Denver, riding a three-game winning streak, is deep and dangerous.
The Nuggets (13-7) don’t even have a healthy Will Barton or Isaiah Thomas, and already Michael Malone is blessed with ample quality reserves.
“It’s one of the deepest and youngest teams that I’ve ever had, and that’s what I like about our team,” Malone said. “We’re young, but guys go out there like Monte (Morris), like Torrey (Craig), Malik (Beasley), Juancho (Hernangomez) and they play, and they play, most of the time, with a poise that most young guys don’t.”
With guard Gary Harris nursing a sore ankle and resting Saturday night in Oklahoma City, the Nuggets mopped the floor defensively as Craig, who’d played just five minutes over the previous four games, bottled up Russell Westbrook. For the second consecutive game, Trey Lyles made a huge impact offensively, and Mason Plumlee, Morris and Beasley all made significant contributions to arguably the Nuggets’ best victory of the season.
Plumlee’s stats don’t foreshadow any awards – 6.9 points per game, 5 rebounds, 1.2 steals – but Malone feels like his do-everything backup big man deserves attention. Interestingly, Plumlee’s plus-10 net rating leads all Nuggets players.
“Mason Plumlee, forget stats, because you won’t probably be able to make a great argument from a stat perspective, but from an impact perspective, he is a Sixth Man of the Year candidate,” Malone said at practice Monday.
The Nuggets’ rotation can safely go 10 guys deep, and that’s before reinforcements such as Barton, Thomas and maybe even Michael Porter Jr. show up later this season.
Thirteen-year veteran Paul Millsap, who helped lead Atlanta to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2015, acknowledged something different about this year’s team.
“This is the deepest, as far as youth and talent,” said Millsap, in his second year with the Nuggets. “It’s a good balance. One through 15, actually. These guys can play. They can play on any given team.”
Heading into Tuesday’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Nuggets are the only Western Conference team that is ranked in the top-10 of both offensive (8th) and defensive rating (4th). The defense is a result of buy-in and effort, and over the past four games – three wins – the only team with a better defense has been the Lakers.
The offense, coincidentally, has been underwhelming. The Nuggets’ 3-point shooting, now at 34 percent, has slowly elevated from the basement of the league, and key players such as Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic and Harris haven’t completely hit their stride. Over the past 10 games, all three are hovering around 40 percent shooting from the field.
“The fact that we’re eighth in offensive efficiency to me is kind of funny because we still haven’t found our rhythm yet from the 3-point line,” Malone said.
Jokic, who is just 11 of 40 over his last three games, is also still learning the delicate balance of when to take over games himself versus when to facilitate for open teammates. When the Nuggets reached a 5-year, $148-million max deal this summer with Jokic, they did so with the understanding that Jokic was a different kind of star. It was never his nature to put his head down and play bully-ball, forcing shots like Westbrook does with the Thunder. But against Oklahoma City on Saturday, despite an ugly 6-for-20 shooting night, Malone was most pleased that his franchise player kept forcing the issue, getting good looks and insisting plays ran through him.
