The Nuggets have the 26th overall pick in Tuesday’s draft. An actual pick in a draft, which is rare for this era. Whether they keep it or not remains to be seen.

Here’s a look at what I think I think I think as the draft gets closer.

THE NUGGETS CANNOT BURN THE PICK

The options are obvious, but let’s go over them again.

• Use the pick, draft a player with the 26th pick in a deep draft

  • Particularly, the draft is deep at what I consider to be a position of need for Denver: power forward. Morez Johnson, Koa Peat, Joshua Jefferson, Zuby Ejiofor, and Chris Cenac are all options at that position to provide help if Aaron Gordon misses time

• Trade up to acquire a higher pick in the draft. Everyone wants to move up; no one wants to move down, but if Denver packages a starter with the 26, that’s a pathway to a possible deal into the teens.

  • This is great way for Denver to be able to mitigate the demands to stay out of the luxury tax and retain Peyton Watson while also adding a component to make Nuggets fans believe the team is better.

  • You cycle out Christian Braun or Cam Johnson, start Peyton Watson in their stead on a new deal, and then add the rookie into Peyton Watson’s bench minutes allocation.

  • This doesn’t get you out of the luxury tax so you’re still probably losing another starter in a talent-losing deal, but it’s also better than the last option.

• Trade the pick for a veteran

  • Even if you include a starter like Cam Johnson or Christian Braun with the pick, you could acquire 1-2 rotation players that might be a downgrade in talent but fill more total minutes with more total skillsets. This is a hypothetical, not one I’m reporting, but if you trade Christian Braun and the pick for Nnaji Marshall and whatever else, that accomplished a lot of goals and at least adds a rotation player.

• Use the pick to dump salary

  • Multiple sources confirmed this has been discussed with other teams in the last few weeks.

  • I want to be clear that you need to not hear things like this and believe that’s what Denver will do. It’s something they explored. They’ve looked at all these options. The only way to find out whether you should do something or not is to look at whether you can do something or not.

  • That said, there have been talks that would include using the 26th pick to just trade Zeke Nnaji, finally freeing them from the contract that could not be dealt.

I do not blame the Nuggets for doing due diligence in looking at all options to fulfill ownership’s desire to duck the repeater tax, if that edict has been issued.1

However, this pick needs to become a player the Nuggets can play next season. He needs to be a human that Nikola Jokic can physically pass to and who can physically catch the ball and shoot.

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KSE had a bloodbath yesterday, with the headline being that they will not bring back Chris Marlowe, Scott Hastings, or Chris Dempsey on the Altitude broadcast next season. Hastings will continue with Altitude radio.

I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t be the last we hear about KSE cuts internally. For an organization with their level of success, they are also looking for ways to make the business leaner. If you’re business-oriented, this approach is admirable. If you’re a fan- and community-oriented person, it sucks.

For me, I’m just going to miss seeing Chris, Scott, and Dempsey at the games.

Chris Dempsey was one of the first people I met in the media room. Chris has been there for so much shit. George Karl tearing into players with reporters. The Brian Shaw era. The entire Jokic arc.

Chris worked at the Post and handled so many different beats. He knows and understands Colorado sports. He’s someone who has genuinely invested himself in the sports community here in Colorado from Colorado State down to the Springs.

The comments from the Nuggets media community all mention the same thing about Chris: that he always has a smile on his face. Chris ALWAYS makes you feel like he’s so happy to see you, you specifically.

He always balances the smart, nuanced nature of his thinking with genuine curiosity. He listens when you speak, and if he disagrees, he’ll tell you, but he’s always moving the conversation in an interesting direction.

When he joined Altitude, it was a shock for me, having seen him be such a hardcore beat reporter, but it was such a great opportunity for him as a young father, getting to spend more time with his son.

Since then, he’s become part of the family that people let into their homes on a nightly basis (when KSE isn’t feuding in a losing battle with the local cable company that deprives fans of seeing the primes of two literal MVP players in two different sports).

Wherever Chris goes next, he’ll be successful and liked, because he’s a likable and successful person.

Scott Hastings brooks no bullshit. You can agree or disagree with Scott across a great many things, and I do, but he’s always treated with me respect and I’m incredibly fond of the man.

More than anything, Scott has held as a link to Nuggets history. It’s important to have guys who know what the league was like, how it’s changed, and the key moments that have told a franchise’s history. Losing Scott means losing that.

Scotty was always exceptionally kind to me despite us being very different people who come from very different backgrounds and different ages.1

He’d ask me what I thought of certain games or sequences, and he and I were always on the same page when we knew things were especially good or bad with the team.

Being on a beat2 brings a sense of how things are with the team.

It’s often nebulous; are they really in a funk, or did they just have a bad plane ride or a locker room argument? Do these guys really dislike each other, or are they just on each other’s nerves?

Scott always had great insights into how the team’s mood was, because Scott knew what it was like to be in the locker room. A former player carries that brotherhood that all players respect.

Scott was also always willing to criticize when the effort wasn’t there. He has a real understanding of what the fans deserve, and he stands up for the fans.

You might get a more detailed analysis, but you’re not going to have Scott’s alternating, grouchy, and delighted tone, and that’s a shame.

Chris Marlowe is a pro’s pro. His career began well before his Nuggets tenure, and will continue well after. He’s covered the biggest sporting events in the world.

For as long as Chris has been with the team, he’s also The Voice of the Jokic era in Denver.

“He GOT ittttttt”

“YES!”

“Jokic AGAIN”

He’s got iconic calls that fans will remember forever. He has the “Big Tipper” nickname.

Chris had a great rhythm to his Nuggets calls. He knew when to hype it up and show urgency and how to fill the dead spots that happen in every NBA game. Chris Marlowe never looked, acted, or called games like there was anywhere else on earth he’d rather be than in people’s homes calling this team’s games.

These announcers are more than just soundtracks. They form the tapestry that makes up “watching your favorite team.” You spend your weeknights after work with them. You tell your kids you’ll be there in a minute to hear them call the end of the game. You rage with them on the postgame shows and exalt with them in big moments.

We are always being caught in the post-capitalist vortex, driving everything towards cost efficiency and profit margin while losing the things that bring comfort and joy to our time in this machine.

Chris Marlowe will always be a Denver legend, but as for me, I’ll miss his inquisitive nature about why certain teams or coaches do certain things, his wry humor, and the way he lifted the media room by walking in with a suit that cost more than my car.

I think it’s great that Altitude has retained Katy Winge. She’s becoming an absolute icon and there’s starting to be some recognition from those above her that she really does carry the value and recognition from not just media members but national fans of how enjoyable she is on commentary.

I’m hopeful they recognize the mistake of moving her off color commentary next year and feature her in a broader role.

I’m hopeful that other on-air and behind-the-scenes KSE fixtures will be retained, but I’m also cynical in that regard.

I’m hopeful that the next era of Nuggets broadcasts will bring invigoration and a freshness that the press release says KSE is pursuing.

But I will miss what we had in this era, and I’ll miss some good people to talk to while we wait for tall people to answer our questions.

Peyton Watson’s upcoming contract as a restricted free agent is either one of the Nuggets’ most difficult offseason decisions or an absolute no-brainer.

Watson had a breakout season for the Nuggets, posting career-highs in points, rebounds, assists, and eFG%. His highlight reel is impressive and showcases how he’s developed as a player:

The data supports a significant leap as well. From DunksAndThrees.com:

The highlights and overall stats suggest a player with real star potential that simply needs to be unleashed. The question is what is Peyton “worth” from an objective market standpoint, and how much should the Nuggets try and re-sign him for, and those are two very different questions.

First, I want to talk about Watson and his game.

THE HIGHLIGHTS AND VALUE ARE IN OPPOSITION

The idea of Watson this year is that he developed into an explosive on-ball threat capable of creating on his own, a potential All-Star with defensive chops.

But this is inaccurate. When Watson was tasked with on-ball creation, he created at an 11th percentile efficiency. When he operated in pick-and-roll, he was at 42nd.

Handoffs aren’t listed here, in part because he only had 39 total possessions out of them this year, but he also only scored in the 42nd percentile on those.

His turnovers were a major problem. As the pick-and-roll ballhandler, he was just 45th in turnover percentage. It wasn’t that he was awful turning the ball over, except on spot-up drives, it’s that his efficiency didn’t make up for the turnover rate.

But as an off-ball weapon? He was great, particularly as a spot-up shooter. In fact, Watson was the third-best catch-and-shoot player in eFG% this season with a minimum of 150 attempts.

In short, Watson was sloppy with the ball, but elite punishing teams off the Nuggets’ gravity with Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray.

One of the many mixed results sets for Watson was at-rim plays.

The eye test matches these results. His handle is disrupted by help defenders and he had a hard time getting through multiple levels of defense to score at the rim, but he was red hot as a shooter off-ball and still athletic enough to finish at an average rate. (Watson was 42nd percentile at the rim.)

But what does this player actually look like?

I decided instead of finding similar players at his age I’d look at the player he is now, and see what those players look like this year, then go back and find what those players looked like at Watson’s age.

Trey Murphy and NAW are obviously the most exciting comparisons there.

So I looked at what those players looked like at Watson’s age (24):

Pretty encouraging! Murphy is obviously better by a pretty significant degree with his ability to create and handle efficiency with higher usage. Melton before his injuries was on track to be a really good playmaker and shooter in more of a pure point role.

Wiggins was an uninspiring No.1 overall pick who mostly scored on volume and wasn’t really all that much of an impact player until he moved into a 3rd or 4th best player role.

But let’s focus on NAW and Murphy.

In 2024, Murphy signed a four-year, $112 million extension off his rookie deal. That’s $28 million AAV. In 2025, NAW signed a four-year, $60 million deal with the Hawks.

The best way to kind of position this is that Watson is better now than NAW was at 24 (NAW actually bounced around until he landed in Minnesota), and worse than Trey Murphy was (even with efficiency vs. usage factored in).

Look at that, Watson is above where NAW was and behind where Murphy was, but his trajectory changes a lot it. If he dips? He’s worst than both next season. If he continues this trajector? There’s a chance he’s better over the next three years than either one.

He’s somewhere between those two players. If you think he’s closer to Trey Murphy in potential, you aim for $22-$28 million. If you think he’s closer to NAW, you aim for $15-$21 million.

Me? I think I land smack dab in the middle at $21.5 million.

Watson is not as good as NAW is now:

But that’s NAW in a much-expanded role with more years of experience. For example, compare Watson now to NAW in his last year in Minnesota at age 26, so less than halfway through what Watson’s five year deal would be:

That’s pretty interesting.

But on the other hand, part of NAW’s value is the contract. NAW as a 21-4 elite defender at $15 million is so much more valuable than NAW as a 21-4 elite defender at $22 million or $28 million.

Was NAW worth $22 million this year? Absolutely. Will he continue to be worth it? Is having him in this role a piece of a championship team or does he need to do less and be more of a role player? If that happens, the value on him gets lower towards his actual AAV.

Waston also has to improve as a defender.

Watson was a better defender this season than NAW was at this age, worse than Trey Murphy was at this age. He also dipped year over year, but was still higher in Defensive EPM than Murphy was either of the last two seasons, while NAW also dipped when he took on more of an offensive role.

If Watson continues to slide defensively , he winds up as bad as Murphy defensively and not as good offensively. But if he develops on both ends, he can be better than both.

An important element in this is something fans struggle with: you’re paying a player over what you expect over the life of the contract. It’s not based on the last year or years as a reward; it’s what you expect from them going forward.

Right now, Peyton is very much worth the four-year, $60 million deal the Hawks gave NAW and very much not worth the four-year, $112 million deal that Murphy got.

Do you believe he’ll be better than Trey Murphy by the end of his contract? Do you believe he’ll be worth less than NAW? Bear in mind that NAW was a more impactful and overall better player than TM3 was this season.

But of course, that’s about fair value. Not restricted free agency.

The Nuggets have the right to match any contract offer for Watson and retain his rights. They do not have to lose him for nothing. They will always have the option of retaining him. The question is how much they should use that mechanism to do so, and at what price?

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In the weeks since Denver’s governor Josh Kroenke, front office of Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace, and David Adelman met with the media, a couple of things have become clear from interpreting their comments and the reporting of the Denver Post’s Bennett Durando.

They are not trading Nikola Jokic and expect him to sign his super-ultra-maxxest-of-the-maxxes extension this summer.

They are open to doing anything that will “improve the club.”

They are not ruling out cutting costs to get out of the repeater tax.

You can read

My read on the presser and the entire offseason comes down to this: savvy1 businessmen aim to spend less, make more.2

The Nuggets have always taken the approach of spending on players. They have not shied away from spending into the tax for good players to build a good team. This is their very reasonable defense against criticisms.

The problem is that the repeater tax is not being spent on players. It’s not even spending on taxes for spending on players. It’s just an additional fee. That’s the kind of thing that’s antithetical to how KSE has operated, at least during my time here.

At the presser, Josh Kroenke scoffed at the joke that they spend only on players, not on off-court resources.

The sentiment I’ve gathered KSE holds is that spending on those things is just spending to spend; it is not an objective good to spend on things that don’t matter. And front office salaries, resources, facilities, staff, and auxiliary spending simply don’t matter.

The proof is in the pudding in that regard. They’ve won three titles. In the NFL, they spend because it makes a meaningful difference. In the NBA, they spend on players because it makes a meaningful difference. In the NHL, they don’t spend because it doesn’t make a meaningful difference.3

KSE will spend on what it decides it needs to spend to compete, and the repeater tax simply isn’t that.

So they are likely leaving the repeater.

It’s been considered a near certainty that if the Nuggets can retain Peyton Watson in free agency, it’s Cam Johnson who will be sacrificed.

Johnson played well by the end of the year, and the impact numbers with him were terrific; he was one of the few players who really played well to end the Wolves series.

But his fit wasn’t as seamless as you would have liked. It’s not that he didn’t fit; it’s that he didn’t fit well enough. And the 30-year-old wing on an expiring contract is simply the easiest to move.

However, the problem is that, I’ve said since the deadline, that’s not going to be enough.

From Durando at the Post:

Now, consider that even if the Nuggets are able to reduce their payroll by most of Johnson’s $23 million salary, they would still be a few million over the tax.

Sacrificing him isn’t enough. The math simply doesn’t add up. If you completely ignore NBA trade rules and other teams’ priorities, and if you subtract Johnson’s salary and Nnaji’s from $230 million without adding a single cent back, you still end up around $199.5 million with four open spots. Four veteran minimum free agents later, you’re paying $209.3 million for a roster with no salaries between $5 million and $21 million.

If the financial goal is merely to avoid the $222 million second apron, deciding between Johnson and Watson should suffice.

But the only way to actually duck the repeater tax, barring a miracle of front-office work by Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer, is to dump Johnson and lose another valuable player. Maybe that means letting Watson go in free agency, or maybe that means trading Murray or Gordon.

Just so we’re clear here, the options are to give up Johnson in what will be as close to a salary dump as possible, and then also:

a. trade Aaron Gordon, the team’s heart and soul who exemplifies sacrifice, who is Jokic’s closest comrade on the team, a guy Joker has said is his favorite teammate, and a player with whom the team has dominated but who obviously is over 30 with soft tissue injuries that have derailed two seasons

b. trade Jamal Murray, the franchise point guard and the emotional leader of the team who just put in his first All-NBA season and the homegrown talent who has constantly dealt with the pressure of being the No.2 guy where all the blame goes

c. try and pull off a miracle trade for distressed-asset Christian Braun at age 25 coming off his worst season following a major injury and move Zeke Nnaji who literally no team has been willing to trade for going on two years

All in the pursuit of saving money in the Nikola Jokic Era.

And when they do so, they will try to spin to you, the fan, that they made the team better.

That was my big takeaway from the presser. They previewed change being necessary because of the team’s failures, which allows them to make changes and argue that the team is better now, because the previous version (which was also under the tax, mind you) was not good enough, so different is better.

Even if it’s cheaper.

The problem is not with breaking up the core. It can no longer be argued, even by AG apologists and veteran advocates like myself, that moving on from Gordon due to his injury history is not worth considering. It is what it is at this point.

For 15 years of my career, veterans were the ones who on you titles, and youth and depth were overrated concepts that fans excited by the prospect of what could be rather than what is would use to argue giving unqualified players more opportunities.

But that’s not shifting, it has shifted. From True Hoop:

The way we did this research involved 86 tests–different start years, different lag lengths. Every single one was positive. The more you play young players, the better your team ends up performing, in 86 out of 86 tests. The effect was most muted in the time of the Heatles, Kobe’s great Laker teams, and Boston’s big three. The effect is strongest in the wake of special draft classes like 2003 (LeBron, Wade, and Bosh), 2014 (Embiid, Jokic, Wiggins) and more recently the arrival of Luka Dončić, Trae Young, Ja Morant, and of course Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. These days—perhaps because the faster, more intense game favors youth—the effect is as strong as ever.

Jamal Murray has become the target of ire for Nuggets fans after being a certified playoff killer. They blame his conditioning, his attitude, his game. No matter what goes on, Murray is the one who gets the most blame. It took a few days after the first-round exit to the Wolves but despite everyone on earth seeing Jokic’s passive, lackluster first four games, the conversation turned to Murray in some version of this:

“Joker wasn’t good enough, no question… but the real problem was Murray.”

And if the problem is that the two-man game has failed in the postseason, and you’re obviously not changing anything with Jokic, Murray is the natural part to swap out.

And if the Nuggets were to have come out and said “it’s time for a new era of Nuggets basketball” without outlining what that means, then that’s great. You could still trade AG for valuable components. You could still trade Murray for what is likely a relative haul.

I’ve been saying since we realized the full impact of the CBA that you could not have three top-heavy contracts; you can only have two. The Nuggets currently have 3.5 with Braun, and are facing a fourth with Watson, depending on what it costs.4

So moving one of AG and Murray, to break them into smaller pieces, makes sense.

The difference, however, is that you don’t have to break them into smaller pieces in the aggregate return. The Nuggets could trade Murray for several contracts that make up 110% of his contract value, giving them more assets to move for other components they need. They could trade AG for draft capital they are desperately in need of.

At the presser, Kroenke referenced the term that makes my eye twitch under the new CBA: “flexibility.”

So I want to outline this extremely clearly:

When the Nuggets let Kentavious Caldwell-Pope go in free agency two summers ago, I explained the reasoning I was given.

The second apron, because of the inability to trade for anything but 100% of the return value, the inability to trade one player for multiple in return, and the inability to sign buyout free agents, all made it the right decision to let him walk and start ownership’s preferred replacement, Christian Braun. 5

But the Nuggets are below the second apron. They are below the first apron. Even with Peyton Watson, if they traded Cam Johnson, they could be below the second apron.

The luxury tax itself does not limit your flexibility, beyond the prospect of having first-round picks frozen and eventually moved to the end of the first round. You’ll note, of course, that half of the Nuggets’ first-round picks through 2031 have already been traded, and that there really isn’t room to add a 26th-pick into the rotation, no matter how good young players have been.

The Nuggets getting out of the luxury tax does not improve their ability to add players. It just saves ownership money.

What’s the alternative?

Spend. You want to improve the team, you think it’s time to break up the core?

Trade Gordon for draft picks and swing for a star in a multi-team deal with Murray. Trade Murray for various role player components and assets, then package those with Gordon for another star. Hell, even just try the Jokic Stan’s preferred outcome: just surround him with high level defenders who will make every shot he passes to them and make sure he doesn’t have to do anything defensively.

Keep Peyton Watson. Keep Cam Johnson. Add to your available options so that in a playoff series you can search for and find alternative combinations that give you an advantage. Go into the second apron, since the last time you ducked it you didn’t actually use any of that flexibility anyway, and spend to win with Nikola Jokic.

While we’re at it, overhaul the training staff, get the practice facility built by hook or by crook, and expand the scouting department.

That’s the alternative.

Josh Kroenke said at the presser that they will explore all options, including running it back. This is where the limits of their frugality do hit a barrier. I don’t believe the Kroenkes would “salary dump” Jamal Murray or Aaron Gordon to get under the tax.

If a deal that doesn’t make sense for them isn’t there, they may just move Johnson, re-sign Watson, and go into the first apron. The Nuggets could have said at that presser that they will absolutely not pay the repeater. In some ways, I would honestly respect that because it treats fans with respect by being upfront about your intentions.

If they pay the repeater, if they spend into the first or second apron, I’ll credit them for that decision because it’s the right one. It may not win you Jokic’s second title, but it means you tried.

And I’ll admit I was wrong in my reading of the situation.

But if the Nuggets make moves that look like they made the team better just by swapping out good parts for slightly worse ones that are just different, I will not parrot the idea that the team is better if they leave meat on the bone.

This is the Nikola Jokic Era, and no matter what Joker looked like in Game 1-3, he’s still one of the greatest players of all time and has between three and four more truly great seasons in him. The organization, not just for Jokic6, but for themselves and the fans are obligated to contend to the furthest limit they are able to in that time period.

You want to duck the tax when Jokic is 35 and just a good player like Dirk was in the late 2010’s? No problem. There will come a time when it will make sense to not order the appetizer and the desert because you’re on a budget.

That time is not now.

As we enter what feels like a desperate and desperately hopeless summer for Nuggets fans, what I want to know from ownership is this:

If not now, when?

Denver’s season is over in the worst possible way.

You can lose because of injuries and wonder “what if?” But at least then you have the comfort of believing you were better than you were able to show.

You can get smashed by a superior opponent and have to deal with how far away you are. You can argue this is what happened to Denver, but I’ll explain why that isn’t the case. At least in this case, you can really focus in on how to build on what you have.

You can lose in a heartbreaker, coming so close, but at least then you get the thrill of being so close.

But this?

I don’t think the Wolves, especially with their injuries, were the better team in terms of roster, tactics, and construction. But they played better and that’s what matters. They found everything they needed in this series: tactical answers, motivation, effort and execution, flow state, and mental edge to win the games and the series.

Denver didn’t just choke this series away. They surrendered it. They full on gave up at multiple points in this series, building a deficit they couldn’t climb out of.

Jaden McDaniels punked this team worse than any team ever has. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Draymond Green, no one has ever punked the Nuggets this bad in my memory.

The Nuggets didn’t just lose, and didn’t just lose to an inferior opponent. They were embarrassed. Nuggets fans are embarrassed of their team. That is a miserable place to be.

And so it demands change.

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This Era of Nuggets Basketball probably ended on Saturday night.

There is always the chance that because of injuries to Anthony Edwards (who has been limited and ineffective throughout this series) and Donte DiVincenzo that Denver can snake its way out.

After that, it’s 0-0 vs. the Spurs (or Blazers). A new chance to tell a story.

But it is impossible to escape how this moment feels.

There will be time for autopsies to find the cause of death for the Nuggets’ era, and per haps I should wait.

But I can’t help but think of Blockbuster.

In 2000, Blockbuster was dominant. There was a movie rental store on every corner. And honestly, it was pretty great. You’d get your friends or significant other and go wander the aisles looking for movies you wanted to watch. It was comfortable.

They dominated the market share. They were the movie rental store.

That year, Blockbuster took a meeting with representatives from a small company whose model was different. They had a “modest” subscriber base built off the ability to ship DVD discs directly to consumers. They offered to sell their business to Blockbuster for $50 million.

Blockbuster CEO John Antioco “laughed them out of the room.”

It was Netflix.

Antioco’s response is probably very high on his list of things-I-wish-I’d-never-said: “The dot-com hysteria is completely overblown.” Blockbuster general counsel Ed Stead then explained how the business models of Netflix and just about every other online business were not sustainable and would never make money.

Via Inc.com:

The problem was that Blockbuster thought that what they did would never not work. They couldn’t see anything beyond the moment. They were lazy in how they approached their success.

They were bankrupt within 10 years.

That hubris is rampant with this Nuggets team.

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I thought — not believed — that the Nuggets had grown out of their worst habit.

Denver always has one screw-around game, a game where they should absolutely win, with chances or an environment in their favor, and yet they just faceplant anyway.1

Game 2 vs the Wolves in 2024 will always be the archetype of this for me. Minnesota was without Rudy Gobert2. Denver was at home, down 0-1. This is the spot where the home team comes back and obliterates the opponent to get back to even, heading to the opponent’s place. Sure, you lost homecourt, but every road team just wants the split.

Instead, the Nuggets got absolutely ran by Naz Reid and the Wolves to go down 0-2. They had to dig out by winning three straight, then predictably lost the kitchen sink Game 6 in Minnesota, setting them up to gas out in Game 7 and blow the 20-point lead.

If they just take care of business in Game 2, that series is over in six and Denver likely repeats as champion.

Instead, it led to consecutive second-round exits.

I thought that this team might be different. They’re more mature with Joker across 30 and Jamal Murray coming up on it. Cam Johnson is a more settled personality. AG’s entered a new zone of wisdom. They have veterans like Tim Hardaway Jr., and Christian Braun is no longer a pup.

Instead, they blew a 19-point lead and then another fourth-quarter lead.

Nuggets fans don’t like it when I express my belief, taught to me by multiple players and executives, that teams take on the identity of their best player. It’s often used as a shorthand for me to identify key problems with mindset or performance.

I’ll never believe in the Clippers with Kawhi Leonard, because he doesn’t lead or believe he should have to lead. He doesn’t communicate or set the tone. He plays and practices when he wants, and that’s supposed to be enough.

With the Nuggets, though, this isn’t always a bad thing. Joker is fiercely competitive in a Serbian way I don’t fully understand, being American. He will always have the drive to outlast, out-will, and out-hustle you. He’s calm and unbothered by the things that distract teams.

However, he is prone to moodiness, and when he’s not feeling it, everyone in the building can tell. This is not my read on this: this is what team personnel have relayed through the years.

Is it worth it? No question, look at the guy. He’s a top-ten player of all time already in my mind. His teammates genuinely love him. He’s not standoffish or removed from them. They follow him.

But games like Game 2 are the bad you take with the legendary, incomprehensibly great good.

I have predicted a Game 3 blowout. The Wolves have momentum and the building will be riotous. Denver is 8-8 in Game 3’s after losing Game 2, but 2-3 in a split series, and 1-3 when on the road.3

But more than anything Wolves-related, it’s Nuggets-built. This is the game where everyone says, “You better win Game 3 or you’re in trouble.” The Nuggets always seem to look at that situation and go, “OK, cool, we’ll be in trouble, then,” and then start digging their way out.

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A scouting report on the Nuggets’ offense vs. the Wolves’ defense.

1. Story of the Series

• The Nuggets have a much better offense than they did vs. the Wolves two years ago.

  • Offensive ratings vs. Minnesota

    • 2024: 109.1 (106.6 playoffs)

    • 2025: 111

    • 2026: 117.4

• Denver’s spacing is significantly improved and it makes all the difference

  • Denver made 52 3’s in four games (13 per game) vs. the Wolves this year compared to:

    • 41 in 2025 (10.25)

    • 39 in 2024 (9.75 per game)

      • 73 in the playoffs, an average of 10.4 per game

• Ayo Dosunmu is good, Nickeil Alexander-Walker was better

• Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun’s spacing will be key

2. Nikola Jokic

A. Post-Ups

• The Wolves’ primary coverage vs. Jokic this season was the “Rui Defense” with Julius Randle as the main defender and Rudy Gobert as the weakside help defender

  • Jokic annihilated Randle in these possessions

  • Rui was primarily defending Spencer Jones with Gordon out

    • Jones did good work spacing Gobert out to take this ability to sink away, hitting shots and cutting

    • This problem is exacerbated when Gordon is on the floor

      • When Gordon played, the Wolves primarily played it straight up with Gobert on Jokic and Randle on Gordon

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The Nuggets rested everyone on Friday, and it caught everyone else off guard.

In the day since the bench mob’s wildly entertaining win over the Thunder on Friday night at Fan Appreciation night, there’s been a lot of conjecture and guessing, in no small part by yours truly, as to what led to their decision to essentially punt the OKC game which they won anyway because the Thunder had the deeper leg in this one, so to speak.

“They’re JUST prioritizing health, there’s nothing else to it.”

“They don’t want the Wolves in the first round.”

“They want OKC earlier in the second round, especially since it increases the likelihood of Aaron Gordon being healthier.”

“They knew that OKC was not winning that game, no matter what.”

Some of these are true, some of these are false, some of these are half-true.

Here’s what I think after discussions with multiple people.

THE MAIN THING WAS THE MAIN THING

Jamal Murray said after the Grizzlies game that the only thing that matters to this team is health. That’s it.

There’s a confidence in that locker room that might have been missing in February but is back with a vengeance. Sure, they beat a bunch of bad teams to get the win streak started, but they also beat the Spurs.

They know what they are capable of. It’s why the early clutch-time losses didn’t phase them, it’s why they don’t view Minnesota as having had their number — they never have felt that way— and it’s why they don’t see OKC as this juggernaut.

They genuinely think they’re the best team.

But to be that team, they have to be healthy.

They can win on the road, they can beat tougher teams, they can overcome any obstacle, but they have to be healthy to do it.

That’s sound, and safe, and smart.

But I was told it was not the only consideration. Nothing is ever one thing in the NBA. It was health, first, second, third. But after that, there were other choices.

My issues are with the broader context of the decision-making process. The best way for me to do this is to write a little bit of a dialogue with myself, because I am of two minds of it.

LET’S TALK, ME.

ME: “Nikola Jokic played in 13 back-to-backs this season. Jamal Murray in 14. Aaron Gordon in four of 32 games. Cam Johnson in 10.

They played in 3 in 4’s and five in eights and on and on. So why was health not the priority then? Seeding? But you already affirmed that seeding doesn’t matter.”

ALSO ME: “Well, they wanted to avoid the play-in tournament.”

ME: “OK, but even your dumbass was able to determine with a high level of confidence more than a month ago that the Nuggets were not going to be in the play-in tournament given Phoenix’s profile and schedule. They were never really in any serious danger of falling to the play-in.”

ALSO ME: “Better safe than sorry…?”

ME: “They also played in the Memphis game. Their magic number was one. They were going to clinch a playoff spot no matter what. Why play in that game?”

AlSO ME: “The 10-game winning streak! That really mattered to fans and checks off another thing in the history of the Jokic era.”

ME: “Setting aside that a 10-game winning streak isn’t necessarily better than winning 10 of 12 or 14 of 17— especially if your process waivers — is a 10-game winning streak better than homecourt, which they risked in the Friday game by sitting everyone? Is the 10-game winning streak more important than getting into San Antonio’s side of the bracket, increasing your chances of going further in the playoffs?”

ALSO ME: “But they won Friday!”

ME: “Yes, they did, and the guys deserve credit for that, especially David Roddy who hasn’t played much and was terrific. But, and this is important, it doesn’t matter if they won or not because we’re evaluating the choices. Did not playing guys on Friday lower their chances of winning vs. Oklahoma City no matter what OKC’s intentions or rotation was?”

ALSO ME: “Yes, but OKC was not going to let them win that game. They pulled their good players late.”

ME: “The same way the Nuggets will pull Jokic once he hits 15. That’s why Dort played as long as he did: to be eligible for awards. Also, they pulled guys the same way they would in a preseason game. The Thunder didn’t tank that game, the Nuggets won it. But by not playing starters, they still reduced their win probability in that game, which could have resulted in them landing 5th.”

ALSO ME: “Yeah, but seeding doesn’t matter, all that matters is the guys are healthy.”

ME: “OK, but if that’s true what does it matter if they’re in the play-in? If seeding doesn’t matter, then why is 7th or 8th bad?”

ALSO ME: “You could have a bad game and miss the playoffs entirely!”

ME: “Well, first off, if you’re in 7th or 8th, you can lose one and still make it. Second, every 7-seed, which is what they would have been, has made the playoffs; 10-0 in reaching the playoffs. Third, if the idea is that it doesn’t matter when you lose if you don’t win it, then why is the play-in different? My issue is that their logic assumes that some seeding doesn’t matter, which is fine, but not all seeding, and not the best seeding.”

“There’s also the work I’ve done on the history of it. TWO teams in NBA history have won as more than a 3-seed. The Nuggets are absolutely good enough to be the fourth, but that’s a lot of history there. Having to go on the road to face the 1-seed, and then on the road for whoever comes out of the 2-3 semifinals is a pretty tough road.”

AlSO ME: “OK, but you can’t tell me that there is a meaningful difference in one game between the Nuggets and Lakers, especially if they wind up tied.”

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If this season has taught Nuggets fans anything, it’s that expectations are the thief of joy.

Denver is 48-28, twenty games above .500. They will finish with their 7th 50-win season of the Jokic era, after only 10 such seasons prior, including the ABA.

Their best player will finish on the MVP ballot top five for the 7th time in his career, a remarkable achievement, and collect his 8th All-NBA selection.

Jamal Murray will finish as an All-NBA selection1 for the first time in his career after his first All-Star appearance.

The Nuggets not only have the league’s best offense but also the best halfcourt offense since Synergy Sports began tracking nearly 20 years ago.

The Nuggets remain in an unparalleled era of success for their franchise.

It is totally understandable to want Jokic to collect three titles to cement himself among the Greatest of All Time and to cash in on this era with more championship success. It is natural to be frustrated that a season many felt could be their best ever with this roster will fall between four and seven games short of that.

But life is a series of moments, and while fans are constantly looking ahead to next month and the beginning of the playoffs, players have to survive the grueling 82-game grind on both their bodies and spirits in their own ways.

Here are three examples of why it’s so crucial for players to stay right where they are instead of constantly looking towards games that may never come.

NIKOLA JOKIC: SOMEDAY NEVER COMES

Throughout the last few seasons, as Denver became a championship contender, the media naturally checked in with Jokic on how he was feeling about things. Joker is oftentimes brutally honest about the state of affairs, whether the team is playing well or not. 2

His response has become more and more consistent: “We’ll see.”

Some stars exude constant confidence; it’s essential in their minds to always believe they can find a way to achieve their goals.3

Jokic is a realist. Things are what they are. I wanted to know if the last few seasons, going from a defending champion favored to repeat losing in Game 7 to last year’s disaster, to the good offseason last summer, and all the injuries this year, have helped shape him in never looking ahead.

"Yeah, I mean, I don't believe in that ‘Oh we're going to (win it all)’,” Jokic said recently.

“First of all we we still have seven more games. Who knows what's going to happen in those seven games, who we are going to play in the matchup, this and that? And then the team we are going to play, maybe somebody's going to get injured. Maybe, I don't know, something's going to happen. Maybe they're going to have a bad stretch, maybe we're going to have an extremely good stretch.

“I think it's really hard to say ‘Oh yeah, we're going to have amazing playoffs’, because you cannot know what's going to happen, how the team is going to feel, it’s basically month to month.”

What Jokic is getting at here is how delicate fate can be. The Nuggets were absolutely rolling in 2024. I will maintain they were the best team that season.

But Jamal Murray suffered an injury that hampered him. The Nuggets came out flat against the Wolves in Game 1, then had an unforgivable letdown in Game 2 in what is always a bounce-back spot for the home team when Rudy Gobert was out.

They climbed all the way back to Game 7, only to gas out in the 4th quarter.

Last season, they had a miserable nightmare of a season that resulted in their coach and GM being fired just days before the playoffs. Yet they took Game 1 in OKC after going seven games with the Clippers, only for both Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. to suffer significant injuries, leaving them no chance to complete the upset.

The lesson for Jokic is that you don’t know what plot twists will happen between now and then, so worrying about it or proclaiming things doesn’t mean anything.

" I think in this season we lost some games that we shouldn't lose, and we won some games that we shouldn't win,” Jokic told the Post’s Bennett Durando in a follow-up to my question. “So I think it's hard to predict and hard to say. Like when we won a championship, we lost the last three games in the season or four or whatever, and we won a championship.”

“So I think, and then we can maybe have five in a row and lose in the first round, whatever. You do not know so, and I don't like to look in the future like that.”

“It’s not just how I am. That's not how I work."

JAMAL MURRAY: LIVING THE DREAM

Jamal Murray saves the arrow for certain moments. After having the nickname Blue Arrow for years as a young player, Murray stopped his traditional arrow celebration for a few years, but has started to bring it back.

I love the callback; it’s like a pro wrestler coming out to his old theme music or a music artist playing one of his big hits that he stopped playing for years.

After reaching the Nuggets record for most threes in a season, Murray reached back and let it fly against the Jazz. Without realizing that was the shot that set the record, I and a colleague chuckled at Murray breaking out the arrow for a comeback game against the Jazz.

But later, Murray turned to the crown and celebrated, amping up the Ball Arena faithful.4 And after the game on my way down the stairwell to the media room, I realized that these moments still do matter to players.

Every NBA game is hard. Some will doubt that, after all, the Jazz’ fourth quarter exploits in pursuit of a high draft pick were explicit, hilarious, and disturbing. But even then, you had Ace Bailey making tough shots, good ball pressure from the young guards, and professionals still playing well to stop Murray and they couldn’t.5

Murray is in his prime, having a career-best season, setting franchise records. It’s good that he’s able to celebrate these moments with this city that has embraced him, where he’s won so much and lived up to his potential to become a champion, the player he always believed he could be.

After the game, I asked Murray if he tries to hold onto these moments.6

“I remember every single time I yell at the crowd,” Murray said.

“So it’s just a good feeling when when they they cheer you on and they know what's coming and they know I'm going to shoot some tough shot and probably make it.”

“You know, it's just this sense of… I don't know how to explain it, a sense of confidence in somebody when you see them do it over and over and you know I gain more confidence as they yell more and appreciate it more.

“So it's just fun to have those interactions and and lift up the crowd and win the games and all that

It's a pleasure. It's stuff you dream about. Living the dream."

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Denver is headed into the home stretch of what has honestly been a frustrating and exhausting season for the team and its fans. They’re not quite contenders, not quite pretenders, finally healthy and gaining momentum at what people think is the right time, but actually isn’t.1

They are, mercifully, done with back-to-backs after 17 of them this season. The league gave them the most in the league and then added one after the Memphis game was cancelled.

Their schedule has been a categorical nightmare, not just the back-to-backs, but the one-game-home-immediately-travel flow they wound up in. On top of that, the layered nature of the injuries they sustained, where it was Gordon and then Gordon and Braun and then Gordon and Braun and Johnson, and then Gordon and Braun and Johnson and Jokic, and then Gordon and Jokic and Johnson, and then Gordon and Watson.

But you know all that.

I want to share some things that you might not know, along with a look at the playoff picture and the five-out lineups indicators.

THE NUGGETS ARE MORE CONFIDENT THAN YOU’D THINK

Let’s start with Jokic since that’s where everything should start with the Nuggets.

I have never claimed to have any sort of understanding of Jokic’s mindset and will never try to. The access we get to Jokic is fleeting, brief, and surface-level. He does not open up to the media on any level, nor do I expect him to.

What’s been interesting is the contrast between his in-game behavior and post-game comments.

The post-game comments have become increasingly positive over the last several weeks. There is a collective sense, vocalized by Adelman and Jokic, that the team is playing good basketball. Even during their stretch where they lost to the Lakers and Grizzlies, the team has sensed it has turned a corner in terms of how it is playing.

The idea is that just so happens to come at a time when their competition has hit the floor as the schedule has finally eased up and they’re not playing top-five teams every night. You can believe that to be too much of a coincidence, but if you’re a player or coach, you’re not looking at the opponent, you’re looking at how the Nuggets have played.

Jokic will never openly express a rah-rah sentiment; his attitude is always “we’ll see.” He will never put the cart before the proverbial horse2 by talking up his team. He knows you have to do the thing.

But there is a quieter optimism from him, compared to early season when the Nuggets were killing teams and he said he didn’t think they were playing that well.

That’s contrasted by his attitude on the floor.

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Monday is OKC, again.

Michael Malone once said, before the Thunder were contenders, even back in 2023, that playing the Thunder was like a root canal. They were disciplined and tough, and took a lot from you.

The Lakers had the answer for Jokic in 2020 but soon after he solved all the problems they presented. Everyone else has been solved… except for OKC. It’s become clear that his version of OKC with Alex Caruso and the core developed has found answers to take away what “being a Jokic team” means for Denver.

Jokic has averaged 25-13-8 vs. the Thunder on 56% eFG, compared to 28-13-10 on 61% in all of his games.

Here’s the prototypical setup for what Jokic sees.

He brings the ball up and they screen which gets a smaller defender, Lu Dort, onto Jokic. But when Jokic resets the post, immediately Dort swings in front, faceguarding him and holding him1. While Murray repositions, Holmgren lets Spencer Jones go to the weakside, putting three weakside Nuggets options open with only two defenders.

The Thunder do this over and over, “flooding the zone” on the interior around Jokic and waiting for him to try and make a play inside.

Using that gravity, the Nuggets swing to the top and then the side instead of risking the ball reversal, finding Watson for an open three.

The execution here is massive, if unsatisfying. I’m not saying Jokic has to be a decoy vs. the Thunder, but if they are going to absolutely sell-out on him, the weakside has to make plays to punish that every time and get the Thunder guessing.

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I don’t have faith.

I don’t mean about Denver, but also about Denver. I mean, in anything. It has never been a strength of mine. I have conviction. I have passion. I have a strong desire to find the accurate truth. I have trust in those I choose to put close to me and unwavering dedication and loyalty. I have my strengths (and many more weaknesses), but faith is not one of them, I simply cannot find it within myself.

The most difficult thing about faith is that it, by definition, has to ignore and at times reject evidence. It is about the world unseen.

I will give fans a hard time for their desire to have arguments that spring from that faith, presented as evidence, and to mold the facts to fit the narrative they desire.

But the truth is that I think faith is incredible, be it in a divine being, the will of the universe, the underlying energy of the cosmos, or Nikola Jokic’s ability to make big basketball plays in the biggest moments. It’s such a powerful human element to find a reserve of belief that speaks to whatever we consider the soul.

This is a time for faith in this Nuggets’ team and this season.

All year long, I have tried to maintain an air of calm, to reassure that this is a really great team just going through a very long and complicated series of bad stretches.

I have urged Nuggets fans to keep the faith because teams this good don’t come around that often, and the payoff is worth it. There was so much evidence to justify and validate that faith, that this was truly a special team that just needed to get itself together again.

What has beaten that out of me is the cruelty of the season.

December was not a hard stretch. The games weren’t that dense, and the opponents weren’t that strong. And they did handle it, going 9-5, but the defense fell off a cliff, and then onto the rocks below, before being washed out to shore as a lifeless corpse.

January was brutal. Before the season, I identified December 1 through this week as the toughest part of the schedule. It was road-heavy and schedule-dense. The absolute worst time for the Nuggets to be short-handed was January. They missed four starters for pretty much the entirety of it.

And they conquered it! They went 10-6 without Jok in January. But the cost has been apparent. It took a toll on this team mentally and physically.

Now combine that with the initial Jokic rust for the first three weeks from his return1, cross-matched against a set of games where they played the Pistons, Knicks, Celtics, Thunder, and Wolves, and you have this, the nadir of the season.

All of this has led to the feeling that this just “isn’t the Nuggets’ year.”

Cam Johnson has not been the fit he should have been. I have more thoughts on that later.

Jonas Valanciunas has been pretty much what I expected, but his bad games stand out as very bad.

They’ve lost what has honestly been a baffling number of home games for the team with the best implicit homecourt advantage in the league.

But even more than these factors is the fact that it’s “always something.”

The defense was terrible in December. The defense has been great since the All-Star break, but the offense has struggled as if they can’t balance both ends appropriately.

They lead OKC to the end but have another clutch meltdown.

More often than not, if they start fast (like on Sunday), they fade quickly. If the bench plays well, the Jokic minutes are a minus, which almost always spells doom.

There are 50 different things which, if they were different, would completely change the look of the season, but all of them have happened in constant, concentric circles.

The injuries reduce their options, exacerbating bad lineups and creating mismatches they can’t account for, forcing rotations that exacerbate bad tendencies. The turnovers compromise the defense, which leads to going into set defenses offensively. The injuries took their toll on the role players, who now don’t have the energy to support Jokic when he’s swarmed.

It’s a big chain reaction of suck.

Denver is .500 since January 1st and below .500 since mid-December.

For as much hope — or faith— remains in this team, there is a real risk that this will go down as one of the most disappointing seasons in Nuggets history, and that’s saying something.

NO SAVIORS

Denver is 17-6 when Aaron Gordon plays. They are 20-18 when he does not.

AG and Watson are expected back by week’s end. It will lift the team’s spirits and their play. There are so many things AG helps with that will make a difference from the small rotations and defensive call-outs to the dunker spot play and playmaking out of split action.

However, the Nuggets should not fool themselves into believing Gordon (or Gordon and Watson) is a fix-all. It’s not fair to him, coming off multiple hamstring injuries, and it won’t result in anything but dragging his minutes down to where they’ve been.

The Nuggets have to play better and get the shoring up that Gordon provides along with the ceiling potential that Watson provides.

Gordon and Watson will help in so many ways, chief among them, in my mind, just having another player to lift you up. Cam has two horrible games in OKC? Maybe Watson hits three corner threes. Jamal struggles vs. the Wolves (until late)? Maybe Gordon helps win the minutes.

But Denver cannot rely on a savior. It wasn’t Jokic when he returned, and it can’t be AG when he does.

THE CAM SITUATION, SIMPLIFIED

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I’m a bit of a defender of small samples in the NBA.

In another life, I worked as both a psych lab assistant and a data research project manager. I have worked with SPSS and done the Rs and Ps and the like. I’m not an expert in those fields1, but I can make my way around a white paper.

There is good science and bad science. That’s objectively true, based on the scientific method and reliability standards.

But there is a massive difference between data that I would use to prove in a whitepaper that a lineup featuring the same players is or is not beneficial in key variables and the data I would use to say “hey, this lineup is getting its ass kicked this season.”

Now, one of the fundamental problems is that something can absolutely not work in small samples and then work in large samples or vice versa. If you only use a lineup against the Nets and Wizards and then try it against the Thunder, that will turn very quickly.

You can also just… play better. This is the one that most fans never really consider. If a lineup doesn’t work, it should never play ever again instead of figuring out how to make it work. That improvement can also make something look better in larger samples.

Seeing something more often across more conditions is always beneficial, but also, you can also simply determine if something is working or not working in the NBA.

It’s why I so often use single-game plus-minus, which data researchers and analytics wonks absolutely despise, and for good reasons. But to me it’s beneficial as long as you don’t use it to describe how a player played instead of what worked or didn’t work in their minutes.

For example, Nikola Jokic was a -6 in Sunday’s loss to the Steph-less, Butler-less, Draymond-less, Porzing-less Golden State Warriors. Jokic also had 35 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists on 11-of-21 shooting.

I have consistently said that his box score numbers do not reflect how Jokic played. I have seen him loaf and rack up stats, and more often than that, he’s absolutely dominated a game with 18 points and 12 assists. But I do agree that you cannot look at that stat line and say that “Jokic played badly,” even by his impossible standards.

What I can say is that his impact was not meaningfully felt in that game the way they needed it. If Joker is going to put up that stat line, the team needs to win his minutes by double digits, not lose by six. That’s where the blame for the role players comes in.

“It must be the other guys because, I mean, look at that stat line!”

But what Joker has always been, from the moment he arrived, is a winning player. It’s what those of us covering the team marveled at before the stats became more and more absurd. “Man, they just win with him on the court.”

The Nuggets were -6 in the Jokic minutes, -5 in the non-Jokic minutes.

When Jokic was on the floor, they had a 119.8 defensive rating, without him it was 125, six points worse. Meanwhile, the offensive rating was only 110.8.

So if:

a. Jokic had an insane stat line and poured in 35 points on 21 shots and

b. the offense was still bad, then it was not his fault and has to be on the other players and

c. even if the defense was bad with him on the court but

d. it was worse with him off the floor…

Then it wasn't Joker’s fault, and everyone else was the problem.

Except this ignores the flow of the game, analysis of which requires breaking this into even smaller samples. Denver had a 139 defensive rating in the first quarter, and a 172 defensive rating in his 4th quarter. They put themselves behind the 8-ball with terrible, sluggish play2, and then melted down the stretch.

This isn’t to say the other Nuggets played well; they didn’t, because those same criticisms about Jokic apply to the others. They didn’t play well as a team.

But while I’ve seen games where Jokic has done absolutely everything and the team lost3, this was not one. No one played well on both ends of the floor.

The point of all this is to say that we can take meaningful analysis from small samples, something I do quite frequently.

Which is why it’s weird I don’t really believe in clutch time.

THE CLUTCH CONVERSATION

There is no other way to parse this; the Nuggets are absolute garbage in the clutch this year.

Denver is 14-15 in the clutch overall, with the second-worst defensive rating in clutch time and the 10th-highest clutch time turnover percentage.

What’s worse, with Nikola Jokic in the lineup, they are 6-134 this season, with a 137 defensive rating5 and a -19.3 net rating in 87.5 minutes. They don’t lose in the clutch.

They get blown off the floor, out the door, and into the nearest large body of water to sink slowly into the murky depths in the clutch with Jok.

To compare, the Nuggets had a 61.6% win percentage and an outrageous +12.1 net rating from 2018-19 through 2024-25.

So yeah, it’s been bad. I don’t need to tell you that; you watch the games, you know.

The question is whether it actually means anything.

I get why it feels like it means something. High-pressure situations are considered not only the most valuable but also the most determinative of important aspects of human nature and competition. You need to be able to execute when the stakes are highest, when the pressure is highest, when the going gets tough.

Certain teams and players have that clutch gene, and others don’t. And that matters in the playoffs, when things are toughest.

That’s the idea.

But whenever we’re faced with these ideas and tropes, I want to know, “Is that actually true?” It doesn’t mean they’re often false, I’d anecdotally bet it’s 50/50.6

So I did the work, at least for the last 10 years.

THE CLUTCH FACTS

I looked at clutch data for the last 10 years, comparing clutch performance in win percentage and net rating vs. playoff series advancement7. The results were absolutely fascinating.

Here’s the breakdown of clutch averages for various teams:

• Teams that make the playoffs average a 57.2% Clutch Win Percentage and a +5.3 Clutch Net Rating.

• Teams that advance to the Second Round average a 59.9% Clutch Win Percentage and a +7.6 Clutch Net Rating.

• Teams that make the Conference Finals average a 59.9% Clutch Win Percentage (identical to 2nd round teams).

• Conference Finalists actually average a worse Clutch Net Rating (+6.0) than Second Round teams (+7.6), proving elite teams can survive bleeding points late if they secure the win.

• Teams that make the NBA Finals average a 61.5% Clutch Win Percentage and a +9.0 Clutch Net Rating.

• Championship-winning teams average a 60.5% Clutch Win Percentage during the regular season.

• Championship-winning teams average a +8.0 Clutch Net Rating during the regular season.

• The average championship team ranks 6.7th in Clutch Win Percentage and 7.5th in Clutch Net Rating.

Now, all of that data says that the average champions and teams that win in the playoffs are good clutch teams, which is pretty worrisome for Denver.

Except there’s this:

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What’s best for Jamal Murray, and is that the same as what’s best for the Nuggets?

I typically leave the rotation-obsessive analysis to my colleague Ryan Blackburn, but there’s a trend that I think has to be accounted for.

A few weeks ago, before Joker came back, Murray mentioned in passing that one of the reasons for his excellent play over the last 18 games, particularly in the stretch without Jokic, was playing more in the first quarter.1

He talked about how it enabled him to find a rhythm before he checked out, and get more of a run before going and sitting and then coming back in.

For years, Murray has staggered with the second unit, because the Nuggets needed someone who could create a shot in the second unit on the floor. The numbers were always pretty bad2 but it couldn’t be helped.

A common fan misconception is that the coach makes the rotation. That’s true in college, and it’s true on young teams without stars. Once you make the money, though, the stars set their rotations and everyone else fills in around that based on their priority and preference, if they have any.

Joker wants to play the majority-to-entire first quarter for much of the same reasons Murray does. It allows him to find his rhythm, and it’s simpler. Start, play, sit, return, play, halftime, start, play, sit, return, play, end of game.

Jokic, for what it’s worth, will always say he just goes where they tell him, and the coach makes all the decisions, and he’s just part of the team and blah, blah, blah. It’s fine, I get it, but it’s also patently false. That’s OK, he is the most important person in the franchise, he should play in the pattern he wants.

The thing is… Murray is right to believe that playing longer in the first and 3rd quarters helps his game.

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When the Nuggets started off the season with the No.2 defense, we all knew that was not going to last.

This is not a defensive roster.

Aaron Gordon is a plus defender when matched on big, strong scoring forwards like Kawhi Leonard, but struggles against speed on the perimeter.

Christian Braun does great against rangy, athletic scoring wings like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but struggles getting over screens.

Peyton Watson is the team’s best screen navigator and does well defending pick and rolls because of that, but struggles when matched up against powerful scoring forwards.

Spencer Jones has shown the capacity to guard pretty much every type of player, but is still green and doesn’t get a favorable whistle, especially against all the elite matchups he’s faced.

Cam Johnson is an average defender, Bruce Brown is pesky off-ball but prone to lapses and undersized, Jalen Pickett is strong but short and not fast, Jamal Murray has to conserve his energy trying to get over screens, Jonas Valanciunas is slow-footed and lacks burst for rim protection.

Joker is Joker. You know the deal there.1

But for the first 12 games, Denver was downright elite defensively. Even with some slippage, they would still be good fully healthy. Then the injuries began as the season started to become a grind, and suddenly the defense fell off the earth.

I’ve been operating under the hopeful impression that fully healthy, with Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun available, the Nuggets’ defense can be “good enough” to win a title. That impression was mostly buoyed by this:

Those numbers, courtesy of DataBallr.com, are 50% 3-point luck adjusted. So they should reflect a defensive reality where, even with 3-point luck adjusted, Denver is a decent enough defensive team at a 113 defensive rating with Jokic, Braun, and Gordon.

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It’s been difficult to find stopping points to write on the Nuggets because their condition changes every 45 seconds this season with injuries.

I’ve been working on a full breakdown of exactly how the Thunder have stymied Nikola Jokic, the challenges against that team, and what that matchup looks like down the road.

For now, some thoughts on where Denver is at and what the rest of the season looks like.

THE 40-20 FAILURE

Longtime followers will know how often I talk about the 40-20 rule.1 For the uninitiated, 91% of all NBA champions have won 40 games before losing 20.

The four exceptions are the 1995 Rockets2, the 2004 Pistons3, the 2006 Heat, and the 2021 Milwaukee Bucks4.

The Nuggets lost game 20 last Monday to the Cleveland Cavaliers in collapsing fashion.

This a glass-half-full-glass-half-empty scenario.

On the half-full side, it is rare for a team to have as many injuries as Denver has had and be the level of team they are. There are teams that have had more injuries5, and teams that have had more injuries to key players, and great teams that hat have had injuries, but not teams in the Venn middle of all three, that I can recall.

The Nuggets can hit their stride in March, return to form, finish with a top-3 seed, and win the title. They’re good enough… at full strength.

The half-empty side is that you can’t assume no team has ever been in this position. There have probably been teams I can’t remember who were great and would have been good enough to hit 40-20 but were injured… and didn’t win the title anyway.

After all, it’s not “if you hit 40-20, you win the title,” it’s that if you don’t hit it, you are very unlikely to based on all of NBA history.6 There will be at least two other 40-20 teams in the West playoffs and only one team will make the Finals.

A comparison I had hope for when AG first was injured was the 2011 Mavericks. They lost Caron Butler for the season early in the year, then, after a great start, Dirk Nowitzki went down for a few months. But guess what? That team still hit 40-20.

As a fan, you should believe in the team anyway. They’re a championship-level team, fully healthy. The 40-20 failure, though, does reflect the theory that this just “isn’t their year” though. Let’s talk about that.

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Thoughts on the injuries, Spencer Jones, and ugh, the tax as we head into what is likely the last week without Joker (from this injury, knock on wood).

IN REPAIR

I ran down my thoughts on the injury updates from Adelman on Tuesday night for our Locked on Nuggets Everydayers club in our supercast and on Subtext. 1

We’re starting to see that stuff pay off. Jonas Valanciunas has been upgraded to questionable for tonight’s game vs. the Wizards. If he doesn’t return tonight, expect him back on the road trip.

When Adelman said “he looks good, he feels good,” that’s when I knew he was close.

I get people freaking out over Jonas coming back before Joker, but the injuries just aren’t the same.

As for Joker, Adelman said the problem is that they are up and down. One day he feels great, the next he feels not great. They’re trying to get him to a place where he feels the same every day.

There’s a misconception among fans that the training staff decides if a player plays. This is true for some players. Basically, the training staff’s influence scales with the player’s earnings and importance.

If you’re a two-way player? They get to decide. If you’re a rookie? They get to decide. If you’re a veteran on a minimum? They get to say a lot. If you’re a role player bench guy, they get a big say. If you’re a role player starter? It’s 50/50.

If you’re a star? A max star? The franchise? You get the say.

But it’s a process, and Joker will take the advice he’s given. To an extent.

I’m still of the belief he sneaks back in on the road trip, probably the Memphis game. One game early, to get his legs under him before the Detroit game begins a hellish stretch for the Nuggets in terms of opponent strength.

Adelman equated Cam Johnson and Jokic on timeline, but it does sound like Jokic is at least feeling better than Johnson. Johnson’s done mobility workouts, but as of Tuesday, hadn’t begun contact. The Nuggets have not said if Joker is playing contact.

Note: the training staff, and thereby Adelman, would say Joker has to play contact before he returns. This is a lie, based on the things I explained above. Joker’s back when he feels like he’s back. He’ll take the staff under advisement, but the players know their bodies.

So it looks like this:

• Jonas back on the road trip after a good pre-game workout

• Jokic back by next Friday at the latest (speculatively, he could have a setback)

• Cam Johnson back in the first week of February, worst case after All-Star

THE HIGH COST OF LIVING

Adelman hasn’t been subtle about his worry over what’s happened over the last month.

He’s had to run Jamal Murray into the ground to keep the team afloat. Honestly, if they had won fewer games, it might have been easier. If it doesn’t matter if you play Murray or not, you’re going to lose, then you can justify sitting him. But they’ve not only won more games than they’ve lost, but they’ve been in every game outside of the Hornets game.

I will always and forever go back to the 2022 season. Will Barton was playing some of the best basketball of his career in November and December, helping Denver stay in playoff seeding. But the cost of it was that Will was completely and utterly toast by the time March came around. He was a genuinely negative-impact player at that point, and the disappointing playoff performance sealed his exit from the team, and he was out of the league soon after.

I don’t think that happens to Murray; he’s a different player at a different age and much better. But I worry not only about Murray, but also about AG playing as much as he has with the coaching staff’s skepticism about DaRon Holmes. I worry about Tim Hardaway Jr. logging this many minutes, even if my concern is less there. I worry about Peyton Watson playing not only more minutes but a way higher usage role.

The Nuggets weathered this injury storm in incredible fashion. I said they need to win four games by next Tuesday. They have won seven with six days to spare.

However, they have to absolutely crush February and March to put themselves in a position to back off the throttle for the last 15 games of the season.

GET THEE SPENCE

Spencer Jones has seven games left on his two-way deal that he can play with the Nuggets before he would have to head back to Grand Rapids (or more likely, just sit around inactive). before being converted to a full-time guaranteed contract. 2

Jones is going to get the contract. They know they need him. He can shoot (we’ll come back to that), he’s smart, he plays extremely hard and has the kind of frame that they need for a lot of matchups.

The question will be when.

Here’s the sequence they need:

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Denver lost Nikola Jokic for weeks. The commentary was that they wouldn’t win a single game.

And the Denver Nuggets shut everyone up. Every national analyst. Every local voice. Everyone. They just went out and busted their asses and went 2-2 without Joker.

It was an incredible performance from everyone. David Adelman. Jamal Murray. Peyton Watson. Jalen Pickett. Zeke Nnaji. Aaron Gordon1. Spencer Jones. Jared Dudley and JJ Barea.

It was proof of how good a place this locker room and roster are in. It’s proof of the reason why you give guys like Jalen Pickett minutes to develop.2 It’s proof of how connected the team is.

It’s also proof that these guys are among the best players in the world and maybe, just maybe, they also have done more than “exist next to Nikola Jokic” to deserve their contracts.

We just quite simply need to credit the professionalism and how good you have to be to even have an NBA roster spot.

SO NOW WHAT?

I had CB and AG coming back later, and I had projected them to only win a little less than one game out of the first four. They won two.3

I had their chances at winning the Celtics game at just 7.7%. They won outright.

I said the goal should be for them to win 5 of 14 games if Joker comes back in exactly 4 weeks, which it sounds like he’s on track for. They’ve already won four after beating the Bucks Sunday night without Jamal Murray on top of CB, Jok, Cam, and JV.

This honestly takes a lot of pressure off, but then the expectation ramps up. “Well you beat the Celtics and Sixers, so you should beat the Hawks and Bucks and Mavericks.” Except the whole point is that the probability of them beating the Sixers (even without everyone) and the Celtics was never 0%.

And those results don’t really change their odds of beating the bad teams, either.

What it does, though, is buys you time against bad results.

They really only need to win one more. Joker is not in a walking boot and has been doing on-court work. I still maintain he will be back either ahead of or right at his expected return date of January 27.

My adjusted Nuggets win probability projections based on updated numbers and CB and AG being back.

Vs. Pelicans: 61.8%
Vs. Mavericks: 58.3%4
Vs. Wizards: 55.5%
Vs. Hornets: 47.1%
Vs. Lakers: 35.9%
Vs. Wizards: 32.5%
Vs. Bucks: 34.2%
Vs. Grizzles: 49.4%

That puts them between 3-5 or 4-4 in this stretch. Now, maybe I’m wrong and these games do actually set a bar for what to expect. Maybe they go 6-2 or 7-1.

But I would expect them to go 4-4 in this stretch, with better home success and at least two mildly infuriating losses.

For instance, I think they are slight dogs to the Hornets, but they can win that game and lose both the Wizards games for the second year in a row. They might drop the Bucks game at home and steal it on the road. (They are 47% on average across the two games, basically a coin flip.)

The best predictor of future success may be past results, but the NBA regular season is more about night to night probability and variance than most will believe. Not every team will have a letdown against the Nuggets without Jokic. But some will.

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It’s not great, but it could be worse.

Nikola Jokic is out at least four weeks with a hyperextended knee. He avoided tearing anything (MCL, ACL, PCL, FML, etc.). It could have been the season and that would obviously have been the end of days.

The timing is less than ideal.

This is the densest month of the Nuggets’ schedule. They play the most games this month.

I’m on record with the following predictions:

• Joker comes back before the re-evaluation date, returning in 3.5 weeks

• The Nuggets go 5-7 in the twelve games he misses

• The Nuggets finish in the 4-5 matchup as a result.

That’s of course an optimistic view of things. I’m basing it on my resolve that Joker is simply #builtdifferent. I’ve never seen a more reliable star player in the modern era, who just plays every game. Wrist hurts? Plays game, hits 3-of-4 from 3. Twisted an ankle? 30-point triple-double.

Much of this, I think, can be ascribed to Serbian values. Eastern Europeans do not have the attachment to comfort of their Western counterparts; that region knows a thing or two about discomfort for both themselves and their enemies.

It’s just not going to surprise me at all if Joker gets to week three and says “I think I’ll play” and the staff says “No, we need to give it time” and he says “No, I feel good, I will play tonight” and then drops a 30-point triple-double. I’m not sure the ramp up time will be the same as for other players. 1

It could be, though, for sure, and it could carry him all the way to All-Star. If you want to be a pessimist, that’s the angle here. Four weeks to be re-evaluated, two weeks for ramp up, misses All-Star, returns in the game after with an extra week.

In that scenario, it’s not 12 games, it’s 25. When the calendar flips to February, that’s when things take a turn. Via Positive Residual:

OKC: loss

Detroit: loss

Knicks: loss

The rest of those are coin flips but those three games could be devastating for Denver’s playoff seeding.

However, for now, let’s give him the four weeks exactly, returning for the home game against Detroit on January 27th, and missing 14 games.

So it’s a lot of games.

The trick, though, with the NBA regular season is not to think about games in terms of wins and losses but win probability.

Christian Braun likely returns between this week and next. Let’s put his return date as vs. the Celtics on the 7th. Here’s Denver’s win probability for those games based on that2:

Cleveland: 25.02%

Brooklyn: 36.12%3

Philly (back-to-back, assuming everyone plays for both teams): 24.79%

Their estimated wins there is 0.85, a little under a win.

Not a great start. So CB comes back against Boston. Now we look to AG who is probably not far behind.

Boston: 7.7%

Atlanta at home: 29%

OK. Now AG comes back for the second night of the back-to-back against the Bucks.

Bucks: 41%

Pelicans: 44.61%

Mavericks (back-to-back, assuming everyone plays): 55%4

Wizards: 70.16%

Hornets (back-to-back, assuming everyone plays): 51.84%

Lakers: 29.94%

Wizards: 70.64%

Bucks (back-to-back, assuming everyone plays): 29.51%

Grizzlies: 43.96%

Joker returns on the 27th at home against the Pistons, along with Cam Johnson. If Johnson comes back before then, the numbers go up.

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