And now, The Low Post. Welcome to The Low Post podcast on a Monday morning, following a very bad weekend for the Denver Nuggets, and a very bad weekend for the most valuable player, 3P Case of Nikola Jokic. The Nuggets have lost three games in a row. They got shellacked at home by the Bulls.
They inexplicably lost to the Tanktastic San Antonio Spurs, and then they just couldn't get over the hump. Well, they got over the hump, and they got back down under the hump, and couldn't get back over the hump against the Brooklyn Nets, who are a team just made up from the ashes of failed super team trades. And the Nuggets are now 46-22, still first in the West. They are second in offense.
That's great. 16th in defense. Not good. Probably not good enough.
Plus 3.9 points for 100 possessions. That's fifth in the NBA. Pointedly, the Philadelphia 76ers are now third in offense, breathing down the necks of the unstoppable story machine in Denver. Eighth in defense.
Plus 4.4 points for 100 possessions. That's third in the NBA. 45 and 22. Third in the East.
And just before we get into the morass, just the morass of it all, I think one of the things driving Jokic's case was runaway number one seed versus number three seed with a tough schedule, might fall to number four, and we'll forget Milwaukee. We'll talk about Milwaukee later. And now there's no discernible difference between Philadelphia and Denver in the standings, in net rating, in anything. But more than that, Adam Harris from DNVR Sports.
How are you? I'm doing good, man. You laid out the bad week that we've had here in Denver. That was a lot of stuff.
That was a long list. Are the Avalanche good? They're supposed to be, but they're also in a little post-championship rut themselves. So it's going to be a tense march, I think, all around in Denver.
Well, and that's what I wanted to open with. Let's exit the MVP thing for a second, and we'll come back to it later, because it is important and it is interesting. This whole year, I've been going on about, you know, I picked the Clippers to make the finals at the beginning of the year. I said, this is the biggest season in the history of the LA Clippers, period.
And I've kind of been like, not lambasting them, but just like, this is what you're putting up in like four years of Kawhi and PG or Billy this year, like a game over 500 or whatever. Then the Suns trade for Durant, and they trade McHale Bridges every 2016 in Brooklyn, Cam Johnson, all the picks, the swap, everything. And it's all of a sudden like, well, it's championship or bust for Phoenix, what a big season this is, or next season, whatever the window is, all the pressure's on. And then Durant gets hurt.
Everybody but Sacramento is in some state of disarray or semi-array or discombobulation or recombobulation, and it's just sitting there for the taking. And so I've been asking myself lately, particularly as the Nuggets have kind of scuffled, like, why are we not saying the same thing about the Nuggets? Why is this not the biggest year? And I have said, it's their best chance in franchise history to win the title.
But for some reason, maybe because they seem young or new, or they had this sort of two year interregnum because of Murray's injury that took them out of the running, they seem fresher maybe than these other teams. But I think given the state of the West, we should be talking the same way about the Nuggets. Like, there's enormous pressure on this team right now. And I think maybe that's part of the reason why they haven't been able to drag themselves out of the rut.
This is their first bit of adversity. I don't know how you feel. I don't know how it feels locally, but I don't know if it's championship or bust, but if this team loses before the conference finals, it's going to be a disappointment. If they lose in the first round, it's going to be a catastrophe that will, I think, push some potential changes.
What's the mood that you feel there? Well, I think this last week represents the reality of that. Exactly what you're saying. Last two years, as much as the team has wanted to win, and there's been different narratives at stake, there hasn't been the real pressure.
And I think this last week with Denver solidifying, by the way, a week ago, Denver beat Memphis and all but locked up the one seed. It was sort of a high of the season. So this last week, the 0-3, the losses to some sub-500 teams, it's happened so quick that they've gone from the top to sort of a lull or a bottom here. But it is the realization of, hey, this is the year where you have to find out.
This is the year where Michael Malone is facing, I think, an enormous amount of pressure. That's kind of what I was alluding to, but keep going. Nikola Jokic is going to be facing an enormous amount of pressure, whether or not he wins the MVP. If he does win, I think it's going to be even more pressure individually on him.
But even if he doesn't, I think this is the year a lot of people are saying, whether you're pro or Tom Jokic, he actually is this good or he's not this good. This is the year where there's a lot of prove it and people will look at him differently depending on the success or failures. I think Jamal Murray is facing a lot of pressure. You know, he missed two years, but now this is a, hey, is he actually good enough to be a second best player?
That is coming into focus. So for me, this last week has represented the realization that, hey, over the next five weeks leading up to the playoffs, and especially after that, once the playoffs begin, a lot of people are going to be on the hot seat for various narratives and or their jobs. Can we just stop right now? I haven't even seen it that much.
A couple of big accounts that I follow on Twitter, I saw it retweeted. These silly tweets that Jokic is playing eight-dimensional chess and intentionally losing the MVP to relieve pressure off of him and off the Nuggets. Just let's stop with all that. You can't say both Jokic doesn't care about any of this and Jokic is playing eight-dimensional chess to lose the MVP on purpose.
By the way, and he doesn't need to lose it on purpose because the two guys behind him are coming for it and coming for it hard. And we'll talk about that. Look, when we talk about Denver and the postseason, it's just defense. The whole question is defense.
The team is going to score. They're an elite scoring machine with Jokic on the floor, at least. And their offense is going to travel, has traveled. It's going to be playoff ready.
It's fine. 16th in defense and slumping right now is not going to be good enough. And Jokic is a big part of that. Jokic is a, I said just last week with Howard Beck, I don't want to hear from these people who are like, Jokic is actually a really good defender.
I said, he's average or worse. Like, I know what my I see. He's average or worse. I think he's probably average in the aggregate.
The playoffs isn't the aggregate. The playoffs is like one bad matchup and you're out. And so all the aggregate stuff doesn't really matter that much. And I do think one interesting thing about their defense is, and one reason why I think there's some curiosity how it holds up in the playoffs is the two ends of the floor interact, right?
And I think one of the reasons why Denver has been able to hang around the top 10 in defense for part of this year and parts of some previous years is their offense is so goddamn good. They get to set their defense every time. I'm looking at the numbers today. Cleaning the glass has them 26th in points allowed per possession in transition.
Bad, about that bad off of defensive rebounds by the other team and turnovers both. And some of the other numbers are a little less sort of dramatic than that in other places. But the idea that if it becomes harder to score in the playoffs, if their offense, which is, let's say, 98th percentile now, drops to 85th percentile in the playoffs, is just that enough to imperil their defense? What do you think of that?
And someone who just watches this team every game, when you're going to be watching these next 15 games and saying, I want to see signs that this team is dialing it in on defense, what do you watch for? I mean, it's a really good question. First of all, I want to go to the transition defense even off of just missed shots. One theory I have with this, because this has been a trend with the Nuggets for a while, and one theory I have with it is Denver, part of what makes them so dynamic on offense is they're so good at forcing switches and they're so good at taking advantage of those switches.
Jokic is too big for the guards in the wings, and then you have players, Aaron Gordon, who's too big if you put a guard on Denver to do that. But if you don't score, you're often mismatched in transition the other way, and Denver is especially bad guarding out of position as well. Jokic has to guard a guard. That's a really tough matchup for him.
So I wonder if that's part of it, trying to just come up with a theory of why is it that Denver's numbers are so different from Maybasket versus not, and I have a suspicion that's at least part of it. But what I'm looking for, I think that last night's game against the Brooklyn Nets, who by the way, I love Brooklyn. I think they're such an interesting team to watch. But I think it was one of the most, if not the single most interesting game for trying to predict what are going to be the challenges for the Nuggets in the postseason, because they made their run in the third quarter when they went very small.
Klaxman picked up, I think, his fourth foul. They brought in Dorian Finney-Smith to guard Jokic and just said, hey, we're going to switch absolutely everything. And they hard-doubled Jokic trying to keep the ball out of his hands, and as soon as he caught it, they sold out completely, daring for anybody else to kind of go at them, not letting Jokic make the passes out of there, but put him in a position where he just had to get the ball out quickly. And I think that's going to be the smartest strategy for Denver.
Did Denver score a lot? Absolutely. But Jokic had to guard the pick-and-roll on the other end every single time and be out on Spencer Dinwiddie, and last night Brooklyn made their shot. So what am I looking for?
I'm looking for Denver to be more dialed in and more effective against those type of lineups, because they're not the type of lineups that I think beat most teams, but they're specifically designed to make Denver their most vulnerable. So Denver's, the closest thing Denver has to a base pick-and-roll defense is, they've concluded, for the most part, we can't hang Jokic back at the rim like Brooke Lopez or Embiid, though Embiid blitzes now more than he has in the past. But these big guys who just hang back in the paint and protect the rim, he's not a good at the rim. The Nuggets are 29th in field goal percentage allowed at the rim.
A lot of that is about Jokic. Okay, so if we can't do that, what do we do? What does Nicole like to do? He wants to attack the pick-and-roll higher on the floor.
You and I have talked about this a lot. I'm apologies to the listeners who know this. He's good at it. He's got pretty smart feet.
So let's get him, if the screen's at the three-point arc, let's get him up to the arc, put two on the ball, and make the defense figure, or make the offense figure it out from there. What makes me nervous about that strategy is teams with a lot of shooting and passing are going to get good shots against it a fair amount of time. And when I watch the Nuggets, especially lately in this slump, that first pass to the rolling big man, it was Claxton last night. It's been Vucevic in recent games, Pirtle.
They're letting that pass through too easily. And once that guy gets the ball, it's a four-on-three, and it's easy picking. It's just a matter of what your choice is. And we saw with the Suns two years ago, and I know everybody was hurt, and Campazo and Austin Rivers are your starting guards.
I know. But they had a ton of shooting. They moved the chess pieces around in interesting ways that really elongate the rotations behind those two guys on the ball to the point that you just can't. These two shooters are separated by 25 feet, so you can't guard both of them with one guy.
I don't know. So the Denver's answer to that is, with Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. on the wings, we're gigantic. With those two plus Bruce Brown or Murray or KCP, and Murray or KCP and Bruce Brown, we've got guys that are going to get over that first screen, get their hands up in that first passing lane.
Our rotations will be on point. We're big. We're good rebounders. And it just feels like the margin, even with those guys on the floor, is very, very thin.
And I wonder, I guess I'm just asking, is there another way? Is that the best way? Do you worry that that way is just not going to be good enough? So one thing that's interesting about what you're saying is, I think it's almost under discussed how much the league has evolved in this very way.
I mean, obviously people have been spreading out more and more over the last 10 years and putting more shooters. But that role guy, I think five, six years ago, there were very few players that made that role. Now I have to four on three. Where's the rotation coming from?
Where do I move from? Draymond was like a novelty seven years ago, like just destroying teams doing that. You just mentioned Nick Claxton. I mean, he's good at this as well.
And that's not even what he's known for. But there's so many players. I think it's why are players better at this is because for five years, teams have had to make this adjustment. And hey, here's what you're going to do.
Denver beat Utah in the playoffs, in large part because Rudy Gobert couldn't make that at a high enough level. And Denver was employing the strategy and he was making misreads and missing layups on the rotating guy. The league has gotten better at this. So you're right that the margins have gotten thinner at this exact thing.
But I think when you ask how can Denver win this one, Nicola has to be better. And I think there are a lot of indicators that hint that he can do. When you say that pass is being too easy, so you step up, even in this last game as I'm going back and watching the film, a lot of the plays, Nicola's not up at the level of the screen. He's a little bit too far back and it allows Dinwiddie or whoever the ball handler is to kind of walk into the pass of the role guy.
You have to be more aggressive. You have to make that a difficult pass so that they're not catching the ball in the exact spot they want. And a lot of that just comes down to Nicola and the energy and effort that he expends on that end of the floor. And Denver has been good at this in crunch time throughout most of the year.
If you watch them in the first quarter defense guarding the same actions, it looks one way. You watch them in the fourth quarter, it's clear that there's more energy and effort. And by the way, lastly, the starting lineup, you mentioned Gordon, you mentioned Porter, KCP, there's length in that unit. And you need length and speed and being on a string in chemistry, defensive chemistry.
The blended lineups have been the ones that have completely fallen off a cliff when Nicola's out there. Disaster. And I think that is a big part of this for whatever reason. But Denver's core defensive lineups, I think, have actually been better than the numbers they're out.
Well, let me ask you this question, a very simple question. Who's the second best bench player on the Nuggets? Bruce Brown is the best. Who is the second best backup player, reserve player on the Denver Nuggets?
So you're the seventh guy. The question itself is good because the answer I'm going to give you, you might laugh at it. I think it might be Christian Brown. I'm not laughing.
I'm not laughing. And I say he might be laughing at this because he's been cut out of the rotation since the trade deadline and Reggie Jackson came over. I bet that change is starting, well, it kind of started yesterday, but I bet that change is starting tomorrow. I think it does as well.
He had a lot of six. I mean, one of the reasons Denver fell well behind and then climbed back into it, Christian Brown entered and played very good defense on Spencer Dinwiddie. But as important as the fact that he's a good defender is the fact that he is a position that Denver just doesn't have. They don't have any small forwards.
And he's more of a guard who slides to three at two and a half hybrid. But he's six foot seven and Denver just has a lack of those type of players. I think one thing that Michael Malone has gotten in trouble with over the last couple of years, but last year maybe it was more out of necessity because guys are hurt. You think it's not.
He loves to go to these really small three guard lineups. And if you look at, since the Reggie Jackson trade, I think in six of the seven games or eight games, they have rolled out a lineup that features Jokic, Bruce Brown, Reggie Jackson, and Jamal Murray. And that lineup is getting outscored a point per minute. You're basically getting this Jokic strategy, you've got to blitz pick and roll, you've got to step up.
But now you're putting all guards behind the cover for you and it just gets absolutely murdered. You take Jokic off, it's the exact same thing. That three guard lineup has been playing every single game, usually two stints, and they get killed almost every single night. Would you like the precise number?
Do you have to know that? Jamal Murray, Reggie Jackson, and Bruce Brown is minus 39 in 69 minutes to get adjusted. That's rough. And the thing about that number is I would guess that out of the 12 or 14 stints, it's probably been a negative in 80% of them.
It's not that it was one bad stint. It's every game it struggles. So I think you look at Christian Brown and you think that, one, I think he's a really good defender. He's a very smart player.
He understands his role. Offensively, is he going to be in a playoff series? Is he going to be up and down? Probably.
And maybe damningly so. But he has the length and plays the position that you need to execute that. And I'm pretty shocked that he was pulled from the rotation the last three weeks. Now, I think if you had asked people in preseason, who is the second best backup on the Denver Nuggets?
A lot of insiders would have said Bones Highland. Right. A lot of fans, even a lot of insiders, would have said Bruce Brown with Bones Highland as the best bench player on the Nuggets. Bones Highland is gone.
Reggie Jackson has been bad. Thomas Bryant has been bad. They benched Thomas Bryant yesterday and went without a center, partly because he's hurt during Jokic's rest minutes. And if you're going to do that, I mean, this is a little thing.
If you're going to play without a center, Aaron Gordon has got to be on the floor. You cannot play this Jeff Green, Vlato, Chanchar, Vlaco, Chanchar, front court. Aaron Gordon's got to be on the floor for those minutes. This, who's the second best bench player to me, the fact that the answer is maybe it might be Christian Brown is a problem.
The Bones roster spot turned into a zero. And Jeff Green hasn't been good enough. Chanchar, I mean, he's been okay. Do I feel great about counting on Chanchar for like 22 minutes in a game seven of a playoff series?
Not awesome. This is a problem. And I don't know what the answer is. I suspect Christian Brown will get run now because those other lineups are too small.
Obviously, Thomas Bryant will get another shot at some point to win that backup center spot. Maybe, you know, Zeke Nagy will come back and get a run at it too. You win in the playoffs with your best, best players. But the fact that I have like actual game-to-game confidence in six guys right now is not great.
And I think one other piece that we're leading out of this discussion about the bench is that Jamal Murray has been the staggered option that, hey, go out there. And if you build a bench, you just look at the roster and say, Bruce Brown's going to and we need Christian Brown. And I think we're going to arrive there going forward that you need him because you need his defense's length and the position he plays. So how do you build a lineup around that?
Well, you probably need a ball handler out there. And that needs to be Jamal. But he has been really bad in those bench minutes for most, if not all of the year. I think there was a small stretch where he really hit a stride right before his right knee began to swell and he ended up missing several weeks there.
It's kind of an under the radar thing right now. The knee thing is, it's worth monitoring. Let's make it on the radar because I think if you look at the numbers since he came back from that injury. So he misses a couple weeks.
The all-star break was in there. I think Denver was being overly cautious to take him out. But the thing about Jamal is, you know, coming back from injury, he was gaining his confidence, his rhythm, his flow and all these things. But it took several months for him to get his quickness back.
And I thought right before he got injured, his quickness looked like he was injured. closer to the bubble than anything we'd seen, where if he got a switch out on the perimeter, he was cooking that big or that forward, whoever it was, to get to a setback or to get to the rim. And since he's been back, his three-point shot, he's been taking a lot of threes and he's been knocking a lot of them down, and his perimeter game, I think, has been pretty good. But in that game last night, he got Nick Claston out on an island and got the ball stolen from him in a pickpocket in the open court.
And you think, this is a point guard who's a really good one-on-one player, who's having a hard time getting... I'll be a versatile big, but still... Really good. All-defense level big, in fairness.
He's a really good player. But if Denver's going to be something, if they're going to make a run this year, Jamal Murray has to be able to exploit those situations and be a little bit more quick. And to me, that's what he's lost. But they need it not only for their best punch.
They need it because that bench unit is only going to work if there's somebody that can help them on the offensive end. Michael Malone is going to go with him. I would try to put Michael Porter out in that lineup to see if he adds something to him. But if you're going to go with Jamal Murray, he just has to be able to elevate that group.
Yeah, I think you just nailed the other obvious solution, which is, I just need two or three starters on the floor at all times for the Nuggets in real games. I can't go with this KCP plus bench. Jamal Murray plus bench. It's not going to be good enough.
You're just going to have to stretch out Aaron Gordon or Michael Porter Jr. and detach them a little bit from Jokic for a few minutes here and there to lift up that bench. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax investment advice. I want kids and I want to get back to the community.
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Sign up for Activate Now. It's so interesting you brought up the Utah series earlier. I think about that series in the bubble like once a week. Almost every year.
I don't know if I did it last year. I write a column. I don't think I did it last year. Winners and losers of the first round of the NBA playoffs.
And it's a big column and it's got a bunch of bullet points in it. And that year in the bubble, I wasn't in the bubble, so I was outside the bubble. It's a big enough column. I have to start drafting it like halfway through the first round when some of the series appeared to be over.
And that was 3-1 Utah. And I had an item in there when it was 3-1 Utah. Loser. Denver Nuggets.
And then Jokic, Porter, Murray, Trio. And the whole item was about how they are going to have to come to some realization that those three together may not be good enough defensively for them to make noise in the playoffs. Then they win that series in crazy fashion. Then they just humiliate the Nuggets in seven games.
And that item gets deleted from the column. And then the next few postseason are just kind of like write-offs with Murray injured. And I think about Techcom a lot. I also think about, and I feel like in a lot of ways, Porter's gotten way better.
Way better. Murray's gotten better. Jokic has probably gotten a little bit better, but he just has schematic limitations that elite, elite defensive big men do not have. And yeah, this absolutely factors into the MVP debate, and it should.
And I have a two-time Jokic voter. I think he's been like the best offensive player in the NBA for three years running. And oftentimes when Curry's been hurt and Durant's been hurt, it's not been close. And his durability's been incredible.
And his defense has been good enough for his offense to carry the day. I think his defense has been worse this year. And if you think that that is a recent realization for me, you and I got into a little Twitter, not argument, but on November 11th of this season, so early in the season, I published a column, my 10 Things column, about Jokic kicking the ball. And it was a dislike.
Jokic had eight kickballs in 11 games. That's when I wrote the column. Vucevic led the entire league last year with 13. So Jokic was already on pace to eclipse last year's league leader.
So the NBA sent me the updated numbers today. Jokic has 45 kickball violations this year. Number two is Pirtle, I think, with 17. So, and the reason why it was a dislike is that it's his way of saying, I just don't feel like playing defense.
Can we just reset? You can sit and tell me, it's smart. It's smart, right? Like I'm upending a possession from a position of disadvantage, forcing me to take the ball out, play against our set defense.
And I wrote in the column, like, I just feel like we shouldn't allow guys to karate kick the ball. It's just like, it shouldn't be okay to intentionally do that. And here's what else I wrote. I wrote, Jokic is a so-so defender who hasn't looked quite as engaged so far.
He's contesting more shots at the rim than anyone, but some of those contests are meek waves, meek waves. Opponents have hit 65% of the basket with Jokic nearby. When Kevin Pelton and I did our MVP conversation at the quarter poll, 20 games in, both of us picked Steph Curry at that point of this season as the MVP. Steph Curry was easily our number one choice.
I think it was Steph, Luka, Tatum in that order. The next 30 games to 35 games was Jokic soaring far back into the conversation, and I think above most of the people. So again, I had Curry, the MVP, 20 games of the season. He got hurt.
Durant was coming forward. He got hurt. 30 to 35 games, games like 20 to 55, that's Jokic. And that's why he's been winning those straw polls, the Tim Bontemps straw poll, over and over.
That's only 55, 60 games. There's still 20 left. The game since then, Embiid has soared and made his case. And I think this weekend with Embiid putting up a buzzer beater and the Nuggets going on a losing streak, I think it's now wide open.
And I think, going back to the offense-defense thing I mentioned earlier, I think Embiid's offense has been better than ever this season. He's shooting almost 55% from the floor. Jokic's offense has been better in terms of efficiency, probably, but his defense, I think, has been worse this season than it has in the last couple of seasons. And so, if your argument for Jokic was offense, unbelievable defense, good enough, Embiid's defense, Embiid's pretty good in the regular season on defense.
When he turns out, he's pretty good. And, like, pretty good offense, I think that argument is starting to wobble a little bit right now. And probably you don't care. Your concern is probably, like, I want this team to win the championship, and I don't think they can win with the 16th-best defense in the NBA.
They might be able to survive the West because it's such a mess, but I'll tell you what, man, you probably don't want any part of it. If you have the 16th, 17th, 18th-best defense, you see that Phoenix pull-up jump shooting machine in the second round, that's going to be a problem. Well, especially the way they play. I mean, it's Taylor designed to take advantage of that specific weakness, especially with how well they shoot the mid-range.
I mean, Denver obviously dropped eventually in that series against Phoenix a couple years ago. You've got three of the best all-time mid-range pull-up jump shooters in Phoenix. I would absolutely feast on that. All the stuff you're saying about Nikolai this year, I think it's fair, and over this last run...
And again, I wrote it, November 11th. Meek contested to Ram, stop kicking the ball. He's 45-25. I'm pushing back on.
I'm so glad you brought this up because I'd forgotten about this, and I wanted to bring it up, I think, the last time I was on there. This part I pushed back on. In the game last night, there were two, in the third quarter, Denver had two flagrant fouls for and ones on step-back jumpers. And whatever you think of that rule to protect the shooter...
Like seven under the shooter? I mean, what really is, is you're running out to contest a guy, and if you're close enough, maybe you block the shot, but if you miss that, it's like trying to block a punt. You almost can't really try to block a punt because you're running the kicker, it's really bad. Denver had two of those.
So seven-point possession and the ball back. Absolutely damning. I look at all these rules and the way the game is called, and I think bigs, they need to come up with ideas of how to try to tilt things in their favor. And if Yoke has discovered this one, which, by the way, I'm seeing more and more players are actually trying to go with this method of trying to kick the ball.
I told you 13 was the league lead last year. There are six guys with 13 or more. Now, two of them have 13, two of them have 15, one of them has 17, and one of them has 40. But I almost wonder what that number is, though, after, say, January 1st.
It's becoming more popular. People say, how do we guard the pick-and-roll without fouling as a big? And maybe this actually makes a meaningful impact. 46 is almost one game.
So if you get one game where you prevent a layup because you kick the ball, to me... It's not a basketball play. And he's not the first person I wrote this about. I wrote this about, in 10 things, I just pushed back on this so hard just because I know how hard it is to guard a pick-and-roll.
So any example, if you tip the ball out of bounds, knowing you couldn't get it, but you tipped it out of bounds to make them reset, you know, I would be for it. So whatever, whatever it is, Yoke's trying this out. But your broader point that his defensive effort has just been so low, I mean, that San Antonio game was among the worst defensive efforts I've ever seen from him. I wrote it November 11th, me contested the ring, and it has not changed the whole year.
I think his offense has been so extraordinary, he's averaging a triple-double, that him being in the lead of the MVP race from game 20 to, like, this weekend, I think was fair. I think that was correct. And this is why, it's fun, oh, it's fun for some people, I think, to do the MVP conversation in December and kind of track it along. But I always, when I sit back and say, how can you be leading, how can you do this or that, I just look at it and I go, they're going to play each other in March, the third to last week of the season.
Milwaukee plays Philadelphia, by the way, in that same week. There's going to be a little round robin. It's those three, that's it. One, two, three, whatever order you're going to want them in.
And I think, rightfully, those will carry a little bit of extra weight. The head-to-head matchup should. The records, you know, at the end of the year, those things should matter. The record will show after the first game and be dominated.
Right. I said on this podcast, the Post podcast, people are asking around the league, does one game, does it actually tilt, should it tilt the MVP race at all? I think it should. And I said, this will probably surprise people because I'm like the big picture, you know, like, no, it's not overreact.
I was like, for me, it actually does just a little bit. Like, it actually is going to factor in because these are marquee games and like one guy really, really showed out and one guy was just like, okay. So it's factor number 73 on a list of factors. And one of those factors, by the way, all year long, I've been kind of asking people around the league about the three-peat thing.
General managers, scouts, coaches, like, and I would say it's almost a 50-50 split between people who just kind of have a cold, hard view of, you have to put the last two years in a review, not you can consider them at all. And then the other 50% are, no, the bar actually should be higher every year. And I think half of those people have been saying, oh, you're not going to actually be clearing the bar by averaging a triple level, we're not sure. And I said last week, I'm open to the idea of like history and post-season success and stakes and precedent being a tiebreaker maybe.
And people brought up Will Chamberlain. Will Chamberlain won his first two MVPs before winning a title and technically his first three before winning a title, but he won the title in the third year. He won the title with the third MVP same year. I think all this stuff matters.
I think it's fascinating, but I think the more important conversation for Denver people is, it's a big, big season for the Nuggets. And on the one hand, you want to say, well, there's always next year, like Jamal will be healthier, another year continuity, we have to remake the bench in the off-season, blah, blah, blah. Who knows what the hell's going to happen next year? Who knows what other West teams are going to reload next year?
And you're not promising anything. Yeah, there's no question about all of those things. I will say this about the Nuggets. The MVP is not one of the most interesting things about the Nuggets, but it swallows up all of the other stories.
And I say that to say that Michael Porter this year has been such a fascinating player because he's so talented and we know that he's had issues defensively and even just the feel of the game. Missing all those years, I think has robbed him a little bit of his growth as a team player. But this year has been such a great story of the effort he has put in to fit into a larger system. I think he's a guy that could score 25 a game on other teams, on certain teams.
The fact that he has been so efficient this year, but because he has really figured out this is my role on the team, this is what they need from me. And every now and then I get to step outside of that, but I'm going to try to excel in this has been a great story. And it's not one that gets discussed very much because it's all about the Jokic MVP or this or that. And last night, going back to last night's game and why I think it was one of the most fascinating ones, Michael Porter scored a point in a minute.
He got 23 points in 23 minutes last night. He gets benched in the third quarter. Denver's falling apart defensively. He got benched in the third quarter and did not come back in until there was 26 seconds left in the game.
And I looked at that game and did he have a couple lapses, he had some turnovers in that third quarter, but Denver collectively melted down in that third quarter. Defensively, offensively, he wasn't the only guy. I don't even think he was the worst defender. But last night to me was the first Michael Porter has done everything that has been asked of him so far in a regular season.
You're right to question if push comes to shove, does Michael Malone not go to him in a game four or game five down the stretch? We've wondered that since the preseason. But last night was the first time where I looked at it and I thought, Malone didn't actually have a reason in that game to bench him, but he did. And that gives me a hint that maybe he doesn't fully think that he's the guy that he's going to go to the foxhole with when he just stopped.
See, I think you just don't, they're not deep enough to quibble about Michael Porter Jr.'s flaws here. Like, I'm not going to go to the foxhole with Michael Porter Jr. Who am I going in with? Jeff Green?
Who's around last night? Well, but yeah, I get it. Like, I know who their six best players are and put whatever five of them on the floor, but I just, that to me is, that's a, that's really good. By the way, we should say Denver is, when you talk to people around the team over the weekend of like, so what's wrong with the team?
What I keep hearing is like, well, you know, like March, we're up by a million games, like people are tired. Okay, like that's probably part of it. I'm sure that's part of it. But at some point, you got to come out of it.
And this is a big test for them coming up. All right, let's dial it back up, get ready for the playoffs. And fatigue and complacency and all that, that's also part of the MVP debate. Like, you got to fight through that to win the MVP.
And B, by virtue of his conference, and Giannis, by virtue of his conference, has not had the luxury really of complacency or fatigue. They're fighting to like have home court advantage in the second round of the playoffs. Denver doesn't have to fight that, fight for that. And that's a new spot for them to be in, by the way, Zach, that they have never been the runaway one seed.
So this is also a new, I think a new experience for them. And like I said, coming out of the All-Star break, they got a huge win at Cleveland where they played phenomenally. They got a big win against the Clippers on the second night of a back-to-back where they played phenomenally. They own the Clippers, man.
They just own. They own the Clippers. And then they got a big win against Memphis where we talked about defense. That game, I thought, Nicola's defense was A+.
Threw from first quarter to fourth quarter, he played phenomenally. That game gave Denver, I think, a seven or eight game cushion on the one seed. And it was right after that moment that they played so poorly. So I'm of the opinion that some of the things we are seeing are very real.
And hey, this is the question that Denver has to answer if they're going to be the team they think they are. And this is the thing they do. It makes people doubt that they can do it. But at the same time, I think there was a natural sort of letdown from those moments that has made them look really better over the last week.
Maybe in two weeks we're going to look back and say, no, this was a trend of something worse. But I think there's reason to believe that, hey, this is a team that solidified a one seed and then took their foot off the gas. I would like to see them come on this road trip and decide we kind of want to kick the crap out of a couple of these teams just to get back in the groove of doing that. And Memphis, interestingly, we highlighted this on NBA Today way back in November, December, I can't remember when.
Memphis is a matchup that offers them the opportunity to play around with how they use Jokic. And I've been calling for that for a couple of seasons now. And finally, I think Michael Mullen has started to do that a little bit this year. So by that, I mean, you go under screens against our man and dare him to beat you as a jump shooter in a way you can't against Devin Booker, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, whoever you want to name.
And they've done that. They even tried for part of the next game last night and we put Jokic on Dorian Finney-Schnitz so he's not on the main screen setter in Claxton. They've done more of that this year. They played zone.
It kind of feels like either it's too little too late or mostly too little of that to get playoff ready or maybe they're holding some cards for the playoffs that they don't have to show now. But I think that's another answer to this is you need to be more well-versed at six or seven different teams with any defense. We've seen the Sixers put Embiid on non-screen centers as well and that's more for like let him be a predator and block shots and all that kind of reasons. But that's just something else I watch for with them.
And I'm with you. Denver's experimented with some zone. It hasn't necessarily looked very good. And I think that's one of the main reasons to doubt Denver's.
I don't think they have a lot of different defenses they can go to and that might end up being a reason they fail in the playoffs. But the reason to not doubt them is their offense is going to be elite, period, against everybody. And that's because of Jokic and that's why he's been the MVP the last few years. There's also been guys that have gotten hurt and it's been kind of weird years where candidates have fallen away and all that.
but that's why he's that good offensively. And I think that, when he's geared up, he's just good enough defensively on glass and all that to carry those conversations. That hasn't necessarily been the case. Sorry, I didn't interject here, but this season kind of reminds me of LeBron James' 2013 season.
If you recall that year, he didn't take any threes unless they were catch and shoot. He completely limited his game to be hyper-efficient. Yeah, he shot like 58% or something like that. Yeah, and he had completely kind of figured out, okay, I gotta get to the rim, I gotta do this or that, and do these things.
And in the finals, San Antonio took advantage of that and said, hey, we're gonna force him into the mid-range. And he hasn't been doing it, he can do it, but he hasn't done it all year. And I thought one of the reasons Miami ended up winning that series was he started to take those shots as the series went on saying, this is what I have to do, I haven't done it all year. I think Nikola has approached the season much the same way and his shooting efficiency is through the roof.
I just feel a lot of confidence that as good as Denver's offense has been, he has been more focused on the team efficiency and everything else. But one of the things I want to see over this last stretch and especially want to see in the playoffs is I think he's a much more dominant scorer than he's been this year. And it's been by design. And how do you balance out, okay, they need me to be aggressive now and really break the defense individually versus how much am I just trying to make this efficient offense?
To me, that'll be one of the things I'm looking for, but Nikola in the playoffs has always ratcheted up his intensity and his individual points. His playoff numbers are incredible. I mean, absolutely incredible. And Denver has had, I think, more playoff success than they've been given credit for in the yoga tier.
But look, I mean, the opportunity is there. We can sit here and pick the flaws in the defensive system. No team is perfect, right? Like, rarely do you get perfect.
Like, the 2013 Heat were kind of perfect. They won 27 games in a row or whatever. It was pretty perfect. But the West is, it's not in tatters.
It's just kind of in chaos. Like, there's almost no team other than Sacramento right now that's like feeling great about their consistency and their level of play. And so, you know, at some point for Denver, it's going to be like, let's see it. I think Denver was up until this last week, though.
If you look at the little 50 games that you were talking about, Denver won, it felt like 7 out of 10 every single time and had some good wins under their belt. But this last week has definitely changed the narrative a little bit, and rightfully so. This is why you've got to keep watching until the end before A, you submit your ballots, and B, you solidify who you feel great about in the playoffs. All of a sudden, you have to be able to say, am I watching something real?
Am I watching something that's not indicative of this team's true level? Why do I think either A or B? And that all just comes down to watching the games. Adam Harris, DNBR Sports, you guys do an incredible job covering a really interesting team and an all-time great player.
It's going to be an interesting roadshow coming up there, coming to my neck of the woods for a couple games over the weekend, so I'll get to see him in person. I will see you down the line, my friend. Thanks so much, Zach. All right, let's pivot away from the MVP and the Nuggets and all that stuff to the opposite pole of the awards race.
And I know there are not a lot of people who want to talk about Bowl Bowl. If you want to talk with me, I would say about Bowl Bowl in December about his most improved player candidacy. Not a lot of people who are diving into the deep depths of like the 12th honorable mention for most improved player, but Nakias Duncan of Basketball News and the Dunker Spot Podcast with my Peloton companions. How are you, sir?
I know you're one of them. You're ready. I am pumped and proud. I have a list of, I think, 23 that I had a little bounce.
Okay, I can't do this in the time a lot, but I am here ready to talk some hoop. Glad to be here, man. Thanks for having me. At some point, we can just start saying names.
If we're running short on stuff, just start screaming names into your microphone. Like, Sam Hauser! Just start saying names. I do have an Ernest Hamadou Diallo shout that I want to get to at the end of the podcast.
He was on my long list last year and he was a cut this year. He just got hurt, though. You know, not a lot of people watching it. The fact that we're starting with the Pistons mentioned is pretty indicative of what we're doing here.
So I am going to posit that four names. I said, let's each make a top 10, like a vague top 10. We're not committing to this top 10. It's March 13th.
We've got a month left in the season. People will improve. People are always striving to improve in life and in basketball. I would imagine Laurie Markman is going to be one.
Check. I would imagine Shea Gilgis-Alexander would also be one. Check. I would have Mikael Bridges in there as well.
Ooh, it's not one of my four. That's interesting. That's interesting. We'll get to that.
It's not one of my four. He's on my list, but he wasn't one of my, like, he's going to dominate this category, guys. Oh, wow. Okay.
We're also a good start then. The other guy I had, at least in my top four, at least, was Nick Claxton. Was he probably in top four? No.
Okay, so we're totally off the rails immediately. So why not Mikael Bridges? I would say, I just wonder if a lot of voters are going to be like, I'm vaguely aware that over the last 20 games of the season, he became a completely different player. And really, it started before that, in Phoenix, in December and January, when Booker and CP were hurt.
I think that's a great call. The four I had, and I think Claxton is going to make a lot of all defense teams and has made just gigantic strides on offense, sort of polar opposite of Bridges has seen those opportunities dwindle a little bit without Durant and Kyrie to draw two defenders all the time. The other two, I think Markman is probably going to win. And Shea will probably finish second or first.
I had Halliburton and Jalen Brunson as the other two. Did you think about them or was it just like, was it so obvious that they were going to be this good that they're not going to get considered? What is the candidacy like for them for you? For me, Halliburton on my vague top 10, Halliburton was five, so he's right there.
Jalen Brunson was the interesting one for me because I don't know if he's been the most improved Nick. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have him, I think I have him ninth on my top 10 list, so he made it, but he was someone that I didn't have super high up. Like, he's trying to balance how much better have you gotten versus what is your opportunity like?
And I think I've seen signs of like the intermediate play for Jalen Brunson, the shooting for Jalen Brunson, the drives, the foul drawing, the foul drawing has popped in the way they just did in other places. I think that's been a large driver of why we've seen a scoring ball from him. But yeah, it's like, how much did you get better versus you have the ball more and you have more opportunity to showcase who you already are? Yeah, we all struggle with the opportunity versus actual improvement thing.
I just feel like as optimistic about Brunson as I could have been, 24 a game on this level of efficiency with this level of responsibility, like the jump in responsibility is so gargantuan that for him to do this, he's going to be on my short list. Make the case for him. Who are the other Knicks? I have a bunch of Knicks on my long list too, but who's your Knick that has improved more than Jalen Brunson?
I think it may just be virtually the games that I've caught for New York, but I feel like it may or Quigley has made more of a leap from last season to this season than Jalen Brunson has. I think obviously Brunson has been better, but I think what Quigley has done defensively, particularly what he's done with his screen navigation, like he's just been unbelievable at the point of attack this year. You already know he brings a pull-up shooter, slow start to the year on that front, and now he's up to I think around 36% from threes this year. The two-point percentage is way up too from what I recall.
Yeah, he's just getting much more comfortable with the ball in his hands, making better decisions once he gets inside the arc. It feels like it's calibrated more to shooting versus passing, but even the passivity he's made has looked a little bit better from last year. And so that's where I'm like, for most improved, it feels like he looks more different than Jalen Brunson does. Maybe I'm just on the island on that, but that's kind of where I'm at it.
No, some guys, it doesn't show, it doesn't like scream in the stats that they've gotten better, but when you watch them play, their games, just the quality and steadiness of their games is just better no matter what the numbers. But if you watch the games, he's playing more and he's just playing better. Talk about Bridges for me because I think, you know, the Nets will have a bad record in all these games by the end of the year when he's playing this well. Make the case that this, and some people will sort of look at it and say, well, okay, whatever, he put up numbers, someone's got to put up numbers.
Make the case that this is a real thing that's happening. I would say just for what Bridges has done and you already touched on a little bit earlier, the growth started in Phoenix. I think there was a clear emphasis for Monty Williams for Mikael Bridges to do more on the ball. You've seen him as a guy who kind of replaced Devin Booker in some of those elbow sets, getting to run more pick and rolls.
Just looking at his pick and roll volume I was peeing on the second stretch a little bit earlier. He's run about 2.6 pick and rolls per 100 possessions last year. That includes the playoffs. This year's art is near 11.
And so for him to nearly quadruple his volume or more than quadruple his volume and have to efficiently jump up that's in person. Again, that started in Phoenix. So him getting more comfortable with the ball in his hands, making more reads. The scoring has really popped for me.
It popped in Phoenix, the numbers weren't huge until that stretch without Devin Booker. He really started seeing the boss score. But you knew what kind of pull-up jumper he had. Him actively seeking out contact and finishing through contact better was a little bit new.
And we've seen that kind of extend once it's gotten to Brooklyn. And so not only is he getting higher usage, he's seeing better defenders and he's throwing the shoulder nudge on these drives now. He's doing a little bit better at creating space for himself and now he gets a high release point against any touch. And I think that feels very translatable.
Like I think he's just gotten so much more comfortable against physicality that it just kind of accentuates everything else. Because if you do look at 4 for Brooklyn, if you get a true number one and slide them off, he's already proving he can play off. He's proving he can drive in the secondary role. So him taking on these primary reps, having the efficiency, I think what, nearly 27 points per game or 64 and a half true shooting.
That's the thing he's shooting. It's like 55, 45, whatever shooting. I mean, it's crazy. It's insane.
And so like some of those numbers will come down, but just the comfort that I'm seeing with the ball in his hands. I think that's where he really makes the case for me. I guess the best compliment I can give McHale Bridge is Brooklyn Nets is when I watch the Nets and I think about defending them from the perspective of their opponent, he feels dangerous to me. Like it feels frightening when he has the ball like, oh my God, is he gonna pull up?
He's gonna do this. I know he's probably not gonna throw like some crazy Lucas style pass to the corner and all that, but he feels threatening as a scorer in a way that I kind of didn't expect to feel that level of threat from me. You almost expected to feel like kind of went to buy his hair or went to pick. All right, someone's got to shoot some pull-up jumpers.
He feels dangerous to me. Give me, give me, so you've already mentioned like five of your vague top 10. Give me a couple more names. We'll see how we line up.
Pick some guys and stay some guys. Stay some guys. We have reached a fun part of the program. Someone who was a late addition to my list and I actually had to move him up once I thought about it more.
I was only gonna have one Timberwolf on this list and it probably wasn't gonna be the obvious one. I had to add the obvious one by the title being ridiculous. Anthony Edwards, I think, is playing himself into this conversation. He's on my vague top 10 as well.
I'm guessing the other Timberwolf, the other Wolf was Jaden McDaniels? Yes. I have Ant above Jaden McDaniels on my vague most improved player ladder. Is that wrong?
Is that ridiculous? They're both fine. None of them are really gonna make ballots. Neither of them are really gonna make ballots.
Ant might make some ballots. I can see him making some ballots. I think with what we've seen from him at least statistically since, let's say, December and if the Wolves end up being a playoff team because the Western Conference standings are so jumbled up right now they can very well finish like fifth or sixth. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up landing third.
And ultimately, if he continues to progress as a playmaker like he has and we see more of these moments from him defensively, then I think he's really going to open up some eyes. But yeah, I don't think it's crazy to have Ant over McDaniels. When I was first making the list and trying to look like, okay, let's get this done before the pot starts. I had McDaniels, I think, 10 and I didn't have Edwards on.
I was like, okay, wait a minute. I can't do that. But as I mentioned earlier, the playmaking growth, there are still these pockets where he sees two defenders he doesn't care. He's going to get to the rim where he's going to take a pull-up and he still has to cut down on some of those.
But he still does look more comfortable when he gets two to the ball now. No question. He's making more skip passes than I've seen him in obviously short reform so far. But he's showing more comfort there.
Doing a little more slow things like stringing out the trap before driving to the basket. You know, once he gets a full head steam downhill, there isn't much you can do with him. You can ask Jayden's brother about that. So that's kind of where the case is for me.
But Jayden McDaniels, I originally had him on one. If I can campaign on your podcast, we got to get Jayden McDaniels on all defense teams this year. I've seen you making that campaign. I feel like it's reasonable.
You feel like he's not getting enough. Just his sheer versatility. He'll guard Clay one night and then he'll guard a power forward the next night and a point guard the night after that. Yeah, but there's a tier of like this guy can switch on to anyone you feel okay with it versus you will just get this assignment and feel good.
And like there are plenty of wing defenders that are one, just do it. The two, they have the athleticism of having that equipment. So okay, if he switches on to a point guard for eight seconds, you're going to be okay. You can just give Jayden McDaniels a point guard assignment and feel good about him using his length to give room to test.
He's a really good screen navigator for a guy his size. And so even if you have some of those pull-up shooters, he can fight over and then you worry about the rearview contest for him. What he does as a weak side rim protector when he's off the ball if he's a low man, he just cleans up at the rim in a way that forwards mostly don't do that. I haven't seen enough buzz outside of like the Minnesota people that I follow.
And so I just want to take the opportunity to say, hey, this guy, he's good on film. If you care about advanced numbers like he ranks high in DEPM and stuff like that, like you can find numbers to kind of make that case as well. He's been really good really steady all year long. Yeah, when they have Jaden McDaniels and Kyle Anderson at the 2-3-4, there's just a ton of length around Gobert.
That makes it just much easier for them to play any number of different styles. Much harder for teams to just spread them out and try to attack five out like Gobert's been victimized with in the playoffs before. Yeah, Jaden McDaniels, 38% from three. Not a ton of attempts, but that's a big deal.
And he's made himself into a, okay, I'm comfortable with this guy playing 30-something minutes a game because he's a big enough offensive threat. Can I make a case for someone that I don't think is getting enough love this year? Sure. Miles Turner.
I feel like Miles Turner has had an under-the-radar really, really good season. More scoring, shooting a lot better from the floor, twos and threes. More versatility to his offensive game. Now, part of that is just situational, right?
Like, Savonis is gone, so he's got the rim and the lane to himself. But you also have to do something with that. Having Tyrese Halliburton, who's a genius, makes it easier for him to do something with that. But he's rolling more.
He's mixing up the timing of his roles. And defensively, he's as good as ever. I think he's at, I think his scoring's up like five points a game this year from his general career numbers, his efficiencies numbers are up, his free throws are up. You know, he kind of settled in as like a 12 to 13 point a game bit player on offense.
He's up around 18 now, hasn't really sacrificed much on defense. Still not someone I'm going to feel comfortable with, like with the ball in open space, running handoffs and stuff like that. But for what he is, I think he's gotten meaningfully better. Did he make even your 23-person list?
He did, in fact, make the 23-person list, which now don't say it out loud as well. But no, he did make the list. You already mentioned the rolling and just having more space and opportunity to do so. I hesitate with him when he's having short roll opportunities throwing the ball in the post against mismatches now.
I used to cringe when they did that and now I'm like, he's probably going to score or get fouled or something. It's not something that has a defense unnecessarily just inviting you to do against my worst perimeter defender over and over again. Yeah, that's an important leap and that's something I would imagine people would like to see the other eight do more consistently than he does. I think he's a better score than Miles Turner is on the interior.
But this thing to change in mindset, this is something that Caitlin Cooper wrote about not too long ago and the work that Caitlin does with the Pacers is insane. I don't know if there's anyone covering the team in professional sports like she does. But at any rate, she's talking about what Miles Turner has done to shift in aggression with some of the post-hows, even with some of the screengashes that he's been used in. There's just a level of intention and purpose when he gets the ball or when he feels like he can't get the ball that is a big shift from last year.