Why Denver Can't "Do It For Joker"
In the end, it's still team sports.
I have to start with a gigantic preface because it’s crucial.
Nikola Jokic has been the best player in basketball this season, and it’s not close. He’s having literally the most productive start to an NBA season in individual box score performance in league history. Jokic has played with intent and intensity in almost every game this season.
He is averaging career highs in points, rebounds, assists, and steals per game, shooting 56% from the field and 51% from 3 and 80% from the line.
There’s nothing more Jokic can be doing, and the Nuggets’ mediocre record is not on him in any way, shape, or form.
The consensus, outside and within the team, is that they are letting Jokic down.
It’s this dynamic I want to talk about.
There are problems galore to blame the team’s start on. An optimistic view would be to say that Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon have missed time with injuries, and the team’s structure isn’t built to survive without them because it’s top-heavy.
The conflict between the front office and the coaching staff has bled over to the locker room, as Adam Mares talked about on the Wizards game postgame show at DNVR.
The roster itself is flawed to the point of being broken, based on draft misses and tripling down on picks with extensions and guaranteed deals, which created The Flexibility Problem.
The front office missed on Jalen Pickett, Hunter Tyson (mostly, he might be OK), and Dario Saric.
Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson haven’t improved their games enough to be ready for what’s asked of them this season.
The coaching staff has not provided any re-invention of a stale offense and has been unable to sell the players on essential Know-Your-Personnel tendencies or rote gameplan elements.
Everyone’s failed Jokic. It is, as Swipa has said, a total organizational failure.
But framing it this way isn’t going to solve it, either.
Something I think a lot about is the push and pull of the NBA being a team sports league vs. being a professional sports league.
What I mean is that the league is often about politics, egos, agendas, and things impacted by the players' lifestyle.
But at its core, it’s still five guys playing together on the floor. It’s still 15 guys hanging out in locker rooms and playing sports together.
All of those cliche things about sports still apply and are very real. You do need to play for one another because basketball is a sport that requires five games to play in concert with each other. It’s not baseball, where the offense is individual. You need to have collective goals and a collective belief. You need a connectedness.
Mares and I have talked a lot over the years about joy and its role in basketball. The cost of that is often professionalism. The Nuggets peaked in 2023 with a combination of the two. They were perfectly balanced as the best starting five in basketball, playing together and for one another on both ends of the floor.
Last year, they started to drift towards professionalism more than joy. They had just played so much basketball over the past 18 months (and for Joker, really the last five years) that their ability to play with joy was compromised.
This year, both are absent. Everyone’s playing for their agendas, in their heads. There’s a lack of professionalism evident in their game preparation, and there are signs that the team is not invested in things like team dinners or small moments of togetherness the way you need to be.
Everyone’s just going through the motions for themselves while also feeling bad for letting Jokic down.
You can’t use your All-Time Great’s burden as a motivational point. You have to want to sacrifice for one another because everyone will sacrifice for you.
I sense that the players are aware of how much Joker is doing and how incredible he’s been. They don’t take this for granted. But their inability to act on it is less a matter of selfishness and more a product of the fact that guilt is not a unifying force.
The responsibility to solve this is a complicated cocktail of coaching and personal investment. The team has to want to be great, and Jamal Murray has to stop pouting about whatever has bothered him for some time. The team’s veterans have to help the younger players and Michael Porter Jr. with how to clean up their mistakes.
The coaching staff has to find a way to reach the players and get them back in and back together.
This is where the fears that the team has tuned out Malone come from.
But it should be noted that if Malone had more veterans in the locker room to lean on and fewer unplayable fringe young guys, the situation might be different. The front office is the one that influences your future contracts the most. How do you buy into the coach who is in a feud with the front office?
And how do you do that if the feud is about you?
Through all this, the bones of the team are still good because of Jokic. The net rating of the starters is better than it was last season. With Murray struggling, they’re still crushing teams in their minutes together.
That part of the team still works. But they have to heal the whole team organism.
Trades can’t fix that. Schemes can’t fix that.
I don’t pretend to understand this the way the players do. I don’t have the success in team sports to speak to how to fix things. I can only say that I’ve watched a lot of teams and locker rooms come and go, and this one won’t be fixed by fealty to their best player.
The Nuggets can’t bow to Nikola Jokic’s greatness.
They have to rise to meet it.
I think most fans think of these things from a management perspective, as that's how fans have largely been taught to understand sports in the wake of fantasy games. I think the front office has pretty clearly failed Joker and owes him a duty to surround him with capable team. This is a disgusting attempt from Stan and Josh Kroenke, Calvin Booth, and everyone behind the scenes in the Nuggets organization. Michael Malone is the only guy there that appears to feel like he has some sort of duty and an understanding of what Jokic has done for him.
I'm aware that you often times get angry at the fanbase for crediting only Joker and no one besides him. I think it's fair, they've had other good players and other guys that helped. However, at a certain point you just gotta cut the shit and ask yourself where is this organization without Joker? They're nearing an 80 game home sellout streak, season tickets are sold out in full, half and quarter seasons. Without Jokic they're doing five dollar game nights and loading up tickets with free meals and drinks. The Nuggets would be beyond irrelevant not only in the league, but in their own market, if Jokic were to leave. I'm not trying to badmouth my favorite team; I'm just telling you what, deep down, you already know. You've been in the building on the witness protection nights, and I've been there on nights where I had a whole row to myself.
The Nuggets were the second to the last team in the league to get a G League team, they're the only team in the league without a dedicated practice facility. The courts at 24 Hour Fitness on Parker and Arapahoe have more space than the Nuggets practice facility. KSE, as a whole, has had countless injury issues in Denver. Would a dedicated practice, training, and rehab facility fix these injuries? Maybe, maybe not...there's only one way to find out! Whatever the result, it certainly wouldn't hurt. You have lamented the Nuggets core injuries that seemingly no other team has, there are failings on Nuggets ownership and Calvin Booth that must be discussed. This is just not a major league commitment to winning.
The Nuggets ducked the second apron this year so they could send three second round picks to get off Reggie Jackson and sign Dario Saric, who cannot play, to the tax payer midlevel exception. Oh by the way, he's on the books next season. In ducking the second apron they let the best permitter defender they've had in the Jokic era walk. The one bugaboo that's haunted the Nuggets throughout the Jokic era was fixed for two glorious years when they had KCP, they let him walk and didn't replace him. While I will concede that in year two or three of that deal you'll be wanting off of it, but there isn't an understanding that the Nuggets were trying to win a finals *this* year. The front office fell for the NBA Twitter trap of flexibility, only to assemble the least flexible roster in the league.
I am a Nuggets full season ticket holder. My tickets have more than doubled since the pre pandemic days, the benefits that come with being a season ticket holder have all but disappeared. No comp games, no meet the team party, no redemption games...nothing. I still pay, I don't know how much longer I'll get to watch Jokic so I want to treasure what I have left. Shouldn't I have some expectations of the on court product for this team? You've doubled my tickets and you're worried about the second apron? Shouldn't I ask for an NBA caliber product for paying an NBA caliber price? Shouldn't I be repulsed I have to watch "Jalen Pickett" or "Hunter Tyson" play with the best player my market will ever see?
To me, this is what I mean when I say the Nuggets have failed Jokic. Where's Calvin Booth without Jokic? Where's the Nuggets organization without Jokic? Tim Connelly joked that he had a wing of his house named after Jokic. Michael Malone understands he's where he is because of Jokic. Does everyone else? Without Jokic the building is half fill with the other team's fans every night. Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Junior are ALL NBA players without Jokic (not the award, just that all of them are NBA players) they're all on good eight figure contracts headed toward nine figure career earnings. Jokic has certainly helped them as they have helped him, sacrificed for him. Michael Porter Junior completely changed his game to fit next to Jokic. Jamal Murray has played hurt countless times for Jokic as has Aaron Gordon.
Jokic has elevated no one more than Nuggets management. They are failing him as they have failed the fans. Let's ignore the facilities and the crappy fan treatment, the Kroenkes have allowed a Stanley Cup run, a Finals run, a Norris season, a Hart season and three MVP seasons be blacked out for fans. Apparently no one suffered from that more than Josh Kroenke, so we can just chalk that up to shit happens right? Are we surprised that this group of absentee landlords is also fumbling a top ten player of all time? This is who needs to do it for Joker.
I don’t know what it's like to be Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Julian Strawther, Peyton Watson, Michael Porter, or Christian Braun. I think there's a few things here and there they can do to be better, but their failures are not on par with an organization that handed an all time great player a roster with seven playable players that also can't shoot. I feel that there is a baseline of professionalism that is missing from several of the players on the roster, but that isn't a "do it for Joker" thing that's a "do it for yourself if anyone else" thing. If you got a roster with seven playable NBA guys and you don't see an opportunity to seize that's on you, nothing Jokic, Malone, Stan, Josh, or Booth can do.
Assembling a team full of bums like that? Well there's something management can do about that.