Took an afternoon to dig through the most recent league stats and put together a short post–All-Star break breakdown of the Nuggets to answer one simple question: what actually separates this team from another championship?
It’s a look at where Denver already looks elite (the offense) and where the real gaps show up (mainly defense and late-game execution) compared to the league’s top tier.
I also went through the rotation to clarify roles. Where are guys thriving? Where are they falling short? What adjustments should be made over the last 30 games or so? Essentially, I wanted to see what needs to go right for this version of the roster to win it all.
Welcome any thoughts. Not precious about anything here.
3 comments
But it’s not the all star break yet
Notes:
I honestly don’t think the Spurs are in that elite tier of contenders with OKC and the Pistons. We haven’t seen how they perform when the lights are brightest and there have been bad nights where Wemby disappears and they lose games to nobodies. If that happens in a playoff series? Disaster. I may eat my words later but for now I don’t think they have the experience to be in that tier.
Pretty spot on in your analysis of offense, defense, and clutch. I think we’ve just come to be too dependent on Jokic, Murray, and to an extent Gordon to just do their thing and save us in any scenario and if any of them have a tough time at the end we pretty much just lose. I will say for defense I expect us to be far better in the playoffs, we have multiple great defenders on the team (AG, Pwat, Spencer “Spencer Jones” Jones, CB) but they have pretty much never all been healthy at the same time. AG especially is absolutely CRUCIAL as our defensive anchor and rim protector and he’s been out most of the season.
Player analysis:
We know what to expect from Jokic at this point and the team is built to cover his deficiencies and work with his strengths. If we’re healthy then we can expect both those things to go better. 100% Jokic needs to drive more and trust his scoring, be a little more selfish, but I’m chalking up a lot of the issue rn to rust and caution cause of his injury.
Murray is about as rancid as Jokic on defense but it’s not as noticeable since he’s never the rim protector. This is fine when he’s helping us outscore the opponent but when his shot isn’t falling, he becomes nearly invisible on both sides… or at least he did, but at least now he is improving his playmaking greatly, that month with Jokic out helped his synergy with the rest of the team a lot. I think we’re past the point where we can expect him to fix defensive flaws but if he focuses on his playmaking when his shot isn’t falling it’ll help his impact even on bad nights.
Gordon does his job perfectly. We just need him back. That’s legit it. He is the ultimate system player next to Jokic and is probably the 2nd or 3rd most important player to the team. I legitimately think we have 40 wins at this point if we have Gordon the whole season.
Cam is doing his job as well. Few more shots from him a night when others are cold is all we really need, he’s a swiss army knife style of player so he just needs to fill in in any role when others are struggling. Really liked how he’s looked since he came back.
Braun just needs to adjust to post-injury physicals and continue to work on his shot. His defense is insane, the way he locked down Merrill the other night to the point that he literally couldn’t get a shot up when Braun was on him was beautiful. His shooting against the Cavs was exactly what we need more of.
Pwat has really exploded onto the scene and the only real improvement for him is to know when he’s cold and get the ball to others. Stick to playing within the system and avoid hero-ball when hotter players are on the court, and hopefully lead the bench unit with shot creation and driving threats.
Spot on on Spencer Jones, his defense and shooting is good but he’s often outplayed by stars who get him into foul trouble easily. It’ll come with experience. Expecting limited minutes for him in the playoffs.
Tim is our scoring spark-plug off the bench, but he can’t be jacking up like 8 shots if he’s only going to make 2. It’s up to him to figure out when he’s hot or cold and adjust appropriately, he’s been a surprisingly good threat on drives and middies and should aim for those more often if the 3-pointer isn’t falling. Super streaky but really fuckin good when he’s good, I think he’ll win us at least a game or two in the playoffs if we make a deep run.
You have CB at 30 minutes and Peyton at 15 – 20. Is that reflecting Peyton coming off an injury or do you think when healthy Peyton should play that much less?