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Spurs stomp Nuggets

Nov 18, 2012 - 5:17 AM San Antonio, TX (Sports Network) - Everything's back to normal with the San Antonio Spurs.

Two nights after experiencing a rare home loss, San Antonio bounced back strongly, leading virtually wire-to-wire en route to a 126-100 shellacking of the Denver Nuggets at the AT&T Center.

Manu Ginobili went 5-of-7 from 3-point range in a 20-point effort, while DeJuan Blair finished with 19 points and eight rebounds as the Spurs easily put behind Thursday's 104-100 setback to the visiting New York Knicks and upped their season record to 8-2.

Since the start of the 2010-11 campaign, San Antonio owns an NBA-best 68-11 record at the AT&T Center in regular-season play.

"You can expect that after a tough loss, to come back and try to do everything right," said Ginobili. "Today, of course, everything went right. The effort was great and the execution was impressive."

Danilo Gallinari led Denver with 15 points, with Kenneth Faried scoring 14 in the Nuggets' third straight defeat.

The Spurs broke open the game with a huge surge that overlapped the first and second quarters, outscoring Denver by a whopping 25-4 margin over a 5 1/2- minute stretch to turn a tenuous 16-13 lead into an overwhelming 41-17 advantage.

Ginobili led the charge by netting 10 points over that time frame, with the veteran guard starting the second period with a 3-pointer that staked San Antonio to a 36-15 lead. He would bury another triple following a steal and layup from teammate Danny Green that extended the differential to 24 points just 1:20 into the quarter.

Denver did make a bid to get back into it, with Gallinari scoring six points during a 17-6 spurt over the next five-plus minutes that brought the Nuggets within 47-34.

That was as close as they would come, however. San Antonio went into the half up comfortably by a 60-40 count after Tim Duncan made a 3-pointer at the buzzer, then opened the third quarter with a 14-2 run to put the game squarely into blowout mode.

Blair accounted for much of the damage during the flurry, putting up six of his points during that sequence.

"I think San Antonio would've beat any team tonight by the way they played with their ball movement and shooting," said Nuggets head coach George Karl. "We were playing in recovery all night long and they got great looks."

The Spurs would carry a 90-68 lead into the fourth quarter, with Denver facing a deficit of at least 18 points the rest of the way.

Game Notes

San Antonio prevailed despite being without starting forward Kawhi Leonard, who's slated to miss between 10-to-14 days after being diagnosed with knee tendinitis on Friday. Additionally, guard Gary Neal sat out a second straight contest due to a lacerated right finger ... Faried had a streak of five straight double-doubles end after pulling down only five boards in the loss ... Denver rookie Evan Fournier, the team's first-round pick in this summer's draft, had a career-best 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting in only eight minutes of time.