The San Antonio Spurs beat the Denver Nuggets 120-109 at the AT&T Center in Game 6 on Thursday, leaving themselves the opportunity to decide the result of the series in the last game at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on Saturday.

Having received a lot of criticism for their disappointing performance in Game 5, DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge finally made key contributions as they had been expected by putting down a combined 51 points, 17 rebounds and 12 assists. As the Spurs' two major weapons on offense, DeRozan and Aldridge must play their role, if not do more, before the team can compete with the Nuggets.

The other reason behind San Antonio's victory was Rudy Gay. He buried all three shots from the 3-pt line to finish with 19 points. Since Denver put Torrey Craig in the starting lineup, they had no one to match 2.03-meter, 104-kilogram Gay from the bench. When coach Gregg Popovich gave Gay a bigger role in the game, he responded by inflicting more damage on the opponent's defense.

In his postgame interview, Gay said the key to their home win was being aggressive. He also stressed that the Spurs must keep that attitude if they want to win Game 7 on Saturday.

Nikola Jokic played the best playoff game in his career on Thursday with 43 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists. His screen+hand-off play with Jamal Murray and Gary Harris dismembered San Antonio's defense. However, when he was not on the court, Denver lost their pillar on offense, watching the Spurs launch a 17-2 run at the beginning of the fourth quarter that decided the result of the game.

The other two things that went wrong for the Nuggets on offense were three-pointers and free throws. They were outmatched in both by San Antonio, meaning that they were in a contest of perimeter shooting with San Antonio, a team that had two of the league's best mid-range shooters, DeRozan and Aldridge. No wonder Denver lost by 17 points in the end.

With home teams winning 78.8 percent of the time in Game 7, history does not favor the Spurs. However, they can still make the Western Conference semifinals if they do two things right.

First, San Antonio must limit Denver's fast break points. As neither side enjoys a visible advantage on offense, especially with individual attacks, chasing easy points in transition is what both teams need. In their past two losses against the Nuggets, the Spurs trailed in fast break points 17-12 and 17-8, respectively. By contrast, in Game 6, which they just won, it was a tie of 12-12.

Second, San Antonio must maximize their firepower from the bench. Three players from the team's bench – Patty Mills, Marco Belinelli and Davis Bertans – hold the key to the Spurs' three-pointers and in today's NBA, three balls decide a team's offense. In Game 6, San Antonio led 36-15 in bench scoring and they did it when Mills missed all of his seven three-pointers. If the Spurs can rely on their bench players to make bigger contributions, they will have a better chance at the Pepsi Center.

The solution for Denver is both simpler and more complicated – someone else, other than Jokic, must stand out. It's obvious from Thursday's game that the Spurs were okay with Jokic scoring by himself, even though he made 19 of 30 shots to claim 43 points. What the Spurs could not stand is the rest of the Nuggets beginning to score under the orchestrating of Jokic.

In their three wins against San Antonio, Denver had Murray stand by Jokic, and he scored 23, 24 and 24 points. When he shot well, Murray's combination of shooting and penetrating made the Spurs very uncomfortable on defense. However, Murray alone will not be enough because the Nuggets' biggest weapon on offense is they have more scorers than the opponent's defense can deal with. So far, most of the team's players have been doing fine on offense, but not Will Barton, who's nothing but a disappointment. If Denver can have a third player contribute alongside Jokic and Murray, their chances of winning at home will grow.