Danilo Gallinari scored 27 points, while Kenneth Faried added 19 points and nine rebounds in the Denver Nuggets' 118-110 victory over the Houston Rockets.
"We knew from the beginning of the season January was the most important month of the season," the Associated Press quoted Gallinari as saying. "I thought we responded well."
Denver won its fifth game in a row to improve their overall record to 29-18.
For the Nuggets, Ty Lawson scored 16 points, Andre Iguodala added 15 points and five rebounds and Andre Miller finished with 12 points and five assists.
For the Rockets, Jeremy Lin was the top scorer with 22 points, while James Harden and Chandler Parsons had 21 points apiece. Omer Asik finished with 10 points and 18 rebounds, while Patrick Patterson had 10 points and five rebounds. Toney Douglas contributed with 11 points off the bench.
Houston and Denver scored 29 points apiece in the first quarter. The Rockets outscored the Nuggets 28-27 in the second to take a one-point lead in the game.
Houston again outscored New York 29-27 in the third quarter to extend their lead to three points, but then came the big fourth quarter, which saw the Nuggets rally to claw themselves back into the game.
"Defensively, the first 10, 11 minutes of the fourth quarter was probably the reason we won it easy," Denver coach George Karl said. "Our offensive was good but we got confidence in the game when we finally kept them out of the paint, kept them off the boards."
Gallinari hit a pair of 3-pointers which started the Nuggets' 24-3 run. Denver were leading by 101-88 with 6:54 remaining in the game. The Rockets' six turnovers helped the Nuggets to extend their lead further. Houston had a total 22 turnovers in the game.
"Our turnovers caught up to us. Our defensive deficiencies caught up to us," Lin said. "They hit tough shots.
"They had eight 3-pointers the whole game and they probably had four or five in the fourth quarter. They just got hot and we were trying to play uphill and come back from there on out."
Houston cut the lead to 106-102 following a 7-2 run with 2:55 remaining in the game, but Miller and Lawson converted consecutive baskets to extend the Nuggets' lead further and eventually Denver outscored the Rockets 35-24 to win the game by eight points.
"Gallinari made a couple of tough 3s and then we decided we were going to do it on our own," Houston coach Kevin McHale said. "It snowballed a little bit and they got ahead. We had to fight back. You never want to lose. You especially don't want to lose when it's self-inflicted, and we did."
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