DENVER ? The Denver Nuggets may have gotten their first glimpse of life without Nick Van Exel, and if their performance against the Sacramento Kings Wednesday night is any indication, it wasn't all bad.

Despite the absence of Van Exel, Denver's leading scorer, who sat out his first game of the season after hurting his jaw in a collision with Utah's Karl Malone Monday, the Nuggets threw a little scare into the Kings, the hottest team in the NBA.


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In the end, though, the result was ever so familiar as Denver blew a nine-point third-quarter lead and dropped a 112-107 decision to Sacramento, which won its 10th straight game, the most in the franchise's history in Sacramento and Kansas City.