Murray, Braun Combine for 70 to Sink Phoenix 127-120
Jamal Murray dropped 39 points and Christian Braun added 31 more as Denver outlasted Phoenix 127-120 on Halloween night. The two guards did the heavy lifting while Nikola Jokic quietly orchestrated a triple-double-adjacent masterpiece: 18 points, 7 rebounds, and 10 assists.
Phoenix looked like the sharper team early. Miles Bridges opened the scoring with a floating jumper, Dillon Brooks knocked in a fadeaway and then a 27-footer, and the Suns pushed the lead to 10-5 before Denver found its footing. It was Braun who steadied the Nuggets — he hit back-to-back threes at 7:27 and 6:58 of the first quarter to flip a three-point deficit into a three-point lead, and Jokic kept feeding the fire with a pair of driving floaters and a mid-range jumper to push Denver to 22-17. Phoenix refused to fold, though. Collin Gillespie hit two late threes in the final minute of the first quarter, and Luke Kennard buried a 23-footer with 16.8 seconds left to send Phoenix into the second quarter up 37-32. Denver trailed by as many as seven in the second quarter — 45-38 — after Devin Booker drained a 25-footer. That's when the game turned.
The single biggest moment of the night came at 4:48 of the second quarter: Braun knocked down a 24-foot three-pointer, assisted by DeMar DeRozan, and Phoenix's home win probability collapsed from 54% to 39% — a 16-point swing on one shot. That's the play that broke the game open. From there, Denver's depth and Jokic's playmaking kept the Suns from ever fully recovering. Jokic finished with 10 assists, threading passes to cutters and shooters all night in a way that looks effortless and is anything but.
For Phoenix, the effort wasn't absent — it just wasn't enough. Bridges was genuinely excellent with 24 points, 10 rebounds, and 3 blocks, and Brooks gave them 22 combative points. Booker added 20 points and 5 assists, but the Suns couldn't sustain any of their leads long enough to matter. The story of the night, in this writer's opinion, was Braun's emergence as a genuine second option: 31 points on a night Murray was already scorching at 39 is a problem opposing teams can't solve with one defender. Denver's two-man punch was simply too much. Murray's 39-point, 8-rebound, 5-assist line was the headliner, but Braun's 31 points and 3 steals made this a complete team performance from the Nuggets' top end. Final: Denver 127, Phoenix 120.