The Worst Kind Of Team

On Denver's win profile and a frustratingly good season

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Each season, an NBA team is its own organism.

They’re never the same, year over year. Even if you return the same players, things will always be slightly different¹. Players’ games and mindsets will have changed. Contract situations shift. Assistant coaches move on, and that changes things. Luck, invariably, is different.

“Continuity” was such a buzzword when the Nuggets won the title because their core four had been together for a long time² and they looked so much the same last year.³

The proof in the last two seasons is that things are never the same. They are always different, and if things line up for you to have a special season — as they did for Denver in 2023 — then recreating that magic is way more difficult than you’d think.

Each organism takes on its own profile. They’re of the same genus but not the same species as the year before. You never see that species again. I tend to identify the species, so to speak, by a team’s win profile.

And Denver’s… is not good.

On the surface, things are fine, if not great. The Nuggets are on pace for 52 wins with the seventh-best net rating in the league despite missing two starters, Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray, for big chunks of the year.

That’s a good team. With their having won a title two years ago and employing the best player in the world, it should be enough to make them a contender. But under the surface, they are vomiting Mom’s spaghetti all over.

THE WIN PROFILE: ANY GIVEN NIGHT

The first layer looks pretty normal. Denver is 29-9 vs. teams under .500, with the fourth-fewest losses against those teams in the West. They are 14-17 against teams that are .500 or better.⁴ That’s the fifth-best record against those teams.

Against the top teams, they are 8th among West teams in point differential against teams with a top-10 net rating per Cleaning The Glass.

They do not pose a serious challenge to serious teams.

Some of that is impacted by their getting boatraced by the Knicks and Cavaliers, though.

So in the West, Denver is sixth in record vs. other top-eight West playoff teams.

However, look at the win/loss record. Denver has two wins vs. the Thunder and wins vs. the Lakers, Warriors, and Grizzlies.⁵ They hung with Boston, even if they lost both.⁶

They can beat these teams. The best version of Denver is that team that still looks like a champion. They are smart and fast, physical and big. They are brilliant offensively.

They can also lose to the Wizards.

Denver was 24-11 against teams under .500 in 2023 and 28-2(!!!) last season against those bad teams. Despite playing way more of them, Denver may actually wind up with fewer losses to sub-.500 teams than in the championship season.

But the end result is that Denver can go toe-to-toe with heavyweights but not play well enough to win and lose on any given night to literally any team in the league.

A MICROCOSM IN A HURRICANE

Saturday night’s loss to the Wizards was a perfect storm. A five-in-seven nights back-to-back against a miserable team they did not take seriously. They thought they would win with offense. Their defense was atrocious. They allowed a breakdown on pick-and-roll coverage on the three-pointer to tie ⁷, and then Jordan Poole just hit a nasty long-range pull-up for the win.

It should never have come to that. It wouldn’t have if Denver had any defensive floor.

The Nuggets legitimately believe that most nights, there is a floor to their defense that will allow them to play without putting the pedal down.

They are wrong. This year’s team has the lowest defensive floor of any Nuggets defensive team since 2019.

Denver is 29th in defensive rating among all teams when they lose. That’s the worst ranking for that stat in the Jokic era. A crazy stat? Denver was 1st in defensive rating when they lost last season.

They have never ranked lower than 27th.

If this sounds like an effort condition, you’re right. The question is whether this is because they are gassed or don’t have the mental will this season.

I want to pause here to emphasize how tough this is. It’s almost game 70. The Nuggets have been playing basketball night after night for five months. March is the worst NBA month by far because so many teams are where Denver is, trying to find enough energy to do this again.

“That’s what the money is for!”

Sure, absolutely. I think that’s a fair argument. But it’s also a consequence of the NBA’s refusal to rethink their schedule structure and the minutes Denver has had to play.

Maybe Malone should have rested guys more mid-season, but with the injuries to Gordon and Murray, he genuinely couldn’t. They are in the playoffs currently only because of the decision to prioritize winning games.

If the roster was deeper? Maybe more guys would take nights off. But it isn’t, so here we are, constantly pointing fingers between the roster construction and Malone's (and the locker room’s) desire to win games.

So here they are. A good team, a top-four seed in the West, can win any given night or lose any given night, but also not good enough to secure seeding for rest or to knock off the truly elite teams.

THE WORST KIND OF TEAM

This is the worst spot to be in. Coaches would argue that being a totally lost franchise with players who aren’t professional and a miserable roster with a cheap owner is worse.

But for fans, I think this version is worse.

You can’t just say, “They’re not any good.”

No, in fact, Denver has some elite talent, no matter how much people want to discredit others to credit Jokic.

Jamal Murray has actually wound up having a terrific season. Michael Porter Jr. had the best season of his career until he ran out of gas about two weeks ago. Aaron Gordon is shooting a career-best from three. Christian Braun has been a revelation and has been better than anyone could have imagined (offensively) replacing KCP.

They’re good… but not good enough together. They are infuriatingly bad defensively, but not all the time.

Malone has mentioned their fourth-quarter defense — ranked 9th— as proof of what they’re capable of. But in the Wizards game, it fell apart. There’s nothing to rely on.

We’ll talk about Denver’s defense later this week because the fall is a combination that reveals how badly the defense is both built and designed.

STORMS ON THE HORIZON

Saturday night felt like a pivotal moment. After the game, Malone suggested that the media should talk to players and ask if they believe they can defend. Jokic essentially said no, he doesn’t believe it.

Malone is at the end of his rope and realizing he simply may not be able to get this group to commit on the defensive end. That’s brutal for a coach.

The players feel like they can do it but don’t know how.

They need a spark and can’t find it. They need a bench rotation and can’t find it. They need consistency and trust, and they can’t find it.

I asked on the show above “Is the Nuggets season officially over?” The players and coach would rail against that idea.

But at some point you have to show us, the collective us, the fans, the media, the league, that you can do the thing you think you can.

Denver has failed to show they can do the thing that they should be able to do. That’s what makes this season, with a top-three seed and the MVP runner-up, so frustrating.

1. Boston is the best example of this. They haven’t changed a thing from last year except for the departure of Charles Lee, but they are slightly different in a lot of key areas, which is why they’ve lost a few more games.

2. It actually wasn’t that long. Gordon was traded to Denver in the spring of 2021 and didn’t play with Jamal outside of a five-game set until October 2022.

3. Again, like Boston. Don’t tell them,; it’s a secret they get to find out on their own.

4. Via ESPN’s Advanced Standings page.

5. They haven’t played the new-look Warriors, lost to the new-look Lakers, and have actual high-stakes standings games coming vs. the Rockets and Grizzlies.

6. Once without Joker.

7. After rewatching, I’m pretty sure the problem was just that Jamal Murray, on a bad ankle, could not plant to “x-out’ to the corner. If Michael Porter Jr. does not pick up Alexandre Sarr, he’s got a wide open pick-and-pop three. If Joker recovers any sooner, Poole has a driving lane to force help and then kick strong side for an equally easy three. Murray has help strong-side, he has to recover to the weak side and it’s too far and he starts to plant but can’t make the push to recover. Again, perfect storm.