiana cut the deficit to one with 2 1/2 minutes left prior to Wilson Chandler's 3-pointer and Faried's dunk. Lavoy Allen converted a putback layup with 1:05 remaining to make it a 74-70 deficit for the visitors.
Donald Sloan pulled down a Miles miss in the closing seconds and nailed a trey to make it a one-point game with 1.2 seconds left. Arron Afflalo proceeded to knock down a pair of free throws with under a second on the clock to push the advantage to three. Miles was again off the mark from beyond the arc as the buzzer sounded and the Nuggets won their sixth straight over the Pacers at home.
"We just didn't play well enough to win. We have to play better," Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. "(It) was a tough shooting night, but we gotta keep grinding."
In a forgetful first half, Indiana brought a slim 33-32 lead into the halftime break.
West had 11 points in the first quarter to help the Pacers to a 21-15 edge. Indiana then got cold, shooting just 3-for-19 (15.8 percent) from the floor in the second, but Denver didn't do much better and managed to trim the deficit to one after two quarters.
The Nuggets ended up tying the score at 55-55 entering the fourth.