The Nuggets, Grey Swans, And Next Year

It can always be your year.

Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

Last year was not the Nuggets’ year.

You don’t really need to be told that. It was one of the most frustrating seasons in Nuggets fan history. There have been worse seasons with lower expectations, and seasons where they failed to meet end expectations after good seasons.

But last year was somehow the worst of all worlds. They were too good to check out on, too bad to feel good even when they won.

It was the Thunder’s year. It was the Cavs’ year despite their finish. It was kind of the Pacers’ year? It was the Pistons’ year. It was the Rockets’ year.

Sometimes everything comes together, from the vibes to health to how the roster fits together to coaching and everything else. Sometimes, it’s an avalanche of disaster. But that also doesn’t mean it will always be this way, just like everything did not remain sunshine and rainbows after the title.

DISSECTING THE AVALANCHE OF DISASTER

None of that came together for Denver this season—none of it.

• The roster was badly put together. Everything the season hinged on failed.

  • Dario Saric was going to be a difference maker as a smallball big and was a complete and total miss. Just completely unplayable.

    • I want to stress on this point that every single player was enthusiastic about adding Dario in preseason. Swipa was against it from the beginning and Warriors fans warned about it, but he was good the first half of 2023-24 and then the Warriors had to shake up their rotation to boost the starters. I still think Saric being this bad was unforseeable.

  • Peyton Watson came into camp in less than great condition and had worked on things the team was not enthused about while still lacking the things they wanted him to work on. He suffered a preseason injury and that knocked him back in the rotation and he never really recovered.

    • I have a lot more empathy for Watson on this. The Nuggets want their guys to fill roles very specifically. Michael Porter Jr. was willing to make those sacrifices to win, but Mike had the backdrop of the reality of his injury situation.

    • I don’t blame Watson for wanting to expand his game. He’d be looked at a lot differently if he were on the Hornets.

  • Julian Strawther didn’t make a leap, had some injuries again.

  • Russell Westbrook brought all the good for a while and all the bad for a while and on the margin was probably a slight positive but continues to be a player you need to not rely on being great every stint or every night and they did.

  • Christian Braun was better offensively this season than KCP was last season, but worse defensively for the first half of the season¹ and the Nuggets badly missed being able to deploy lineups with multiple defenders.

  • Jalen Pickett’s value hit rock bottom and then climbed out with some hope for the future in the back half of the season, but it was far from a five-star seson.

  • Hunter Tyson: unplayable. The two-way contracts: unplayable. Zeke Nnaji: mostly unplayable, again.

• Injuries were a problem again.

  • Jamal Murray missed 25 games again with a variety of maladies including a late hamstring injury.

  • Aaron Gordon played the fewest games in his career since his rookie season, with a calf injury and other things tearing down his availability.

  • DaRon Holmes was lost in preseason, robbing the team of a possible spark of youthful energy with physicality.

  • Jokic missed 12 games, some for the birth of his son.

• The vibes were nightmarish.

  • Calvin Booth and Michael Malone split the organization and the locker room into “Booth Guys” and “Malone Guys” and if you were one, you were not meant to associate with the other. Paranoia ran rampant.

  • Malone’s brand of hard-nosed intensity ran aground, finally, after 10 great years, and the players tuned him out. Malone, compromised by both a sense of arrogance after winning the title and a lot of personally difficult situations like the death of his father in 2023 and his daughters heding to college, seemed both more exasperated and more exhausted than ever.

  • Nikola Jokic was miserable. It’s fine if you want to get defensive and respond with “Can you BLAME the guy?!?!?!” but three things can be true:

    • Joker shouldered an unparalleled load and responsibility this year and raised his performance higher than anyone else possibly could given the circumstances and had what is probably the best offensive season in NBA history.

    • Joker was annoyed, despondent, bored, and overall just not fun to be around for people in the organization.

    • Joker’s greatness and the teams’ struggles combined to create a real guilt in the locker room of everyone letting him down which isn’t healthy, and his demeanor didn’t exactly lighten the load.

  • Jamal Murray frustrated some in the organization with his attitude, especially on long road trips… depending on who you ask.

    • There were reports of Murray being persnickety when the team thrived with Russell Westbrook starting for him and when Malone said Jokic and Russ was the best two-man game in the league at the time.

    • Murray routinely would take excursions for UFC events or to do things that well-paid athletes like to do in their time.

      • I personally think these criticisms don’t hold weight. No one cares what other players do in their free time; it’s their free time. The implication that Murray should be rehabbing or working out 24-7 to get into shape because Joker dropped 35-17-18 the night before or whatever is unrealistic. Guys get to live their lives.

      • But I’d also be lying if you didn’t hear about it from people in and around the organization with some grumbling.

    • Aaron Gordon was dealing with the personal tragedy of the death of his brother, and there were a lot of other family situations weighing on him. AG went through a lot this season.

    • MPJ was dealing with just as much on the outside with his family and their legal issues. Then on top of it, he had injuries and as he has really battled the perception he’s an injury risk, he often tried to play through it.

Other than that, though, the team won 50 games and took OKC to the brink.

So why will never year be better, especially without the changes to the roster that seemingly every fan wants?

THE COACHING ELEMENT AND AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH (FOR ME)

I’m a Malone guy. I’m not oblivious to his hot-headedness and have heard enough stories to acknowledge that while Malone treated a lot of people right in his tenure and earned some lifelong devotion, that kindness did not extend to everyone.

None of us are as kind as we should be to everyone and we’re all probably a little too kind to some people in our lives.

But Malone made a real difference in the organization and made enough subtle improvements through the years for me to notice. His track record and resume was superb. Most of all, Malone cared. You think that’s true for all coaches, but it’s not (especially former players). He hated losing and took it personally. It mattered to him how the team did. He was never cashing a check.

At the same time, when Malone would brush off criticisms of the offensive degrade over the past three seasons by pointing to their overall ranking, it rang hollow. You can be an efficient offense and not be scary. You can be a middle-of-the-pack offense and put teams on their heels.

More than anything, though, there were a lot of signs along the way that Malone had lost the team.

Most of this is genuinely just simply that the team got older. They were kids when Malone took over, and became men, fathers, and quarter-billionaires while he stayed the same.

Murray isn’t the guy who cried in Malone’s office after tearing his ACL. Joker isn’t the kid who apologized for letting the team down after the Blazers series. They’ve won a lot and lost a lot of games since then. Things are just different.

And while I didn’t dig a lot because of how players get defensive when you ask about the coach, the players did not rave about Malone in the later years. He was just who he’d always been and they knew him and he knew them. There was a comfort and familiarity but that also bred staleness.

All of this means that David Adelman has a chance to earn investment, excitement, and love in a way that Malone could not. Just by being different, Adelman can get their attention. By bringing different energy, he can reset the tone.

Adelman has talked a lot about innovation and reinvention. Reshaping the coaching staff is a lot of that. But just breathing some new life could help the team feel better playing, even if it comes with growing pains of installing new things.

THE GREY SWAN EVENT

A black swan event is one that is completely unpredictable beforehand, creates major change in outcomes, and is retroactively explained as predictable. A white swan event is predictable and carries significant impact. A grey swan event is one that is known and possible to happen, but considered unlikely.

Denver needs grey swan events next season.

A black swan even would be PJ Hall becoming an All-Star. David Adelman inventing a new scheme no one has ever scene before that revolutionizes all of basketball. The Nuggets trading for Jalen Brunson.

Some grey swan events that would reshape Denver’s season:

• Jamal Murray playing well enough early to make an All-Star team.

• Peyton Watson becoming a three-level breakout scorer.

• Julian Strawther turning into something akin to Monta Ellis.

• A team taking on Zeke Nnaji and returning a contributing rotation player.

• Russell Westbrook becoming a 40 percent three-point shooter

• DaRon Holmes recovering completely from the Achilles tear and becoming a Rookie of the Year candidate.

• Christian Braun transforming into an on-ball shot creation threat.

• Jalen Pickett becoming a triple-double threat off the bench.

• Denver trading into the first round and selecting an impact player

None of these are likely, but they are possible, and any one of them would move the needle. The Nuggets got a few grey swans this year, the most prominent being Aaron Gordon turning into an elite three-point shooter.

IT CAN ALWAYS BE YOUR YEAR

It wasn’t Denver’s year last year. But despite the stagnation of the roster, the aging of the roster, the miles on the roster, the holes in the roster, and the uncertainty about the front office, next year can be Denver’s year. Things can click into place for the Nuggets.

We do not know the shape of the future, just as we didn’t the night they won the title when dynasty talk prematurely began. You should not assume you know what the Nuggets will be next year when they don’t know themselves.

1. I’m going to write a piece in the coming weeks on the progress that CB made defending over screens and what it means going forward, but he really made strides defensively over the course of the season.