Aiming Down Sights
Matchups, lineups, and reluctant enthusiasm
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.
