There are few tasks harder in sports than repeating as NBA champions.
After playing 100 games en route to a title, you must grind through the regular season while wearing a giant bullseye on your back. There’s a reason the last five NBA champions have all failed to advance past the second round in the ensuing season. There’s only so much all-time greats like Nikola Jokic can do.
As the Denver Nuggets learned during Sunday night’s painful Game 7 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, it’s much harder to be hunted, getting every opposing team’s absolute best every night for over half a year, rather than being the hunter.
THE EXCLAMATION POINT. pic.twitter.com/4Hk1xvCmX5
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) May 20, 2024
In the coming days, much ink will be spilled about where the Nuggets fell short in their hallowed repeat pursuit:
- Was Denver focused enough in a regular season that can feel like a drag when you’ve already climbed to the top of the mountain?
- Is Jamal Murray’s approach to slowly conditioning himself throughout the season part of his now troubling injury issues, or is he just prone to being hurt?
- Did Michael Malone push all the right buttons (or push them too much?) for a team that looked like it flat-out ran out of gas in the biggest moment of its season?
- Is a surprising change coming, like a trade of the mercurial Michael Porter Jr. in the name of adding a glut of rotational players?
These are fair questions to consider. The Nuggets will need concrete answers to all of them if they want to add another Larry O’Brien Trophy or two to their collection during the Jokic era.
Above all, managing Jokic’s workload during the regular season will determine whether this Denver organization has more happy moments in mid-June in the coming years. It’s no secret that these Nuggets were built around Jokic’s unique abilities. Effectively, every Denver starter, even Murray, is a tool for the three-time MVP center. Aaron Gordon is his hammer. Porter is his sharpshooter. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope maintains the point of attack on defense and spaces the floor. Jokic’s two-man game with Murray opens up the paint and, by extension, the entire Nuggets offense.
It stands to reason that if Jokic doesn’t have his fastball, the Nuggets are without a paddle. It doesn’t matter how good or bad his supporting cast is if he’s fatigued. None of the Nuggets’ championship-caliber identity is feasible if Jokic isn’t firing on all cylinders—which is exactly what happened while he played an exhaustive 47 minutes in Denver’s Game 7 defeat.
In the end, the better and deeper team simply wore the best player in the league down:
"I'm not an excuse maker. The better team won… They [Nuggets] gave me everything I could ever ask for… As much as this hurts, I will walk out of this building tonight with my head held very high."
Denver HC Michael Malone after Game 7 pic.twitter.com/R4C8sUugI4
— NBA TV (@NBATV) May 20, 2024
But this is a vicious feedback loop when considering what the Nuggets asked Jokic to do in the wake of their first championship. The Serbian big man took a career-high 1,411 shots in the regular season — nearly 400 more than during the glorious 2023 title campaign. He had 976 rebounds — roughly 200 more than in 2023. He took on more defensive responsibility and was also asked to carry a team with thin depth and an overly green bench filled with young players and veteran fill-ins.
Jokic’s numbers this season are, in fact, most comparable to his 2021-2022 campaign, when he had neither Jamal Murray nor Michael Porter Jr. for most of the year. That speaks volumes.
So it’s no wonder Jokic had his worst true shooting percentage (65 percent) in three seasons. Watching him tap into his highest form on only a handful of occasions during Denver’s playoff run wasn’t shocking. That was all he had in the tank. Jokic burned the jets carrying the shorthanded Nuggets all season, lifting them to 57 wins and the West’s No. 2 seed.
It ended up costing them when it mattered most.
Whatever happens next, the Nuggets must prioritize keeping Jokic fresh so he has something left in the spring.
Maybe that happens in the form of a growing young bench. Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and Julian Strawther have each shown promise intermittently but must take considerable leaps moving forward to give Denver a viable extended rotation. Maybe Malone learns from this season, understanding that he can’t push his team to the limit for six months and then expect their top performance in the most important games. Maybe it happens in the form of another Porter offensive leap. The 6-foot-10 big man cannot continue being a one-trick pony jump-shooter at his massive contract price, or a trade that refills the roster cupboard starts to seem more feasible. Maybe it just happens with Murray, who ideally comes into the next regular season in tip-top shape, ready to finally play like an All-Star teammate every single night.
Having someone who can shoulder more of the Nuggets’ burden would be the biggest blessing for a player of Jokic’s mold.
Jamal Murray:
“It’s back to being the hunter. It’s back to fighting for something with a different type of edge…” pic.twitter.com/z1d095joFi
— DNVR Nuggets (@DNVR_Nuggets) May 20, 2024
In October, Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth admitted that this Denver season might be more of a gap year. Considering its rampant depth issues and decisions to lean on youth because of the tricky CBA rules, Denver was OK falling short if it meant the franchise would have a longer championship window with Jokic in its building. It was OK with a failure to repeat if it meant this year helped foster a dynasty in the mold of Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs, a.k.a. three titles in six years, four titles in eight years, you get the idea. Only time will tell whether this was the correct decision.
The Nuggets’ championship window with Nikola Jokic is far from closed. We’re about to find out how they really maximize it.
