Nikola Jokić can’t play defense. Jamal Murray can’t do it outside of The Bubble. They can’t win on the road. They were terrible down the stretch. The West wasn’t that good this year. They’ll be exposed in the playoffs.
For nearly an entire season, it’s seemed like the discourse around the Nuggets—the No. 1 seed in their conference—centered on why this team couldn’t win an NBA championship. Whether it has to do with the skepticism around Jokić’s two MVPs or faith in bigger names elsewhere, Denver hasn’t exactly been a sexy Finals pick for the last few months. Headed into the playoffs, many oddsmakers gave them the fifth- or sixth-best chance to win a championship, despite having arguably the best offensive player in the league and a fully healthy roster for the first time in years.
And yet, now the Nuggets are the first team to punch their ticket to the conference finals. And they did so with a dominant closeout performance, smothering the Suns 125–100 in a game that wasn’t even as close as that score would suggest. Denver raced out to a 30-point lead at halftime, apparently eager to secure a mini break before the next round. And while a bigger test awaits, the Nuggets are starting to answer most of the questions that hounded them before this postseason run.
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Perhaps the most pressing issue for the team was its defense. Denver has never exactly had a lockdown unit in the Jokić era. Everyone from podcasters to pundits to players predicted the Nuggets’ center would be a routine target for opponents come playoff time. So far, so good. Denver has the sixth-best defense of all teams that made the postseason, ahead of the likes of Philly, Miami and Boston. In the second round, the Nugs have posted a better defensive efficiency than the Lakers, Knicks and 76ers while going up against Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
Meanwhile, Jokić and Murray have been fantastic. Murray is putting any concerns of him being a Bubble wonder to rest. He’s averaging 25.9 points per game in this run … a whopping 0.6 points a night fewer than he did in 2020. He’s been integral to Denver’s success, particularly his two-man game with the Joker. And now in the last two playoffs both Murray and Jokić have been healthy, Denver has made the third round.
The Joker hasn’t exactly been coasting. Though the belt may have been passed around the last few weeks, Jokić is currently the undisputed best player in the postseason. Nobody in the known universe who’s attempting to put an orange sphere through a basket is doing it better than the two-time MVP. In the second round, Jokić averaged a comical 34.5 points, 13.2 rebounds and 10.3 assists a game while shooting 59.4% from the field. An undermanned Phoenix team had absolutely no answer for him, and he dominated games night in and night out.
Overall, Jokić’s playoff stat line is a robust 30.7/12.8/9.7, and he is only three assists shy of averaging a triple double. He has thoroughly outplayed his fellow MVP finalists, with Giannis Antetokounmpo getting bounced in Round 1 by the eighth seed, while Joel Embiid has seen his counting stats and efficiency decrease (and his turnovers go up) in the playoffs compared to the regular season.
With a few games to go in the second round, no team has performed better than Denver so far. The Nuggets’ 8.6 postseason net rating is far and away the best of all playoff participants. They have been unstoppable offensively and capable defensively. Even if this year looks different from the last few—with the regular season seemingly having very little correlation to what’s been happening now—Denver has more than proved itself to be a legitimate contender.
Of course, that should have been obvious a long time ago. If anything, the Nugs should be the favorites. Ultimately, as coach Michael Malone said after the win over the Suns, the only way this team will definitively earn people’s respect is to win a championship.
There are still serious hurdles for the Nuggets to clear before they can achieve that goal. Awaiting them in the next round will be a team with significant Finals experience—either LeBron, Anthony Davis and the Lakers, who knocked Denver out in 2020, or the dynastic Warriors, who bounced the Nuggets last year. Whichever of them joins the Nugs in the next round will be well served to take them more seriously than almost everyone else has.
