After a long summer, the wait is finally over as the Denver Nuggets face the Golden State Warriors to open Denver’s season in San Francisco. The Warriors already had their season opener on Wednesday when they downed Luka Doncic and the Lakers in Los Angeles with late Steph Curry dagger to slam the door, but this is Golden State’s home opener and both they and their fans are expection contention from this squad. The Warriors can obviously shoot the 3 and added Al Horford late in the offseason strengthen their inside presence. With Jimmy Butler they are a deep scoring machine and the Nuggets will need all their own offensive prowess in response.
But Denver looked ready in the pre-season, with Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray showing off some mid-season form alongside a healthy Aaron Gordon, a newly-enriched Christian Braun thanks to his extension, and the new kid on the block Cam Johnson. The bench squad should feature the return of Bruce Brown’s chaotic ways, Peyton Watson’s enhanced game, new veteran shooter Tim Hardaway Jr. and of course 7 feet of bearded skill in Jonas Valanciunas, all of whom are looking to ease the burden on the starters and set them up for a deep playoff run this coming summer.
Having a national game for their first action of the season is representative of what people expect from the Nuggets this year: an absolute title contender with a deeper roster and new blood in the coaching ranks. Game 1 of that contention starts in just a few hours!
The Basics
Who: Denver Nuggets (0-0) at Golden State Warriors (1-0)
When: 8:00 PM MDT
Where: Chase Center, City by the Bay, CA
How to watch/listen: ESPN, Altitude Radio (No Altitude TV til Game 2). Say you’re the diversity manager for a mid-size startup that has a sponsorship deal and throw around words like “synergy.”
Rival Blog: Golden State of Mind
Injury Report: Nuggets, none. Golden State: Moses Moody – out (calf), Alex Toohey – out (knee).
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: Rust on the Mile High crew
The Nuggets will be seeing their first game action of the season while the Warriors already worked off their rust against the Lakers. Denver historically needs to win the Jokic minutes by a large margin to win games, and a slow start could make that rough for them. That said, the starters looked good together in the preseason, focused and ready for this title chase. Denver will need to have their defense on point though with Golden State’s ball movement, and they’ll need to deny Jimmy Butler (who had 31 points and abused both Austin Reaves and Gabe Vincent in the win against LA) easy access to the paint. It’s almost impossible to stop the Warriors from getting and taking threes – but Denver has to take away something, and in this case it should be the paint as they grind that rust off in real time.
The thing to remember: Denver has a size advantage and they plan to use it
The Nuggets have had a math problem for years now, as they make a lot of the three-pointers they take but they take very few. Denver added a couple of confident shooters in Cam Johnson and Tim Hardaway Jr. but they also snagged another real 7-footer with scoring touch in Jonas Valanciunas to back up Nikola Jokic. The Warriors have shooters all over the court obviously led by Steph Curry and Buddy Hield, and they have Jimmy Butler to attack inside, but Denver has large wing defenders in Christian Braun and Peyton Watson to contain the Warriors and force them to stay perimeter-oriented, as well as the returning Bruce Brown to harass any guard they want. The Warriors had 18 turnovers against the Lakers, and Denver being able to force the action and get out in transition would suit them very well.
The hope is that the Warriors do not get blindingly-hot from outside (here’s where Denver’s iffy defensive rotations in the preseason may really hurt) but with real rebounding bigs out there for all 48 minutes, the Nuggets will be hoping to limit the Warriors to one shot before pushing their own offense back at Golden State. Denver has been chucking the three in the preseason, but whether or not they attempt to keep up with Golden State’s pace from deep the Nuggets absolutely have to take advantage of their length to force the game to go their way.
The thing to bet: A Denver dub
Look, it’s opening night for Denver. It may not be pretty, it may not be elegant, but the only goal is to win to open the championship chase for the Nuggets. Jokic triple-double, 30-burger from Jamal, a double-double from Cam Johnson – the method doesn’t matter. Get that win.
