Oh, The Nuggets, They Are A Changin'

A premature eulogy

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Maybe it was the Wizards loss. The second one, I mean.

Maybe it was the double-overtime loss to the Wolves with Jokic going for 60-10-10.

Maybe it was Friday night’s dispiriting loss to the Warriors where Golden State looked like a team with hunger and belief, and the Nuggets looked like a team with doubt and lethargy.

But the result is the same: Denver’s season feels over.

I’ve resisted this sentiment for several reasons. One, if the Nuggets make a run, you look like an idiot. Two, the Nuggets can make a run. Teams worse than them have found themselves in the conference finals, and when you have a player as great as Jokic, anything is possible.

Jamal Murray has repeatedly blanched at the idea Denver’s not worthy of true and absolute faith in their championship capability. The five players who will play the most for Denver in the playoffs — should they make it at this point — were five of the six players who played the most last season and were five of the eight most-played in 2023.

Before the season, I tried warning Nuggets fans on Locked on Nuggets that this would be a hard season. It was going to be rough. It was going to look bad at points. But I said the hope had to be that they could be better by the end of the season than they were at the start.

And they are. Christian Braun not only has had a marvelous offensive season, but his defense has really improved in chasing screens and on off-ball sequences over the course of the season. Aaron Gordon is a reliable three-point shooter to compensate for the lack of shooting. DeAndre Jordan has given them good minutes. Jalen Pickett has shown he’s an NBA player and could be good. Peyton Watson looks back on track.

But it’s not enough.

The defense is simply not enough. The team looks tired and frustrated. The tangible stuff is defense, shooting, and creation. The intangible stuff is vibes, confidence, and hunger.

A GREAT OFFENSE BUT NOT GREAT ENOUGH

Denver shot 53% from the field against the Warriors. They shot better than 50% from the field and were blown out. They shot better than 50% against the Wolves. Better than 50% against the Thunder in the first matchup of the back-to-back a month ago.

And they lost all those games. Making your shots isn’t enough in the NBA in 2025. When you turn the ball over to lose the possessions game and trade 2’s for 3’s you’re going to wind up on the wrong side of the margin. It just is what it is.

Something a lot of Nuggets fans love about Denver is that they are counter-NBA-culture. They don’t go in for this three-point chucking stuff. That’s thought to be more ethical.

It does not matter in a game that is decided by point margin. The point margin is what matters. You can’t build an offensively-balanced team that is starting off facing this much of an uphill climb. It would be like saying we’re going to be an elite defense while giving up the most three-point attempts.¹

The Nuggets aren’t the only team facing that kind of climb. They’re actually the Western Conference Knicks, statistically. The Knicks are in the bottom five in three-point rate and fifth in offensive rating.

Denver and the Knicks have similar problems. The Knicks are 9-17 against top-10 defenses this season because they’re 17th in defense against those teams. They get outscored when the offense is limited. The Nuggets are 9-12 vs. top-ten offenses this season. They get outscored when they face teams that can hang with their firepower.

Malone has scoffed at the idea that the offense is a problem, and he’s honestly right. They are third in the NBA overall and 3rd in offense against top-10 defenses.² The offense is not a problem.

You can bark about the bench offense all day long, like when the Nuggets scored five points in seven minutes of the third vs. the Warriors. But this team was not built, financially, to produce in those minutes. The money allocation is built to win the Jokic minutes and to win them with offense.

And the Nuggets do win those minutes and win them with offense.

But they don’t win those minutes by enough or consistently enough because of the defense.

For Denver’s offense to be enough to make up for the defense, they have to be the best offense in the league, by margin. The two teams above them in offensive rating are 4th and 1st in 3-point rate, respectively.

THE VIBES

Media usually doesn’t know what it’s talking about, myself included. Things can seem disastrous to us, and then you get in the locker room, and they’re like, “yeah, tough loss, but no big deal.” And sometimes you go in with, “Hey, tough game, but you played great,” and they are livid.

But something the media asked about a billion times on media day was about how hungry Denver was. They were hungry in 2023, knowing the opportunity ahead of them. They were confident last year, like a cat that knows it will be fed so it doesn’t meow at you.³

This year we asked about their hunger, and they said they needed to be hungry and mad about how Game 7 went. But because these last two runs have been so long and physically and emotionally grueling, they also talked about managing it. This is the inherent problem with modern-day contention.

If you play like dogs every game, you’ll burn out without a higher gear.⁴ If you don’t, you wind up like this: lethargic because it’s not the playoffs but unable to build the habits or identity you need because you’re mostly bored and tired.

That’s how Denver plays most nights. To be clear, every NBA game is grueling and demanding and takes more than I could ever give in a million years.

But also, Denver doesn’t play with hunger or togetherness. They play like a team that doesn’t know why it’s not better, but also isn’t invested in making up for that with effort. They don’t fly around. They don’t dive for loose balls. They take what the game gives them and believe it will be enough.

For all his brilliance, some of that is Jokic. Your team takes the identity of your best player. I understand if you don’t want to put anything on Joker given what he has done this season in what is, in my opinion, the greatest offensive season in NBA history. How could you ask for more?

But there is a direct line between Jokic’s general ennui and this team. Jamal is not the spark, not anymore. Gordon is not the spark; that’s not his role. Maybe Jokic shouldn’t have to be that, too, given he does absolutely everything else, but someone has to, and in professional basketball teams, it’s the best player.

Artist’s rendition of Nikola Jokic this season

But if the Nuggets’ are serious about their adoration of Jokic and how great he is, then they have to pick up for him. They have to bring extra effort. They have to play with emotion and connectedness.

People around the Nuggets have spoken again this season about a recurring problem: communication. Jamal has hinted at it. But they are back to being a silent team that doesn’t call things out defensively. They are not constantly getting into each other for accountability.

Their spirit is low.

Again, this is the part that could flip in the playoffs, and I look like a moron. But this is how the season has felt.

If the defense was better but the spirit was listless, they’d probably be good enough with the chance to be what they need to be in two weeks. If the spirit was good but the defense was bad, that effort makes up for personnel problems.

It’s the combination of the two in what is unquestionably Jokic’s best season and one of the best ever that puts them here.

SO WHAT’S GOING TO CHANGE?

First off, I’m never ever going to advocate for any coach getting fired. There isn’t a “but” coming. The man has a family and a life here and loves his job.

I’m also never going to advocate for firing Malone, in particular. This is going to be the first season they did not reach regular-season win expectations. They were 20 minutes short of a probable title last year in Game 7.

Players have gotten better under him, and the team has won a title and tons and tons of games. He’s literally the winningest coach in the history of the franchise. I have as much respect for Michael Malone as any coach in the game. Above all? That guy still cares so much and hates losing.

If the Nuggets go out in the first round, it’s likely Malone is not retained. That’s the reality of the NBA. Maybe the Kroenke’s’ relationship with Malone is fundamentally different from my perspective. But based on how this usually goes in the NBA, that happens.

I don’t know how you find a better coach than Malone. I genuinely don’t. A different voice can spark things, but I don’t know what coach is for sure going to get a team to this level. Tinkering with things, even if I feel like there needs to be reinvention, can lead to disaster. ⁵

Fans believe that it’s easy. Just have Jokic and nothing else matters. The Milwaukee Bucks are 12th on offense and defense, and I assure you the gap between Jokic and Giannis isn’t that wide.

But a new voice might be needed after a decade.

Calvin Booth is a huge question mark. The direction of the franchise in going young and giving so many roster spots to unproven, developing players who aren’t top-10 picks was his. The cultural slide and unstable feeling in the front office have occurred under him. He owns the Reggie Jackson contract and subsequent trade cost. He owns the Zeke Nnaji contract and the Dario Saric contract. ⁶

But Booth is excellent at drafting and thinks about team building as deeply as anyone. He’s invested in finding the answers and it’s unlikely that anyone could have fixed the situation (that he himself created).

You can keep Jamal Murray.

You can keep Michael Porter Jr.

You can keep Aaron Gordon.

You can’t keep all three.

The deep playoff runs and heavy minutes are taking their toll on AG and while I’m extremely confident he’ll have a better season next year for many reasons, he needs SOME help on the perimeter.

Murray is having a career season, and I’m actually higher on him than I have been at any point since the injury. He also probably has the second-highest trade value and represents the biggest chance for a fundamental shift.

Porter is tough. His trade value is impacted by his medical history and isn’t compensated for by his play value. But he’s also been the guy to sacrifice, to make big shots, and he did legitimately make a leap in the first four months of this season. His slide might just be a hamstring issue, as he’s asserted.

I think Christian Braun stays. He’ll get paid at some point but cross that bridge when it comes. He makes winning plays and has the most impressive professionalism I’ve seen from a player his age. Ownership loves him.

Peyton Watson has the highest upside, which makes him tough to trade, but that upside also makes him one of the few players with trade value.

Everyone else is effectively negative trade value.

There will be changes this summer unless the Nuggets find that gear that’s been missing. It will be the end of this era, of this core. For a time that looked like it could be dynastic in June of 2023, this season is a reminder of just how fast the NBA moves and what it looks like when it moves on without you.

Unless the most surprising Nuggets run of the Jokic era arrives in two weeks, the times? They are a changin’.

1. That’s the Thunder, by the way. They are the best defense in the NBA, and they give up the most threes. Do with that what you will.

2. Denver is 13-14 against those top-ten defenses. That’s below .500 but a lot better than it is vs. the overall elites. They can score against top defenses, but if those teams can score, too, Denver’s sunk.

3. Our family has two cats, one was a kitten born in foster care who has always been provided for. She is a total baby, doesn’t really get excited to eat, and is completely spoiled. The other is her mother, who was a stray and was malnourished when she was found. Guess how that one reacts when her feeding time comes around? Inside you there are two housecats. You should be a dog.

4. See: Thibodeau, Tom. Again, the Knicks comparison comes calling.

5. Nuggets fans should closely examine what happened in replacing Mike Budenholzer with Adrian Griffin and then Doc Rivers, and Jrue Holiday with Damian Lillard in Milwaukee.

6. I’m willing to give him a pass on Russ, a minimum contract pick up that was worth the gamble given the endorsement of Nikola Jokic. Better executives than him have made that gamble and lost all the same.