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The Denver Nuggets I think we all know how 2019-2020 went. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olIfm1nSqUU The team was briefly in that spot that every small-market team dreams of being: a young core upsetting a large-market team with much more famous players. Pretty much every Nuggets fan would have considered the year a success even if they had lost to the Clippers, so to come back and beat them in a way that made the Clippers subreddit go private and then switch to being about maritime vessels was amazing. What happened in the offseason? Not much that can be spun positively. The front office's self-declared #1 priority was retaining sometimes-bench-sometimes-starting 3-and-D wing Jerami Grant, and they offered him $20m... which he turned down to go to Detroit and get the same amount with a larger role on a worse team. So it goes. Then, just as surprisingly, the team decided not to extend an offer to Torrey Craig, a three-year veteran of the team they had initially found for a Summer League roster before signing him to a two-way and then a full contract. (He seems to feel a little betrayed by the team, and I can't really blame him.) Both players were used primarily for their defense. That's not to say they were good defenders- people like Hollinger say that Grant is way overrated on that end, and Torrey Craig is probably just average. But they were at least doing the job of primary wing defender while on the court, and if they don't do that, well... someone has to. No one wants to watch Jamal Murray get burned by Steph, Harden, Kawhi, Mitchell, or Dame in the playoffs. The Nuggets somehow got what seemed like an endless supply of "3-and-D guy that isn't very good on defense and is barely average at shooting threes." Now with Grant and Craig gone, they're down to like... two of those guys. (To be fair, Jerami Grant actually was a decent three-point shooter during the regular season.) Detroit also took Mason Plumlee, a guy I've embarrassed myself defending more than probably any other player. He barely got played during the playoffs, and sucked rear end when he did, so it's not a big deal for people who aren't watching League Pass. Their replacements are a Portuguese PG that I'll spam the N/V thread with highlights of and will play no defense whatsoever, and a guy who is kinda like Grant if you squint a bit and has the same initials. ------------- The players, in roughly descending order of importance: Nikola Jokić https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWjV4dt9aw0 Weirdest top ten player in the league, maybe the weirdest player of his caliber since Barkley. The team's swing into success started years ago when the Nuggets realized that not only was Jokic their star, but that he was such a unique talent that the whole roster and gameplan should be based around maximizing his skills. The kind of playmaking from the high post that players like the Gasols sometimes do is part of the basic structure of the offense. The way they use dribble handoffs is far different than just "he's a big point guard" or that he's a center who's good at interior passing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPHWbUUAtH0 "Makes everyone else better" is an overused cliche, but it's really true for Jokic. He's so good at finding cutters, looking off the defender, and hitting them for an easy two points that the whole team cuts constantly whenever he has the ball. Beautiful to watch. People who don't watch the Nuggets obsessively will tell you that he's bad on defense, which isn't actually true. He's not quite Marc Gasol with his ability to compensate for his slow speed with positioning and good hands, but he has great hands and gets a ton of deflections in passing lanes and when people try to make moves in the post with the ball. His real weaknesses come around fouls: being a star center means being involved on defense on every single play, which means picking up a lot of fouls, and wh- [three paragraphs of homerism whining about refs and Other Team's Fans] That ties into his temper. He can get riled up, and trail a play yelling at a ref until he gets a technical or just walk up and hit a guy who annoyed him for no reason and get a foul and trigger JVG's rant about Hostile Act if it's an ESPN game. I don't know if he needs to start meditating or something, but in the playoffs it can get him sat really early for foul trouble. One final note, and this is a pretty grim one, is that I'm worried about his health. He had COVID, and anecdotally it seems like even in young people, it can result in long-term health consequences. I'm really hoping that isn't the case for Jokic. Jamal Murray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbUSh0LuDYY Not only on my favorite team, but I also drafted him in the BYOGM game so hopefully y'all think he's spectacularly good. I'll be honest, I thought Nuggets fans were overrating this guy, but the Utah series definitely proved me wrong. Kind of the opposite of how Jokic plays great pretty much all the time but will get ticked off and do stupid poo poo, Murray will play just alright until he decides that the team Must Win Game and puts up 40+ without missing a shot in the fourth quarter. Somehow he can just decide to hit 30 free throws in a row in the fourth quarter, so it's a mystery why he's a 18.5/4.5 player in the regular season. Jokic's role as the primary playmaker means that Jamal's "PG" title is meaningless. He can run PNR, sure, but what usually happens is that him and Jokic just tap the ball back and forth and do playground tricks until one of them flicks the ball in. He's a good shooter, but similar to a lot of skilled shooters who can create their own shot, he'll get a bit carried away and get too ambitious about dribbling seven times into a contested pullup jumper. But, sometimes it's when the team is down thirteen and his pullup threes keep going in, so I shouldn't nitpick. Over half his threes in the last playoffs were unassisted, which on a team with Jokic, is pretty ridiculous. Improvement from him should come on defense, where he's a liability (but not Trae Young bad), and working with non-Jokic teammates. His chemistry with Jokic is what the team is built around, but if he can't do that he'll mostly go 1v5. Michael Porter Jr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgShYP0HCJQ His rookie year showed very sharp strengths and weaknesses: insane athleticism, best shooting on the team by far (42% from three regular season, 38% playoffs), great body control going for layups, but especially in the seeding games and the Utah series some of the most embarrassing defenses lapses I've seen in the NBA, like 6'10" Jimmer Fredette. It got him benched in that series. A lot of this is personal impression and guessing, so take it with a grain of salt: seemed to have some chemistry issues with his team. It looked like they were trying not to pass him the ball, so when he did get the ball, he made sure to put up some kind of shot because it was his only chance that possession. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdjYykX-Okw But, to some extent it's understandable. The rest of the Nuggets tended toward overpassing, and a wing three from a guy shooting 32% behind the arc was the result of a lot of those possessions. A guy who was both willing to take shots and actually making them at a good rate is an asset. It's hard to tell a guy with a .600 TS% that he needs to take fewer shots. As the playoffs went on, his defense seemed like it was trending in the right direction, and he would make routine continue-the-play passes rather than immediately driving or shooting 100% of the time. I have high hopes for his sophomore season. More than anyone else, the future of the Nuggets depends on the progression of MPJ. Jokic will probably stay about the same level, Jamal could join him on the all-star team, but MPJ could either become a true third star or completely crater with a combination of bad defense, being a bad teammate, saying actual words and phrases in postgame interviews instead of platitudes, and despair about Biden stealing the election. Gary Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKIzcpbnVk The longest-tenured Nugget, Garry is one of the aforementioned "3-and-D" player who's kinda just average at shooting and is maybe pretty good at defense, sometimes, if you look at the right stats, ish. A professional analytics guy could probably tell me either that he's secretly elite, or that he's completely league average, and I'd believe either one. The truth is that he's probably a top 25th percentile defender, but on a mediocre defensive team, you take what you can get. Should give Jokic at least 15% commission on his paycheck for all the passes off backdoor cuts. Everything other than defense is like someone hit the "slightly-below-average shooting guard" button on the player creator. Will Barton After being mysteriously out for the entire season comeback, Barton will have to convince Malone he's ready for his starting small forward job. Often handled the ball for the second unit last season (but not that great of a playmaker, leading to some unwatchable offense when Jokic wasn't in the game), and a decent shooter on a team that desperately needs it. Not very exciting for a guy people call "Thrill." Or maybe it's just been so long since I've watched him play that I've forgotten his better moments. Bol Bol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRKj9Wtrg2o Oh HELL yeah an interesting player again. Because of a quirk in the awards voting, despite playing in bubble games last season, Bol Bol will be eligible for all-rookie honors this year. Which is somewhat plausible: a 7'2" 72lb three-point shooter, every possession on either end involving Bol is an adventure. Can spike shots into the upper deck, make passes like ^^^that one^^^, but is likely to goaltend three times and have five turnovers for every highlight. His shooting is actually no joke, though, and the team moved him from a two-way contract to a full one with intention of playing him as backup PF (?!) or SF (?!?!), but then again, positions are fake, man. Similar to how Denver has a lot depending on MPJ coming into his own, the team would take a huge leap if Bol Bol lives up to his potential in a few years, but the gamble was super low-risk, as Denver traded for the second-round pick in the 2019 draft for some cash and a worse second-round pick. Is he going to be a combination of Kevin Durant and Manute? Well, probably not, but it would be cool, wouldn't it? Paul Millsap A good player on the last few years of his career, Denver got another year of him at $10m instead of $30m. A Locker Room Guy who gives Veteran Presence and has Playoff Experience, Millsap will probably play 20-25 minutes a game, shoot open threes (which he shot at a way-outlier 43.5% this last season), get his mandatory one post Iso per game sometime in the first or second quarter, and randomly go off for twelve points in ten minutes every now and then. During the playoffs, he'll get in the face of some rear end in a top hat like a Morris brother, which is pretty funny, and he still plays good post defense. Really, though, I'd much rather see one of the younger guys getting more minutes in the regular season instead of a guy born when cassettes were the dominant format for music. Monte Morris https://twitter.com/Cosmis/status/1295444652880011269 Take an average backup point guard. Now, replace all of their turnovers with a different result of the possession. That's Monte Morris. Solid, solid, solid. He'll probably go to another team as a starting PG one day and put up 15/8. JaMychal Green Played pretty well against the Nuggets, so if we can't have Jerami, why not pick this guy up for a third the price? Has a good chance of seeing starting minutes as Malone futzes with the lineups and slaps MPJ on the wrist for playing an Infowars video during film session. A 4 that shoots pretty well, I'm sure JaMychal will be fine. Hope he can play defense, though, because if not yikes Facundo Campazzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF2wXgOwMwQ Hell yeah!! Oh HELL yeah!!! Any time some guard passes like Jason Williams I want my front office to move heaven and earth to get him, who gives a poo poo if he """helps win games""" or not, sick And1 passes are more important. If anyone says a bad word about him I will get you banned from this web site. Rookies: Zeke Nnaji and RJ Hampton They'll be in the G-League until some injuries happen. Zeke is an Energy Big, and I don't understand the pick at all (he was mocked lower than 22), but the Nuggets have been pretty good at drafting so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85VLpmZM1Ww RJ Hampton is an athletic scoring guard who might be able to shoot one day. He's this year's "guy who fell in the draft so the Nuggets pick him up for value" guy. He played a year in Australia instead of college. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XZVpggCCYk Isaiah Hartenstein I looked at the roster and his name is on it. Tall Paul George lol y'all see this poo poo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNXo7NBTvNU ------------- Coach: Michael Malone One of the better coaches in the NBA, much less afraid of new ideas than most. Team seems to like him a lot, and he's gotten them to improve every single year since he started with the team. (Personally I'm proud because on an otherwise lovely BYOGM team I had a few years ago, I picked him as my head coach back when he was just a Pacers assistant.) Still plays vets too many minutes over rookies, leading to some playoff issues when the team needed to rely on MPJ, but hey, he's still a coach. 2020-21 season outlook After such an amazing season, the struggle will be following it up with something that doesn't feel like a letdown, but getting into the finals in a conference that still has LeBron's Lakers is going to be a challenge. Jokic needs to figure out how to not get frustrated by some idiot like Dwight, and Jamal needs to be more consistent playing against high-level wing defenders like the Clippers have. But MPJ's improvement truly is the way that they could possibly get past the Lakers. That's unlikely, though, so my prediction would be that they'll end up the WCF loser again this year.
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Dec 4, 2020 23:16
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 03:32 |
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Metapod posted:I dare you to try The OKC meet the team
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Dec 6, 2020 22:49
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