With 72 games, a series of awards and a couple of crucial injuries packed into fewer than five months there was no shortage of storylines to stay on top of this Denver Nuggets season.

Here’s a look at the biggest events of each month of the season.

December – Slow to start

The run to the Western Conference finals and a short offseason seemed to catch up with the Nuggets at the start of the season.

The Nuggets went 1-3 in the month, including two losses to a Sacramento Kings team that finished 12th in the Western Conference. Denver also lost to the Los Angeles Clippers in a nationally televised game on Christmas Day that wasn’t as close as the 121-108 final score suggested. The team’s only win of the first four games of the season came against a Houston Rockets team that was without four players due to the league’s health and safety protocols.

January – New year, New Nuggets

Denver started to put it together late in the first full month of the season, and Denver’s record displayed the improvement. After a loss to Phoenix on New Year’s Day, the Nuggets won six of their final seven games in January to take a 12-8 record to February.

That late-month stretch included back-to-back wins over the Suns and Nikola Jokic’s 47-point, 12-rebound performance that helped beat the Jazz. It went down as Jokic’s fifth game in January with 35 or more points. He also had a 29-point, 22-rebound game against the Suns.

Jamal Murray had consecutive 30-point games early in the month, while Michael Porter Jr. had a 30-point, eight-rebound performance off the bench in a win over Dallas on Jan. 25.

February – Jokic joins Denver’s best

Jokic earned the NBA’s first player of the month award and also became the franchise’s first All-Star Game starter in a decade. His inclusion among the Western Conference starters Feb. 18 put the Nuggets’ center alongside Alex English and David Thompson as the only players to represent Denver in three straight All-Star Games.

February also featured a game against Detroit that was postponed due to health and safety protocols minutes before the scheduled tipoff and 50-point games from Jokic (Feb. 6 at Sacramento) and Murray (Feb. 19 at Cleveland).

March – Nuggets make their moves at deadline

The Nuggets announced their championship aspirations on March 25, trade-deadline day. Denver sent guard Gary Harris, a key part of the franchise’s rise the last few seasons who also struggled with injuries, R.J. Hampton, a promising rookie who went on to win rookie of the month honors later in the season, and a future first-round pick to Orlando for Aaron Gordon and Gary Clark. The Nuggets waived Clark after a couple of appearances, but Gordon would quickly join Denver’s starting five.

The Nuggets also swapped centers with Cleveland, acquiring three-time NBA champion JaVale McGee and parting with Isaiah Hartenstein, who averaged 3.5 points and 2.8 rebounds in limited minutes, and two second-round picks.

Denver went 11-3 in the month to take a 29-18 record to April.

April – Group of guards gutted by injury

The good times continued into April before the low point struck.

Fans returned to Ball Arena early in the month with the Nuggets in the middle of an eight-game win streak, the longest during Michael Malone’s six-year tenure. The streak ended with a loss to Boston on April 11. Murray tore his anterior cruciate ligament against Golden State a day later. Will Barton III and Monte Morris would sustain hamstring strains that kept them out for multiple weeks before the month ended.

The Nuggets signed Austin Rivers and Shaquille Harrison to help fill a depleted backcourt and won eight of nine games after Murray’s injury to close the month of April.

May – Resiliency rewarded with home-court advantage

Malone’s success late in the season despite a rash of injuries earned him coach of the month honors for April, which was announced early in the final month of the regular season. The Nuggets would go 5-4 in May with Jokic and Porter assuming more responsibilities to secure the No. 3 seed for the playoffs and home-court advantage for their first-round series against Portland.

Jokic would put the finishing touches on his Most Valuable Player resume down the stretch by posting his 16th triple-double of the season in the penultimate game of the season and making sure he started all 72 of his team’s games this season in Sunday’s season finale.

The Nuggets will close the month with their first-round series against Portland, which starts Saturday.