Regular posts resume next week as we head towards Nuggets media day, September 29th, and then training camp in San Diego.
Let’s hit a bunch of different catchup topics.
SERBIA BOWS OUT IN ROUND OF 16
Allow me to be a little petty here.
Perhaps we should reconsider recommending Svetislav Pešić as the next coach of the Nuggets. Maybe we should not suggest that Team Serbia would do better against NBA competition than the Nuggets. It’s possible that the answer for the Nuggets isn’t just to sign all of Team Serbia. Just a few thoughts.
Jokic was sublime, incredible, his usual amazeballs self offensively. He was slow and labored defensively, especially on the perimeter.
Denver has always done a pretty good of keeping him out of matchups where spacing could harm him, but between Chet Holmgren and the Serbian matchups, you can expect more of it next season.
One thought that came to mind with these issues, as Alperen “Baby Sabonis” Sengun bombed from 3 against him (as a career 27% 3-point shooter in the Association), was that Brook Lopez’s addition to the Clippers may be a problem next season.
Zubac doesn’t space to three, but Lopez certainly does.
Nikola Jovic continues to shine brightly or emanate no light and nothing in between. Petrusev had a widely disappointing tournament, Guduric had some awful decisions (an understatement), and Vasilije Micić is just not a very good guard.
Tough end for Serbia, but after the Bogdanovic injury, you got the sense they wouldn’t have enough.
THE GOOD SCHEDULE NEWS
On a recent episode of Locked on Nuggets, Ryan Blackburn and I went through all 80 games currently on the Nuggets’ schedule1 and whether they were a win or a loss.
The most surprising thing in this exercise was that a schedule that is still pretty rough looks a lot better if you start going through it game by game to see what the opponent’s rest situation would be.
This chart shows what the opponent rest situation is for every Nuggets rest situation.
As an example of the data here, the Nuggets have 16 back-to-backs. The opponent is on rest for 10 of those games, the majority at 63%. But that also means that the Nuggets’ rest disadvantage is mitigated in six of the 16.
Here’s a look at just home games so you can see what opponents will face when they’re in altitude.
Let’s take the games where the opponent is on a 3rd game in 4 nights. Even with Denver on a back to back in two of those 10 games, those are all “schedule wins” for Denver.
Those 16 games where the opponent is on rest disadvantage in altitude are all high-win-probability games for Denver before we even talk about opponent strength.
And of the 16 back-to-backs for Denver, four of them are home-home back-to-backs at Ball Arena. Five of their ten 3rd-game-in-4-nights are at home.
So of the 26 “schedule loss” games, eleven are at home, mitigating that disadvantage.
That still puts 15 “schedule loss” games on the radar (rest disdvantage, on the road). Here’s who they are against.
Los Angeles Clippers
Memphis Grizzlies
Phoenix Suns
Dallas Mavericks
Philadelphia 76ers
Boston Celtics
Dallas Mavericks
Milwaukee Bucks
Memphis Grizzlies
New York Knicks
Portland Trail Blazers
Golden State Warriors
Utah Jazz
San Antonio Spurs
Los Angeles Lakers
Not easy. But Denver also won’t go winless in those 15 games. The opponent will be sick, injured, exhausted, or in a bad place in enough of them and Denver will just win enough.
The point with this analysis is that there are definitely bad things about Denver’s schedule, but all of it is manageable and even the bad numbers (most back to backs in the league) are mitigated when we look at the context of the opponent’s rest position.
THE BAD SCHEDULE NEWS
Now, what is concerning?
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