After a win over the Grizzlies on Tuesday, the Nuggets woke up in first place in the West on Wednesday. This is not totally surprising. Nikola Jokić is making a case for his third straight MVP, the team is the healthiest it’s been in years and the offense is humming. What’s surprising is how Denver beat Memphis on Tuesday: with a great defensive performance.
The Nuggets held the Grizz to only 91 points, by far their stingiest total of the season. It was only the fourth time Denver held an opponent to under 100 points this year. Memphis’s 14 points in the first quarter and 40 points in the first half were also season-bests for the Nuggets.
Unfortunately, these kinds of nights are few and far between for Denver. On one hand, it’s promising the team showed the potential to slow down a top-10 offense. On the other, if the Nugs are serious about being title contenders, it doesn’t matter where they finish in the West; they need to start defending.
Even after going Bad Boy on the Grizz, Denver is in possession of the sixth-worst defense in the NBA, per Cleaning the Glass, ahead of only a group of tank squads. The Nuggets are keeping ignominious company on that end of the floor, and are in first entirely by virtue of Jokić’s offensive genius.
The trick for the Nuggets is building the right scheme around their center. They play more aggressively than most teams to cover up for Joker’s lack of rim protection. He’s typically hedging on screens, which means Denver is putting two on the ball in pick-and-rolls, creating a lot of pressure for everyone off the ball to rotate between the rim and corners when teams are initiating their actions. Oftentimes, it hasn’t been pretty. If guards split the Jokić hedge, they aren’t met with much resistance at the rim, and if they are, they can kick out to shooters on the perimeter. Somewhat distressingly, despite adding some better screen navigators in Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Denver is still vulnerable when Jokić drops, because verticality is not his strength.
Against Memphis, the Nuggets worked in a good amount of zone, something coach Michael Malone has been willing to lean on a little bit more this season. It also helped that the Grizzlies were missing their best shooter in Desmond Bane, which made it easier for Denver to shrink the floor. Ja Morant still went off for 35 and frequently knifed his way into the paint, yet a Memphis team that normally hits nearly 12 threes a night was limited to five with the lack of shooting on the outside.
It’s not totally clear how sustainable the performance against the Grizzlies is.
Denver started rookie Christian Braun on Tuesday. The lineup of Brown, Braun, KCP, Jokić and Aaron Gordon has now played 43 minutes together and has a promising 100.0 defensive rating, but it’s not a long-term solution. Braun is not going to start over Jamal Murray. And somewhat surprisingly, the group of Murray, Brown, KCP, Gordon and Jokić has a 112.3 defensive rating, not terrible, and slightly better than league average.
Headed into the season, I expected that group to be better on that end of the floor. (I even wrote about the additions of Brown and KCP!) That lineup is the most athleticism and screen navigation the Nuggets have put around Jokić, with shooters to boot. It should be a better group, though to their credit, they have improved over the course of the season.
Denver’s true starting five of Jokić, Murray, KCP, Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. has actually been great when MPJ has been healthy. That unit has posted a 101.6 D-rating in 172 minutes, and Porter is expected back soon after missing every game since Nov. 22. Though Porter has never been considered a stopper, he does offer some size on the backline when the team is caught rotating, which helps within the confines of Jokić’s chasing around guards.
And while the focus here is on how the team defends with Jokić on the floor, it’s worth noting Denver is much worse when he sits. Bench lineups have bled points. Denver has a 112.2 defensive rating with Jokić playing, which is above league average. (The offense is historic when he plays. It’s like an All-Star Game.) Per CTG, the defense is 9.4 points per 100 possessions worse when Jokić is on the bench.
Still, I expect better! Before the season, Malone said he wanted a top-five defense. Denver is nowhere close. In Malone’s, uh, hm, defense, there are a bunch of new guys playing together this year, and they need time to build both habits and chemistry. Murray also still needs some time to find consistency on both ends of the floor after missing a year with a torn ACL.
It’s very rare for teams this poor defensively to win championships, though. And if the Nuggets catch the wrong matchup—cough, Stephen Curry, cough—their aggressive scheme can be exposed very quickly. It takes a variety of styles to win in the playoffs, and individual defenders need to be prepared to be targeted.
It was nice to see the Nuggets win a game without having to score 110 points. (The last time that happened was Nov. 20.) There is definitely potential within this group to do that more often. But if we’re really going to take Denver—my preseason Finals pick—seriously as a title contender, then it matters less where the Nuggets wake up in the standings, and more in the defensive rankings.
