Nuggets This Week: The Win/Loss Rollercoaster, Swatson Rises, And The Cup

The Nuggets are better than everyone seems to think, including themselves

Lots of Nuggets notes for a Sunday.

THE KINGS LOSS

Here are the Nuggets’ losses:

• Against the Warriors in their home opener, in overtime

• Against the Blazers on the road in the worst late-game officiated game I may have ever seen

• Against the Bulls coming off a monster win vs. the Wolves, a truly bad loss

• Against the Kings on a back-to-back shorter-rest travel spot at home without two starters, still a bad loss but heavily schedule-influenced

They lose small and random. These losses matter because the way to build 60 wins is to beat the bad teams, win your home games, and beat your division opponents. They have losses to all three so far.

I really thought this team was going to go 38-3 at home because that’s how good they are. But they lost focus vs. Chicago and were ran out vs. the Kings.

But the doomerism has been shocking. There is a sizable chunk of the fanbase that really believes this team is the same as last year, and that’s categorically insane.

Joker’s comments yesterday caused a kerfuffle.

I want to put this in perspective: Joker saying “we’re better” is the key because he was pretty hopeless last year. But every single Nugget has downplayed their success. They have all, to a man, said that there’s a lot they have to get better at.

The problem with Joker saying it in the presser is that the response is “Yeah! Look at Joker who has standards instead of those bums he’s carrying!” Which just isn’t the vibe of this team at all.

Ultimately, do you think the Kings are better than Denver? No. Do you think Denver loses that game with normal rest? No. Does OKC win this game with bad rest? Yes. They are not OKC. But they are still a great team that is 12-4 with the No.1 offense and the No.12 defense.

Equally frustrating is that fans have said “well, sure, they beat the bad teams but let’s see them beat good teams.” So they beat the Wolves and Rockets on the road and then it’s “well, sure, but they lost to the bad teams.”

The logical expectation to be built out of this is that fans expect them to just… never lose. Can’t lose the games they should win but better win the games vs. the great teams!

We are once again lost in the small sample of the regular season. The big sample says Denver’s right where they need to be.

THE BIG ONE

The Nuggets’ win over Houston was massive from just about every level.

They basically knock out Houston from Cup contention, but that’s not the priority.

Denver needed a win vs. a healthy contender to boost the idea they could get those wins and they got it, on the road, down two starters.

They take the lead in the season series. They face Houston three times, so they only need to split with the Rockets to secure tiebreaker, which could determine homecourt in a second-round series or be the difference in the three and the four seed and who has to face OKC sooner.

It was just a massive, gutsy win where they won with defense in the first half and offense in the second.

The Nuggets went to the two-big lineup when Gordon went down out of necessity; they literally have no one to combat that lineup otherwise without Gordon. ¹ That combo played 7.6 minutes and finished +2, which honestly, is pretty great.

There were ups and downs; Denver gave up seven fastbreak points and five points off turnovers (crossover between those two). but they also only gave up two second-chance points. If the objective is to counter the double-big for Houston, it worked.

Here little Baby Alpi tries to hang with Joker, and Joker just makes Steven Adams help over to let JV get a small hook shot.

Also, the NBA is wild, man. Here’s a 5-5 pick-and-roll between two seven footers for a pull-up three. Sure.

Reed Sheppard was bonkers in the first half, but honestly? It was just poor KYP.² Bruce Brown separated from him and helped down. The Nuggets played a deep drop with soft lock and trail on him, and then left him open in transition a few times.