Denver @ Portland preview

Last Meeting ( Mar 28, 2017 ) Denver 113, Portland 122

The Denver Nuggets are winners of three straight and seven of nine as the offense continues to find its groove. The Nuggets will try to make it four in a row on Monday, when they make a brief one-game road trip to visit the Northwest Division rival Portland Trail Blazers.

Denver shot 52.9 percent from the floor and watched all five starters score in double figures as the backcourt combination of Will Barton and Jamal Murray combined for 58 points and center Nikola Jokic flirted with a triple-double in Saturday's 125-107 win over the Orlando Magic. "What I like is offensively you can see we are starting to figure it out," Nuggets coach Michael Malone told reporters. "You can see the confidence, the chemistry, the spacing, guys playing off of each other but more importantly, guys are playing for each other." The Trail Blazers won the first two of a six-game homestand but dropped the last two, including a 101-97 lost to the Brooklyn Nets on Friday. "That was a game we shouldn't have lost but certainly Brooklyn deserved to win," Portland coach Terry Stotts told reporters. "They outplayed us after the first quarter but particularly in the third quarter. They played harder than we did."

TV: 10 p.m. ET, Altitude (Denver), NBCS Northwest (Portland)

ABOUT THE NUGGETS (8-5): Murray scored a career-high 32 points on 12-of-21 shooting, including 6-of-9 from 3-point range, in Saturday's win. The 20-year-old, second-year pro scored in single digits while combining to go 9-of-25 from the field in the previous four games. "Jamal and I talk a lot," Malone told reporters, according to the team's website. "I talked to him after shootaround the other day and said, 'Listen, you're not shooting it consistently because you take a different shot all of the time. If you want to be a shooter, you have to take the same shot all of the time. And I want to see you start being more disciplined with your shot.' And the other thing I said is 'You've got to be aggressive.'"

ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (6-6): Point guard Damian Lillard is averaging 25.2 points but is mired in a bit of a shooting slump and failed to reach 20 points in either of the last two games. The 27-year-old Weber State product is 8-of-36 from 3-point range in five games this month, including 1-of-10 in the last two losses. Shooting guard CJ McCollum in trying to pick up some of the slack and is 18-of-33 from 3-point range in the last four games but had a string of three straight contests scoring at least 20 points come to an end with 17 on Saturday.

BUZZER BEATERS

1. Jokic recorded a double-double in each of the last three games and is up to eight on the season.

2. Trail Blazers C Meyers Leonard (ankle) sat out the last eight games but could return on Monday.

3. Portland took three of the four meetings last season and six of seven in the series.

PREDICTION: Trail Blazers 110, Nuggets 108