It’s not often that a two-way player is one also one of the more talked-about offseason acquisitions, but Ryan Nembhard’s signing with the Denver Nuggets has been anticipated since before his release from the Charlotte Hornets. Can he finally be a solution at a position that has hindered the Nuggets for years?
The Denver Nuggets have been trying to patch the roster spot behind Jamal Murray for years. One of the toughest positions to find success in during the Nikola Jokic Era has been backup point guard. Since Murray became the starting point guard in the 2017-18 season, here are some of the players who have tried:
Emmanuel Mudiay, Devin Harris, Monte Morris, Facundo Campazzo, Bones Hyland, Reggie Jackson, Bruce Brown, and Russell Westbrook. The bench has been assorted versions of terrible during that timeframe, owing much of that underperformance to the difficulty in adjusting the offense when Nikola Jokic is off the court. When your starting offense is hubbed around the greatest offensive force in the game, who touches the ball more than almost anyone in the league and has all the decisions passed through him – as a center, which changes where the rest of the players need to be and where the offense can be initiated from – then switching to the bench is a rough ride indeed.
It requires a different offensive philosophy and a change in mindset. The Nuggets have mostly gone about it in one of two ways: getting a game manager who doesn’t make mistakes and can get up some shots, or a high-paced offensive attack that tries to take advantage of defenses that aren’t set. Those two options are exemplified by perhaps the two most successful backup PGs of the Jokic Era: Monte Morris and Bruce Brown.
Monte Morris is a caretaker of the basketball: do not let bad things happen. He has a 5:1 career assist-to-turnover ratio. He doesn’t give up transition opportunities because he is carefully controlling the clock to find the right approach to attack, but he’s also unafraid to take late-clock and end-of-quarter shots to try to keep the game close. Tyus Jones is a lot like this as well, also running a 5:1 A:TO rate as a smaller guard who picks his spots to attack.
Bruce Brown took a different approach with the bench: give me the ball and let me do my thing. He (and Russell Westbrook and Bones Hyland with him) was more on the attack, trying to find openings in the defense, to create opportunities in transition, to score before teams were set and to raise the energy and intensity of the bench play. Grab the rebound and run like hell, see what you can do. For Brown in particular it was less about orchestrating an offense and more about creating an imbalance that could be attacked.
Neither approach has been perfect – again, the bench has been mostly terrible collectively in the Jokic years. It worked with Bruce Brown in the playoffs the first time because the bench was not 4 other non-starters but rather a good mix of starters and vets who knew their roles very well. But you can’t install two different offenses, one heliocentric around Jokic in the paint and at the elbow while the other is based on guard initiation and standard wing play (because backup center has also often been atrocious). No team has enough practice time to make that work. So Denver has to trust the the bench point guards can essentially run a pick-up game with some familiar faces for a couple of shifts every contest and come out winning more than they lose with those lineups.
Denver has the best offense in the league, year in and year out, because Jokic is life and because they maximize their starting unit. The only goal of the bench is to tread water, to give back the leads that are given to it so Jokic can properly rest and doesn’t have to worry that his 10 point lead from the first quarter will be gone 3 minutes into the second. So how can Nembhard help with that?
Here’s what Nuggets head coach David Adelman said the plan was for the bench at the start of training camp:
Taking Tyus and making him The Fast One, while DeMar – an efficient scoring demon and future hall of famer – is going to be The Slow One is certainly an interesting first plan. But “we gotta figure out who fits best around DeMar” really is the case. The bench isn’t set up to be defensively stout. Alpha Diallo has won early praise for his ability to get over screens and make life difficult on opposing ball-handlers, and Spencer Jones can be a handful as he showed last year, but you can’t spearhead a defensive attack when your point guards are all 6-feet with a lack of reach and switchability, and your center is not a shot blocker. Unfortunately Denver also doesn’t have a ton of bench scorers. Julian Strawther is the only wing who might be considered any kind of volume shooter, but his career percentages are pretty pedestrian despite some eye-opening games that show the potential there and a three-point percentage that has risen every year.
This is where Nembhard comes in. Is he better than Tyus Jones? His one year in the NBA would certainly seem to say “not yet” as Jones is better from pretty much everywhere on the floor, and has been less of a defensive liability. But Nembhard can both push the scoring in the way that players like Bones Hyland did, and also orchestrate an offense. His A:TO ratio last year was 3.7, which is not as good as what Tyus Jones constantly puts up, but is more than respectable. His 12.7 Assists-per-100-possessions was higher than any in Tyus’s career, and even though his eFG% last year was only .477 (and his relative true shooting was awful compared to his peers) it’s still higher than the .440 Jones put up across several teams. To be fair to Jones, that was an anomaly in his career as he is normally very efficient. That’s the point of his player type: be efficient, don’t make mistakes, take advantage where you can.
And Denver desperately needs that. But DeRozan is also a hyper-efficient player, and one of the great two-point scorers in league history. Nembhard at his size will never be that, and the two of them together are not going to be defensive stalwarts on any bench. But if the first approach for Denver (rebound and play fast with Tyus) doesn’t work, then Option B to slow it down, let DeRozan cook and find out who pairs well with him might work out very well indeed for Nembhard. Can Nembhard provide some sizzle to the steak that DeRozan starts? Can they work together at all, or is Denver better off putting all the offensive impetus on the veteran?
Denver has to find a backup point guard they can run with, if only to take some minutes off of Jamal Murray in a way that doesn’t force all of them onto DeRozan. Ryan can run a pick-and-roll, was a top 5% performer in assists-per-100-possessions, and while he is not a great three point shooter yet he is a willing and fearless one. If Denver fans learned anything from watching Tim Hardaway Jr. shoot last year it’s that you don’t have to be the greatest 3 point shooter to be a really dangerous one if you are willing to take the shots that are available to you. Teams will have to guard DeRozan on the bench. Again, the Nuggets don’t have a ton of bench scoring options that will scare opposing teams. But Jones and Nembhard are going to have to overcome their size concerns and fire off the rock at every given opportunity. They need to be able to work with their bigs (which will hopefully include both Marvin Bagley and DaRon Holmes because each can work a good screen game) to get open shots for themselves and others. The Nuggets at least have two backup point guards who are actually offensive setup men and assist options now.
But unfortunately Denver is getting what it’s paying for with Ryan and Tyus. There is a reason Nembhard is available on a two-way deal as an unfinished product, and that Jones played for three teams last year. Jones is 30 this year, Nembhard is 23. Neither has the size of Ryan’s older brother Andrew Nembhard unfortunately, but those are the breaks. This remains a patch job, as it has been in most prior seasons. Denver’s backup point guard rotation is small this year, but they hope to take a page from the workable bench point guards before them and both score fearlessly and take care of the rock. Merging the two prior types of successful guard play, despite not being much help defensively, can help Denver stay afloat in the non-Jokic minutes – and handing leads back to the starters can only help everyone during the long season. Let’s see if they can try something new for a change.
