Going Forward, The Denver Nuggets Will Need More Than Just Roster Continuity

For the past five seasons, with president of basketball operations Tim Connelly and general manager Arturas Karnisovas at the helm, the Denver Nuggets front office has patiently and carefully assembled a roster which has steadily improved year after year as it gradually grew from a rebuilding project into one of the top teams in the NBA’s Western Conference.

Through the entire process, the prioritization of roster continuity over big moves on the trade market, along with a strong emphasis on the deliberative in-house development of their young players, have been the foundational bedrock principles in Denver’s team-building philosophy.

In an NBA era defined by increased player movement and multiple-superstar powerhouse teams, “We don’t skip steps” has been the guiding mantra of Connelly’s trend-bucking front office, and for the most part it has served Denver well in producing successful results.

Last season the Nuggets not only made their first playoff appearance in their current incarnation led by their maximum contract player duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, but advanced to the second round, taking a more experienced Portland Trail Blazers team to game seven and within four points of the Western Conference Finals. That came on the heels of a 54-win regular season which matched the team’s second-best win total as an NBA franchise, and was the culmination of continually improving totals of 30, 33, 40, 46 and 54 wins over a five-season arc.

Denver’s performance this season has been somewhat uneven, however, and points to questions about whether of continuity should continue to be the front office’s highest priority if the team is to reach the next level of becoming a true championship contender.

Potentially further obscuring the answers to those questions, though, is the fact that the NBA has suspended its season due to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, and it remains unclear whether it will ultimately be resumed and completed or in the worst-case scenario, canceled outright.

As a guest on a recent DNVR Nuggets podcast, co-host Adam Mares (follow him on Twitter at @Adam_Mares), asked me what grade I would give Denver for this season if it were to end now. It was a question I hadn’t yet considered given the sudden nature of the suspension, and my real-time response was to give this Nuggets season a C+ (with the qualification that had the season continued I believe my final grade for the team following the playoffs would end up being better). Mares, however, rightfully pointed out that Denver’s current win percentage of .662 puts them on a trajectory in an 82-game season to win 54 games, the same as last season’s win tally.

This is a noteworthy and fair point, and there are other metrics which might be taken to indicate that this Nuggets season is at the very least going just as well as last.

According to NBA.com, the Nuggets’ net rating this season, a measure of how many more or less points a team scores per 100 possessions than their opponents, is a plus-3.1, ranking them ninth in the league. This is down just slightly from last season’s mark of 4.0, which was good for eighth overall. Denver’s rankings in offensive and defensive ratings have likewise taken just a nominal dip, as the chart above indicates, from seventh and 10th last season to ninth and 12th, respectively. Given the fact that in these rankings a single blowout win or loss can bump a team up or down a few notches, the Nuggets’ 2019-20 performance relative to the rest of the league as measured by these metrics is essentially right on par with 2018-19.

There is also the consideration that with the formation of two new “super teams” in the West – the Los Angeles Lakers with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and the Clippers with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George – the potential exists for Denver to have actually improved without it showing up in their statistics or win total due to a tougher level of competition.

So while these factors could be cause for giving the Nuggets a higher grade for this season, other indications point to a degree of underachievement, and perhaps even disappointment, especially when viewed in the context of the expectations of where this team was supposed to be headed – to bigger and better things.

One of the most important of those indications is not found in the numbers, but rather in the “eye test.” People who have watched all or most Nuggets games over the past four seasons understand what the team looks like when they’re playing “Jokic ball” – with heavy doses of cutting, dribble handoffs and ball movement largely orchestrated by Jokic as “point center” – which gets defenses scrambled and off balance to create a ton of great, open looks. And the same people will understand that Jokic ball just hasn’t been clicking like it used to, or at least with significantly less frequency. Something has just been off this season, seemingly more often than not. My personal measure of this is the noticeable increase in the number of games where I’ve observed – usually in the third or fourth quarter – “Hey, the Nuggets actually looked like the Nuggets on that possession.”

A day before the NBA suspended its season, I wrote for Forbes about Murray’s big dunk that was waved off and went viral, and how it seemed to be a catalyst that sparked some joy in the Nuggets’ play which had been visibly absent at times this season. Most recently, this was in the stretch since the All-Star break when Denver went into a slump winning just five of 10 games and losing to the Warriors and Cavaliers, two of the worst teams in the league. The subtext of that article was that the Nuggets have lacked the vibrancy and fun they play with when Jokic Ball is firing on all cylinders, looking more often like a deflated balloon, and that was reflected in lackluster play on both ends of the court.

More concretely, individual player performance is down this season nearly across the board for returning players, and specifically for all four of those players who take the highest percentage of field goal attempts while they are on the floor.

As the chart indicates (per NBA.com), Murray, Jokic, Will Barton III and Paul Millsap have all seen declines in their effective field goal percentages, which account for the value of three-point shots, and in that order are also taking the largest share of shots when they are on the court. Monte Morris is the only player among the returnees whose shooting has improved, and meaningfully so. Gary Harris has maintained his percentage of .488 from last season, but that number puts him in just the 31st percentile for the wing position, meaning 69% of wings are shooting better than him, whereas in 2017-18 he was up in the 89th percentile with an eFG% of .569 per Cleaning the Glass. The eFG% of every other returning player has dropped.

Another sign that things aren’t going quite as they should this season is the fact that the Nuggets are 24-14 (.632) in games in which all five regular starters play, but a significantly better 19-8 (.704) when one or more starter sat out. (Broken down in more detail, Denver is 9-4 (.692) with one starter out, 6-2 (.750) with two out and 4-2 (.667) with three out.)

There has long been talk of the Nuggets consolidating some of players from the deep end of their pool of skilled youngsters, and when Denver in effect traded Malik Beasley and Juancho Hernangomez to the Minnesota Timberwolves at the trade deadline for a first-round draft pick which could roll forward some of their value for a future asset, it was largely to that end.

What that move did not accomplish, however, was a more genuine thinning out of the middle strata of Denver’s roster in order to bring in a higher-level talent. (One exemplary target was Bradley Beal, who appeared in trade rumors last season before going on to sign an extension with the Washington Wizards.) And given the fact that the Nuggets have played better this season with one or more starting players sitting out (as Mares phrased it on the podcast, clarifying the “pecking order”), combined with the decline in shooting of their returning players (along with other statistical indicators which there is not space to delve into here), there is considerable credence to the argument that, despite being on a similar winning trajectory this season as last, in order for Denver to move up a tier into bona fide title contention, they will need to move more aggressively to bring a genuinely impactful player on board.

This would not mean completely abandoning the continued internal development of players they scouted and cultivated from the draft through current day. But it would mean reframing the conversation about roster consolidation to include one or more of their starting players, most likely Harris, Barton or both.

Jokic being untouchable is a foregone conclusion, and for a variety of reasons – not the least of which is the five-year, $170 million contract he has not yet proven he will live up to – Murray is also highly unlikely to be moved. And with last year’s trade acquisition and impending free agent Jerami Grant presumably a top offseason priority as Denver’s starting power forward of the future, that leaves Barton, Harris and just about every bench player not named Michael Porter Jr. as the Nuggets’ most moveable players.

Keeping the band together and bringing it back mostly intact has become not only a roster building approach in Connelly’s front office, but almost a philosophical principle which is intrinsically valued in its own right. And leading up to the current season it has proven to be a wise and fruitful approach.

But prioritizing continuity appears to have reached a point of diminishing returns as Denver has plateaued this season. One team’s “skipping steps” can sometimes be another team’s “making a bold move that takes it to the next level.” And if the Nuggets want to legitimately be in the title hunt and not just a perennial second-round playoff team, then this offseason Connelly and his front office will likely need to move beyond risk aversion and into the scarier – but potentially more rewarding – territory of taking big swings.