SALT LAKE CITY — The “Middle Eight” may be known best as a principle of game management tracked by football coaches, but Michael Malone and the Nuggets are encountering their own version of it in basketball.
There’s an essential difference, though. For the Nuggets, the minutes that seem to matter most are not the last four of the first half combined with the first four of the second half.
Look earlier in the game instead, and there will lie the answer to Denver’s baffling habit of playing from behind.
“We were talking about that the other day, about how I think there’s only one time in the first 16 games this season that we’ve won the last four minutes of the first quarter and the first four minutes of the second quarter,” Malone said Wednesday night before taking on Utah.