After another poor showing against a good team, the Nuggets find themselves at 11-9. They’re hovering slightly above .500 and are currently in the mix for a play-in spot. Now, do I expect them to be a play-in team come season’s end? No. However, are they going to be the out and out contender they have been in seasons past? Hell no. They are a mediocre team now – exactly what their record reflects. They have moments of brilliance, mostly via Nikola Jokic. Sometimes Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray, or another player will have something that can capture the air of a champion. Something that can remind you, oh yeah, they’ve been there.
Then they’ll do the most boneheaded play you’ve possibly ever seen. MPJ’s self-oop attempt against the Warriors comes to mind. It’s not just him though. It’s a team-wide issue. The focus, the fit – something just isn’t clicking for them right now. We’re also getting past the part of the season where you can excuse it by saying it’s early days. It’s a quarter through the season. This is just who they are. Even with Nikola Jokic playing arguably the best basketball of his career, they have struggled to put together any meaningful stretch of basketball outside of the 5 game home stand. At the moment, that felt like the season turning around, and the early struggles were just a touch of grey. Now, though, it seems as though it was a sliver of light in a very dense fog.
The mediocrity on display is a disappointment to everyone – fans, and I’m sure the team and coaches too. This is the outcome of a lackluster roster that has 7 or so actual rotation players. Using box plus-minus (BPM) as a metric, there’s only 8 players on the roster that are higher than a -2.0, which qualifies them as replacement level or above. One of them is Spencer Jones, so if you take him out you are left with Nikola Jokic, Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray, Christian Braun, Russell Westbrook, and Peyton Watson. Now BPM is flawed, yes, but it provides a solid enough basis to show that the roster is severely lacking in the back end. That’s a big reason why the Nuggets aren’t where they need to be.
The starting 5 is still among the best lineups in the league, putting up a net rating of +16.6 with Aaron Gordon and +12.7 with Peyton Watson. The main Nuggets bench has been some combination of typically two starters (mostly Jamal Murray and either Christian Braun or MPJ for the start of the season, but now you see Aaron Gordon running as the backup 5 sometimes) and Russell Westbrook, Julian Strawther, and Dario Saric (or Zeke Nnaji). When those minutes are staggered with Jokic, those tend to be fine. Dario and Jokic don’t play together, but in lineups where Russ and Jokic share the floor with Julian off of it, they put up a +16.41 net rating. When Julian and Jokic share the floor without Russ, it’s a +13.58. However, when all three share the court, that plummets to a -10.27. It craters even further when Jokic leaves, and Russ and Julian share the court to a -23.91. That falls all the way through the floor when Dario shares the floor with those two to an absolutely abysmal -49.09.
There just simply are not enough rotation players on the team to field a contender. Julian Strawther, while likely a good player in the future, is one of the worst defenders in the league at this current time. They didn’t resign Justin Holiday, they didn’t replace him. Strawther is their depth. Vlatko Cancar got injured yet again, and seems to be injury prone. Their backup center spot was maybe supposed to go to Da’Ron Holmes, but he tore his achilles. You can’t fault Booth for that, but you can fault him for having the backup options be Dario Saric on a tax-payer midlevel exception, Zeke Nnaji on a 4-year 32 million dollar deal, and 36 year old DeAndre Jordan. None of those players have been nearly good enough, and it’s led to Jokic playing absurd minutes, 37.7 per game, to be exact.
You can say that about most of the other starters as well; Jamal is averaging 36.1, MPJ 35.6, Christian 35.2, and then AG has been averaging a reasonable 30.3. Though AG is likely going to see an uptick because that is largely due to him being injured early in a game, and also coming back on a minutes restriction. Those minutes are glaringly large. It’s not sustainable to play 8-man rotations in December, but also if they didn’t, the Nuggets would likely find themselves under .500 on the season. The poor roster construction and poor play of Jamal Murray have left this team rudderless. They’re stuck, and until something gives they’ll continue to be that. However, if you look at the lack of assets that they have to trade, it becomes even more evident how stuck they are. They have no second round picks they can trade, and only one first rounder that can be traded. Technically, they can offer pick swaps in 3 other years, but that typically won’t fetch much. Really only Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and Julian Strawther would be seen by other teams as attractive assets.
They’re stuck with this team, and the team is stuck with their fate of being a mediocre shell of a once promised dynasty.
