The Denver Nuggets, on line one.
Christmas is just around the corner, and the Nuggets’ season is slipping away. Denver is 12–10. It is 15th in defensive rating, per NBA.com. It’s 23rd in defensive rebounding percentage. The minutes played without Nikola Jokić have been staggeringly bad. The Nuggets surrendered 145 points in a pre-Thanksgiving loss to the New York Knicks. They gave up 122 last week to the woebegone Washington Wizards.
Said Jokić after the loss to Washington, “We’re really going in the wrong direction.”
Denver’s defensive collapse is shocking. Pick a category. The Nuggets are bad in all of them. Points allowed: 24th in the NBA. Opponent field goal percentage: 19th. Opponent three-point percentage: a mediocre 15th. It’s not that Denver can’t defend. It’s that some nights the Nuggets play like they don’t even care.
“We shouldn’t be talking about effort and focus,” DeAndre Jordan told reporters this week. “Especially with this team.”
It starts with the stars. Jamal Murray has been bad defensively. Michael Porter Jr., too. Opposing teams grind Porter down in the pick-and-roll. Jokić is having a historic offensive season. Defensively, it’s been one of his worst. Across the NBA, some rival coaches are privately saying similar things: Jokić’s conditioning appears to be an issue.
“He just looks heavy,” says an assistant coach of a team that recently played Denver. “And that makes it tough for him to play both ways. He’s using all of his energy on offense and has nothing on the other end. I thought he was trending towards being an average defender. Now he’s back to being horses---.”
And Murray? His decline has been on both ends. He’s averaging 17.8 points, the fewest since his second year. His field goal percentage is down six points from last season. His three-point numbers are down nearly 10. The fourth-quarter closer who helped power Denver to a title less than two years ago has been replaced by something else.
“Murray is where it starts,” the assistant says. “His inefficiency is killing them.”
There are other reasons. Injuries have been a factor. Murray has played 17 games. Aaron Gordon, the Nuggets’ most versatile defender, has played 11. And with players out, the supporting cast has not delivered. Christian Braun has been good. Braun, in his first season as a starter, is averaging 15.4 points. He’s connecting on 57% of his shots, including 43% from three. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s exit left a hole in Denver’s lineup. Braun has filled it.
Problem is, no one has filled Braun’s old bench role. Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther have been inconsistent. Russell Westbrook is shooting 40% from the floor. Denver’s second unit is averaging 25.8 points per game. Only the Los Angeles Lakers and Knicks benches are putting up fewer. Nuggets coach Michael Malone has been forced to lean heavily on his starters. Jokić is averaging a career-high 37.6 minutes per game. Murray (36.1) and Porter Jr. (35.6) are being stretched out, too.
“We have the best player in the world, a top-10 player of all time on our team,” Braun said. “And he’s playing great. He’s out there every single game playing really well. We need to help him.”
But they can’t. Not enough to compete with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dallas Mavericks or any of the top Western Conference contenders. This team needs an infusion. This team needs Jimmy Butler.
Word of Butler’s availability, first reported by ESPN, wasn’t surprising. Butler and Miami are at a crossroads. Butler is playing great. He’s averaging 18.6 points on just 11 attempts per game. He’s getting to the free throw line 7.5 times per game. His efficiency numbers (55.7%) are a career best. And the Heat have won seven of their last 10, surging to fifth in the conference standings.
Still, it’s a stretch to see Miami as a contender. And beyond Butler, the core of the team (Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr.) are all 27 or younger. Miami could sign Butler to a two-year, $113 million extension anytime. The Heat haven’t, and if they don’t have an appetite for offering Butler two years now, it seems unlikely they would want to offer the 35-year-old an even longer deal next summer, when he can become a free agent.
The Heat should be talking to teams about Butler. And Denver should be burning up the phone lines to get him. Granted, it’s not a round-peg, round-hole fit. Denver is averaging 30.5 three-point attempts, the fewest in the NBA. Butler, who averages fewer than two threes attempted per game, won’t help there. The cost of acquiring Butler—namely, Porter, who would have to headline any package—would remove the Nuggets’ most prolific three-point shooter.
But the Nuggets need Butler. His defense. His versatility. His passion. Jokić reportedly pushed Denver to sign Westbrook because of the edge he played with. Butler brings more of the same. There’s risk to it. Butler may hate Denver. He may clash with its stars. But the Nuggets are stuck in the mud. Butler can pull them out of it.
“He’d probably fit pretty well because he can cut without the basketball and he’s a great passer,” the assistant says. “And then defensively when he wants to, he can be a big-time defender. The shooting, obviously, he doesn’t shoot the ball well, so that would be a little bit problematic at times, but I think could probably be a net positive in the short term.”
Skeptics will point to the long term. Porter is under contract for two more seasons. Butler could walk after this one. It doesn’t matter. Denver’s window isn’t two or three more seasons. It’s now. It has a generational talent in Jokić making the game look easy on the offensive end. It needs to do everything possible to put the right roster around him.
Who knows if Miami would be interested in a Nuggets proposal?The Houston Rockets could offer more draft picks and the Heat could prefer Jonathan Kuminga, should the Golden State Warriors make him available. But Denver has to try. There was erosion last season. This season it’s worse. A team with Jokić shouldn’t be fighting for a play-in spot. It should be competing for championships.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Middling Nuggets Should Be Pursuing Jimmy Butler.
