The 255 minutes of basketball played by the Denver Nuggets in five games over eight days across a few different time zones proved to be eight minutes too many.

After starting the road trip with consecutive overtime wins at Phoenix last week that added an extra 15 minutes to the total, the Nuggets were tied with San Antonio on Friday with eight minutes separating Denver from a 5-0 road trip that went from Phoenix to Dallas to Miami to San Antonio. The Spurs won 119-109, ending Denver’s five-game winning streak, after outscoring the Nuggets 24-14 down the stretch.

“In the fourth quarter, we fueled their break with turnovers, and we didn’t finish our defense with a defensive rebound,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “On top of (that), I thought there were probably three to four loose, 50-50 balls that we were just kind of watching and looking when they were going and grabbing it and outworking us. Overall, hell of a road trip.”

Malone said that eight Denver turnovers led to 11 San Antonio points and the Spurs turned six offensive rebounds into six points in the fourth quarter.

“I think we had our chances. We didn’t use it. We had a lot of turnovers, bad ones. In three or four possessions, we were just having turnovers and they just had layups,” Nikola Jokic said.

“I think we needed to be a little bit calmer in those moments.”

After the Spurs scored 37 points and led by seven after the first quarter, the Nuggets cut the deficit to six by halftime before regaining a lead in the third quarter. The game changed hands a number of times before San Antonio started to pull away, eventually reestablishing a double-digit lead.

“They’re a good team, guys. Like, let’s not get it twisted. Those are the San Antonio Spurs with Gregg Popovich. You can go through the film, they’re moving the ball,” Jamal Murray said.

“They move the ball kind of like us in that sense where the ball’s flying, guys don’t make many turnovers. They did a good job of rebounding, too. It was just a tough go. We couldn’t get as many stops as we needed to. We had good stretches where we got stops, but like I said, just here and there, especially down the stretch in the fourth quarter, we just didn’t play the way we need to play.”

While Denver’s win streak ended, Jokic’s run of double-doubles stretched to 19 straight games to start the season. He led all scorers with 35 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Murray added 20 points, while Gary Harris and Monte Morris added 11 and 10, respectively.

San Antonio’s DeMar DeRozan torched Denver’s defense for 30 points on 11-14 shooting, while Dejounte Murray added 26 and Patty Mills scored 17 off the bench.

“To go 4-1 on the road and do it from being in Phoenix back-to-back games, then you go to Dallas, then you go to Miami and then you come back to Texas and you play in San Antonio with everything going on with the protocols, the testing, the time-zone changes and the fact that we’re in the middle of seven games in 11 days, I give our players a lot of credit,” Malone said. “I definitely saw some fatigue out there tonight as a result of this road trip, but if you would’ve told me going on the road that we were going to come home 4-1, I think even though we’re disappointed we didn’t go 5-0, you know, 4-1 is a record that we can feel pretty good about. We have a lot of work to do. The schedule doesn’t get any easier.”

After a night or two in their own beds following a week away, the Nuggets return to action at home Sunday against the Utah Jazz, the Western Conference leaders after Friday’s games.