Life on the road continues to be hard on the Nuggets, even around the holidays.

Paolo Banchero made a lucky-bounce 3-pointer with just under two minutes remaining for a 118-115 lead, and Denver never caught up in a 124-119 loss to the scrappy Magic on Wednesday night at Amway Center.

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Nikola Jokic notched a 30-point, 13-rebound, 12-assist night that was a triple-double with more than six minutes left. He also had three steals and just one turnover.

The Magic went on an 8-0 run midway through the fourth to take a 112-108 lead with 3:36 remaining. The Nuggets answered with an excellent after-timeout play to get Kentavious Caldwell-Pope a 3. Aaron Gordon scored a driving bucket on the next possession to give Denver the lead back and prompt an Orlando timeout.

The Nuggets got a stop trailing 118-115 and called their penultimate timeout with 27.3 left, still trailing by the same score. They designed a post-up for Jokic instead of trying to immediately tie it, and he succeeded at cutting it to one. When Orlando made its free throws, Jokic repeated with a drive for two. But the Nuggets had no remaining timeouts with 4.3 seconds left as Jalen Suggs made more foul shots, and Aaron Gordon threw the inbound pass directly to Franz Wagner for a game-sealing turnover.

Wagner finished the game with 28 points to lead the Magic. Banchero added 23. The Nuggets never attempted to tie the game with a 3-pointer.

Michael Porter Jr. scored 25 on 5-of-9 shooting beyond the arc.

For the first time this road trip, the Nuggets avoided a bad start. Even in Detroit, the one stop where Denver didn’t fall behind by double digits early, the Pistons got off to a 15-7 start well before Michael Malone and Nikola Jokic were ejected. This time, the Nuggets were ahead 10-3 within minutes. As Porter and company shot the lights out, the only thing that prevented Denver from keeping control was poor interior defense. The Magic shot 18 for 23 in the paint and 6 for 7 after an offensive rebound in the first half, leading to a rare situation in which the Nuggets led by two possessions at halftime despite getting outscored significantly inside (36-20).

Denver entered the game scoring 50.7% of its points in the paint, the second-highest frequency in the league, and 30.5% of points from beyond the arc, which ranked 22nd. But jump-shooting carried the offense to its 62-point half, punctuated by Jackson sinking a 17-foot desperate circus shot before the buzzer while getting fouled.

While all of the Denver players who scored in double figures in the first half fell silent, Wagner scorched Orlando with a 15-point third quarter. Jokic scored two, Jackson scored none, Porter scored four, and Gordon scored two. Instead, two players who had not scored at halftime suddenly stood up. In order to guarantee that the team broke even and maintained a six-point lead into the fourth quarter, Caldwell-Pope and Julian Strawther both scored seven points.