Denver beat New Orleans 116-108 on Saturday night, November 14, with Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray combining for 49 points and 19 assists. Jokic finished with 26 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds, while Murray added 23 points, seven rebounds and nine assists for the Nuggets, who have won four of their last five games, as the Associated Press game report records.
The win moves Denver to 7-4 on the season and completes a 3-0 season series sweep of the Pelicans already, in mid-November. New Orleans fall to 4-10 after a sixth consecutive defeat, four of which have come at home. Zion Williamson led the Pelicans with 24 points, but the home side spent the night chasing a Denver team that led 56-51 at half-time and always had an answer when the gap closed.
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A Milestone Built On A Decade Of Chemistry
The night carried a marker that explains why this Denver pairing keeps winning games like this one. During the early minutes of the third quarter, Jokic and Murray reached 1,000 assists to each other, a connection milestone reported from the game broadcast. Two players exchanging that many scoring passes is a picture of a partnership built over years: the centre who passes like a guard, and the Canadian guard who knows exactly when to cut, when to flare, and when to hand the ball back and clear out.
The box score shows how the work was shared on Saturday. Jokic shot 9 of 14 from the field and added three steals. Murray shot 9 of 16, did not make a three pointer, and still finished a team high plus 16, doing his damage inside the arc and at the line, where he went 5 of 6. Christian Braun scored 17 points with seven rebounds, Cameron Johnson added 12, and Aaron Gordon had 11, giving Denver five players in double figures and a bench of options whenever New Orleans loaded up on the two stars.
Murray Closes The Door When It Opens
New Orleans did make Denver work for this one. When the Pelicans pulled within two points on a Saddiq Bey three point play in the second quarter, Murray responded personally, scoring six straight points to push the lead back out to 44-36 with under five minutes left in the half. That pattern, a Pelicans run met by a Murray answer, repeated across the night. It is the part of the Canadian’s game that does not always lead the highlights: not the biggest scoring burst on the floor, but the right burst at the exact moment the game threatened to tilt.
Murray’s week tells the same story. Three nights earlier in Memphis he scored 17 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter to close out a 123-118 win. Denver’s road week began with a defeat in Houston and ended with consecutive wins built on late game execution from its two stars. For a team sitting in the middle of a crowded Western Conference pack in the season’s first month, banked road wins in November are the ones that protect seeding in April.
New Orleans Keep Sliding At Home
For the Pelicans, the concern is the shape of the slide. Six straight losses, a 4-10 record, and home defeats stacking up in a building where they need to be hard to beat. Williamson’s 24 points came on efficient shooting, but the Pelicans could not string together stops against a Denver offence that shot better than 50 percent from the field. Every time the margin narrowed to one possession in the second half, Denver found a clean look through Jokic at the elbow or Murray off a screen.
Denver now return home to host the Phoenix Suns on Monday, November 16, carrying form and a healthy rhythm between their two best players. New Orleans go looking for the end of a losing streak that has already defined their November. Saturday in the Smoothie King Center showed the gap between a team that knows exactly who it is late in games, and a team still searching for that answer.
There is a wider Canadian thread running through Denver’s start, too. Murray’s two way closing work this week, first in Memphis and now in New Orleans, is the strongest early season signal yet that Canada’s best guard is back to deciding games in the fourth quarter on the road. For a Nuggets team that asks its second star to carry entire stretches without Jokic on the floor, that version of Murray changes what their ceiling looks like by spring.
References
Associated Press game report, November 14, 2026. Denver Nuggets game coverage, Denver Sports and ClutchPoints, November 14-15, 2026.
