Damian Lillard said the Portland Trail Blazers played a "better team game" in their series-levelling 97-90 Game 2 road win over the Denver Nuggets.
Lillard had a quiet night with 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting but his now-familiar late-game heroics were not needed as the Blazers used their defense to take control of the game in the second quarter and relied on 20 points from CJ McCollum and double-digit contributions from bench players Rodney Hood and Zach Collins to see them over the line and level the series at 1-1.
"Tonight it was just a much better team game, we had so many guys involved," said Lillard. "When you play that way it leads to more guys touching the ball and you get that type of result.
"Our goal now is to take [the series] one game at a time and protect our own floor."
Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, who supplied 16 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists in the game, rued Denver's performance, suggesting Portland hadn't needed to be at 100 per cent to win the game.
"They didn't even play that good, to be honest," he said. "I think they can play better than that.
"They were aggressive as a team, as a group. They came at my post-ups but that doesn't change the way we play. The energy was bad. We couldn't make shots. In the first half, we [created] a lot of open shots, but we made none of those. We have to be more aggressive, more physical."
Denver head coach Michael Malone echoed the assessment of his star player.
"I felt in the first half, if you're not making shots, maybe attack the basket, maybe get to the foul line or get to the rim. You've got to think 'attack' instead of 'settle'. In the first half, we didn't have that mindset," he said.
"They were the aggressors in the first half. They were much more physical in the first half. But I'm extremely proud of our guys in the second half. We fought.
"But we can't pick our spots when we do that. We can't pick to play like that for just a half. It's got to be for 48 minutes. That's the most disappointing thing about tonight."
Game 3 takes place in Portland in the early hours of Saturday morning (3:30am).