Peyton Watson on game-saving block of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander buzzer-beater

Peyton Watson called DeAndre Jordan over to his locker room while the Nuggets waited. For a moment, coach Michael Malone would engage in the usual postgame mini-speech routine. But Watson was still processing his sense of deja vu in the meantime.

Almost everything was the same. The lack of a timeout; fight with live balls to get back into the defense. The opponent. The player holding the ball. The direction he went to create a shot.

It was even the same end of the field at the Ball Arena.

Just not the same arm. Not the same result either.

“Around this time last year,” Watson recalled to Jordan, stating the obvious, “Shai hit a winner on me.”

On December 16, 2023, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s jump shot barely skimmed over Watson’s outstretched left arm and found the bottom of the net with 0.9 seconds remaining, giving the upstart but ascending Thunder a 118–117 victory in Denver. On November 6, 2024, Gilgeous-Alexander drove left and hit her husband again. This time, he ran into the right arm of Watson, who rotated over to weak-side help defense after picking up Chet Holmgren at the dunker spot.

Watson reached for the rafters at the Ball Arena to block SGA’s layup attempt at the buzzer, preserving a 124-122 Nuggets victory — their most impressive of the season so far because they are no longer considered the bigs in this matchup. The loss was Oklahoma City’s first of the season.

“He flipped it up there so high I had no idea I was going to be able to get to it,” Watson said after arguably his best moment yet in a three-year career. “But I kind of just timed it perfectly and got my fingertips on it. That was enough to change it.”

In his mind, those defensive heroics represented redemption for not doing enough to stop Gilgeous-Alexander’s game-winner 11 months ago — even though Gilgeous-Alexander is a first-team All-NBA point guard and Watson is a bench player on a rookie deal.

“I never stop thinking about it. I never ever stop thinking about it,” Watson said late Wednesday night. “I’m one of those guys who prides himself on: Any late shot situation, the end of the neighborhood, the end of the game, I’m not the guy to really go after. … But he got the best of me that time. He is a fantastic player. One of the front runners in the league for MVP. So he’s all that for a reason bro. He’s good.”

But this was also redemption in a more immediate sense. The reason Oklahoma City had an opportunity to force overtime in the first place? Watson had just fumbled both foul shots with 16 seconds left and a chance to ice the game. “Super nerve-wracking,” he admitted afterwards. “Should have made my free throws.”

“But on the other end, don’t lose your head,” Malone said. “Not in his feelings. He plays on the edge against one of the favorites for MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. … That’s what you love about Peyton Watson.”

That Watson was even on the floor in the climax of the game was a testament to how unlikely Denver’s comeback was. The 22-year-old forward was forced to replace an injured Aaron Gordon in the starting lineup. Russell Westbrook was already filling in for an injured Jamal Murray. Just two weeks earlier, the Nuggets’ bench had gone 7-for-28 as Oklahoma City spoiled their season opener. The depth was the difference.

The Nuggets overcame the potential talent gap with sheer resilience in the rematch. Watson blocked three shots. Christian Braun, still new to the usual starting lineup, pinned Gilgeous-Alexander in the second half (3 of 10 from the field with four turnovers). Westbrook led all scorers (29 on 15 shots) despite eight players logging more minutes than he did. Julian Strawther made up for a poor shooting night by collecting six assists and five rebounds.

And Malone trained for a win as if his life depended on it. His rotation only went eight deep and was stopped at 10 minutes by Zeke Nnaji. He turned on Michael Porter Jr.’s water in the second half by highlighting play-calls to free up the sharpshooter by using multiple off-ball screens. He mixed defensive tactics, occasionally crossing Watson against the slower Holmgren while hiding Nikola Jokic on Alex Caruso. (Jokic made eight deflections and was far more efficient defensively than opening night when Holmgren burned him.) He went to a zone early in the game to discourage Oklahoma City’s many drivers from hitting the rim.

“We put it in, um, today,” Braun said.

And for the second straight game in clutch time, Malone used a closing lineup that went against his instincts: not because it lacked a true point guard, but because it featured three players on rookie contracts.