Denver @ Golden State preview

Last Meeting ( Dec 23, 2017 ) Denver 96, Golden State 81

Just as the Golden State Warriors could wait as long as necessary to get Stephen Curry healthy with Kevin Durant around, the team can afford to wait for Durant to overcome an injury while Curry is lighting up the scoreboard. Curry will try to follow up his latest scoring binge and lead the Warriors to a fifth consecutive victory when they host the Denver Nuggets on Monday.

Durant is day-to-day with a calf injury and sat out the last two games while Curry burned the Houston Rockets for 29 points on Thursday before breezing to 45 in three quarters as Golden State trounced the Los Angeles Clippers 121-105 to cap a perfect three-game road trip on Saturday. "I just knew right away when I got free for a couple of 3s in the first quarter and when they went down, I started to get a rhythm," Curry told reporters. "But beyond that, you just keep your head down and keep shooting, keep being aggressive, and that's really it." The Nuggets will need to tighten up their ball security against the defending champs after committing a season-high 26 turnovers in a 106-98 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Saturday. "It was just poor decisions, and we just never got control of it," Denver coach Michael Malone told reporters. "It started in the first quarter and went all the way through the very last play. ... If you do that in a couple of nights in Oakland, you'll get beat by 50."

TV: 10:30 p.m. ET, Altitude (Denver), NBCS Bay Area (Golden State)

ABOUT THE NUGGETS (21-18): Center Nikola Jokic handed out 10 assists on Saturday but also committed five turnovers and was critical of his team's play. "We just threw the ball around like we didn't care," Jokic told the Denver Post. "We need to pass it with more of a sense of urgency. We need to take care of it, because that's the problem we've had the whole season. It sounds simple, but it's not simple for us." The Nuggets managed to stay in the game on Saturday thanks in part to power forward Trey Lyles, who continued his hot stretch with 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting and is averaging 20 points over the last five games, nearly double his season average.

ABOUT THE WARRIORS (32-8): Curry sat out 11 games with an ankle sprain and showed no rust in four games since his return, averaging 36 points while shooting 58.4 percent from the field and 53.8 percent from beyond the arc. "Honestly, I always feel like I'm hot," Curry told reporters. "...Coming off of that injury, obviously, I got fresh legs, I got a nice rhythm. I was able to put some good work in a week and a half before I came back on the floor, and that's pretty much it." Golden State is averaging 127.8 points in the four games since Curry's return, raising its league-leading mark to 115.8.

BUZZER BEATERS

1. The Warriors scored over 120 points in each of the last four games, matching their longest such stretch of the season.

2. Jokic is 6-of-23 from the floor in the last two games, including 1-of-8 from 3-point range.

3. The teams split the first two meetings this season, with Denver earning a 96-81 win at Golden State while Curry was injured on Dec. 23.

PREDICTION: Warriors 125, Nuggets 112