Nikola jomic top plays7/13/2023 ![]() Of course, just because Denver is playing its best players more and shuffling them differently doesn’t guarantee success. They entered the playoffs having shared the floor for just 10 minutes during the regular season, but bring a burst of versatility, athleticism, and competence that wasn’t there for 82 games. Gordon, Murray, Braun, Brown, and Green are Denver’s second-most-played five-man unit in the playoffs. By tightening their belt and staggering who plays with whom, when, and for how long, the Nuggets have shielded themselves from those vulnerable stretches from most of the year when opponents had hope. ![]() The moment when Peyton Watson appeared to earn himself some playoff minutes feels like it happened a decade ago. There’s no Thomas Bryant, DeAndre Jordan, or Zeke Nnaji anymore. ![]() to answer a once-alarming question-can the Nuggets survive sans Jokic?-with confidence. Off the bench, Jeff Green, Bruce Brown, and Christian Braun (a rookie who does not act or look like a rookie) have seamlessly blended with Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Michael Porter Jr. The Suns Have Given Themselves Almost No Margin for Error Five Key Numbers That Explain Celtics-Sixers So Far By wielding their starting power forward as a backup 5 in every playoff game, the Nuggets have turned a fatal flaw (the backup center position) into a resistant counterpunch. The tailoring began on April 8 in Denver’s penultimate regular-season game against the Jazz, when, in an otherwise meaningless contest, Malone decided to start the second quarter with Aaron Gordon at the 5, a tantalizing thought-exercise-cum-critical-adjustment that’s been anticipated since before last season began. But in the playoffs, units with three starters have gone from 8.5 percent to 22.4 percent of their total minutes played. Meanwhile, no team used groups with three starters in them less than the Nuggets. Now, only 1.8 percent of their minutes have one starter, and 2.3 percent have no starters. Combined, all those groups ranked 29th in net rating. ![]() Lineups that had only one starter in them took up a league-high 19.6 percent of Denver’s minutes 6 percent (seventh highest in the league) of the Nuggets’ minutes didn’t have a single starter in them. But the other side of that coin was a collection of secondary pieces that were getting absolutely decimated. Before the postseason, a league-high 36.8 percent of all Denver’s minutes were allocated to its starting five. Malone is not only giving his best players additional minutes, but also deploying them in new combinations. For months they were also racked with uncertainty, thanks to a pair of significant issues that hung over their heads like an anvil: Could Jokic hold up on defense, and would their bench survive when he sits? But Michael Malone’s (debatably overdue) decision to streamline and reinvent his rotation has made the Nuggets’ dominance feel sustainable.Ĭheck out our daily predictions hub for the 2022-23 championship, the no. The Nuggets just won 53 games and finished with the West’s top seed. So how is this happening? A seven-game, 82-minute sample size against two top-heavy opponents makes this number a little noisy. Their net rating was plus-12.5 when he played and minus-10.4 when he sat, the widest disparity in the league.Īnd here’s a shocking development that pretty much nobody saw coming before the playoffs began: With Jokic on the bench, the Nuggets have outscored their opponents by 19.2 points per 100 possessions this postseason, which is a higher mark than when anyone else on the Nuggets is off the court. Here’s something you already know: The Denver Nuggets were dominant all season with Nikola Jokic on the court.
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