For the Denver Nuggets, last season ended in the same fashion as the previous four: with the team outside the playoffs.
A 112-106 overtime loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, in what was basically a play-in game on the final night of the regular season, punctuated back-to-back years that saw the team fall a single game short of tasting the postseason for the first time since George Karl roamed the sideline.
In the five seasons since Denver won 57 games, led by a roster featuring Danilo Gallinari, Andre Iguodala, Kenneth Faried and Wilson Chandler, the team’s President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly and General Manager Arturas Karnisovas have led a roster reconstruction that’s given the team perhaps the best under-24 young core in the league.
But after years of steady improvement that has seen the team jump from winning just 30 games in 2014-15, to 46 last season, the organization feels a collective sense of urgency to break into the Western Conference top eight this year with a group featuring budding stars Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Gary Harris.
“The time is now. We can’t blame youth another year,” said Connelly. “...Let’s ensure that we’re not going to be one game out.”
Denver’s organizational rebuild has been anchored by the idea of building culture of positivity and functionality, Connelly said. He emphasizes open communication between all levels of the team which has helped to create a brotherly atmosphere, where dinners with players and their families aren’t uncommon, and he has put a coaching staff in place, led by Mike Malone, that empowers young players to grow by giving them the space to learn from their mistakes.
“This isn’t rocket science. We don’t want to be overly sanctimonious towards the game,” he said. “...It’s an industry, and it’s a business. But it doesn’t have to be cold.”
A successful rebuild in the NBA, Connelly acknowledged, usually starts with landing a top-five draft pick, something Denver hasn’t had since it drafted Carmelo Anthony third overall in 2003. Though Jamal Murray was the seventh overall pick in 2016, the front office has mostly built the core by finding value on the periphery of the lottery. The team snagged its cornerstone in Jokic 41st overall in 2014, after making a draft night trade earlier in the evening that sent 11th overall pick Doug McDermott to Chicago for the rights to draft Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris at 16th and 19th, respectively.
Nurkic was shipped to Portland after Jokic seized the reins as Denver’s big of the future, while Harris, who, at 24 and entering his fifth season, is now the team’s longest tenured player, has developed into one of the league’s better two-way guards after a disastrous rookie season that Karnisovas admitted had the team’s brass “kind of worried.” Last season, Harris was one of only four players under 24 to rank in the top 20 in net rating for guards. His backcourt mate Jamal Murray, at just 21, was one of the other three.
That pair, along with Will Barton, who’s been elevated to the starting lineup after a career year, forms one of the scariest three-guard combos in the league. When Barton, Harris and Murray shared the court last year, the Nuggets had an offensive rating of 115.6, according to NBA stats. The addition of Isaiah Thomas should provide scoring off the bench, and both Connelly and Karnisovas said they expected to see Juancho Hernangomez and Trey Lyles, who filled in nicely for Paul Millsap while he missed 44 games with a wrist injury, take steps forward, adding depth to what was already a talented reserve squad. And with Jokic further embracing his role as the team’s primary playmaker, Denver’s offense could be even more potent than last year, when it ranked sixth in offensive efficiency.
The big man gave the league an idea of what a more aggressive Jokic could look like as the Nuggets geared up for their unsuccessful playoff run last year. After Paul Millsap reportedly pushed Jokic to assume the “undisputed alpha dog position” on the team, Jokic responded by going on an 18-game tear to end the year in which he put up 24 points, 11.5 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game, with a shooting line of 54-48-89. In that span, only Anthony Davis took more shots.
With the league getting smaller, faster and more athletic, Connelly said it’s a bit unorthodox for Denver to structure its offense around a 7-footer who last season posted more triple-doubles (nine) than dunks (eight).
“He’s not an above-the-rim athlete, and not the most athletic,” Connelly said. “But he’s unbelievably skilled, has an IQ few can match in the NBA, and it works for us, ... The league is going small for sure but when you have quality bigs like Plumlee and Jokic, it’s much harder to go small because they’re skilled enough to hurt those mismatches.”
Both Connelly and Karnisovas acknowledged, though, that the team’s ball security and defense, weak spots from last year, have to improve for the Nuggets to stay competitive in a brutal Western Conference that only got tougher with the Los Angeles Lakers’ addition of LeBron James.
The Nuggets coughed up 18.7 points per game off turnovers last season, the most in the league, turning the ball over 15 times per game. Opponents shot 37.8 percent from three against Denver, the highest percentage in the league, and the team also ranked in the bottom ten in opponent field goal percentage in the restricted area (64.6 percent) and in the midrange (42.4 percent). Jokic ranked among the worst of all centers in opponent’s field goal percentage, with foes scoring against him 47.4 percent of the time.
But a healthy Millsap, who was on the NBA all-defensive team two seasons ago, has the potential to anchor a defense that Connelly said he hopes to at least be league average. The lineup of Millsap, Jokic, Murray, Harris and the recently departed Wilson Chandler posted a defensive rating of 104.3 in the 23 games they played together, a mark good enough to crack the top 10.
Millsap’s physicality and versatility, Connelly said, makes everyone else’s job on defense a bit easier.
“He’s gonna challenge shots at the rim, he’s gonna be able to take on the physical challenge of some of these bigger post players, and he’s able to switch out in short clock situations because of his mobility,” he said.
The gauntlet that will be this year’s Western Conference means that the battle for the final few playoff spots is going to be ultracompetitive. Connelly even floated the possibility that a 50-win team could find themselves on the outside looking in at the playoffs. With one game being the difference for the Nuggets the past two seasons, Connelly noted that at times, his team appeared to take opponents for granted. Home losses to lowly teams such as the Atlanta Hawks and the Dallas Mavericks can’t be repeated if the Nuggets expect to seriously compete this year.
Connelly said he feels his team is up for the challenge.
“At times it can be a bit daunting looking at these other rosters and seeing the moves as the West gets stronger and stronger,” he said. “But if you want to be at the highest level, you’re gonna have to go through everybody.”
