Nuggets Rotations

[NuggetsWY]

We've talked about this many times, but I still think it's worthy of a little more discussion. Sure, I'd like to see more PT for our rookies, everyone knows that, but Malone plays the players that he believes give us the best chance at winning. It makes sense unless the front office says, "Develop not win" and they have to say that privately and publicly. They have not done that, so the coach must go for wins. <sigh>

Since adding Plumlee, Malone's gone away from playing Faried/Arthur at center (((which I never understood - did you watch those two playing against Jordan, Cousins, Drummond, etc.? Crazy. But no more and don't blame that on the front office not getting a 3rd center because most of those games had Nurkic sitting on the bench.

At PF the Nuggets have Faried, Arthur, Hernangomez yet Malone insists on using Chandler. I get that. I like Chandler and much of the league plays small/stretch-4 types and Chandler fits. However, that leaves Barton as the backup SF and he's a little light to play against many of those guys, but he does fairly well. But why did we resign Arthur? He's only played in half the games - granted he's had some injury issues, but not that many. His 16 mpg could have easily been covered by Faried/Hernangomez and the Nuggets could have picked up a deep bench emergency player. --- --- Speaking of injury issues, Gallinari has had some injury issues, not as bad as in the past, but why is he leading the team in minutes? Sure, they need him, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have restricted his minutes from the beginning of the year, hoping to keep for more games? What's the point of having all this depth if we don't use it? Gallinari playing 24 mpg for most of the year is better than losing him and this is the time of the year where that seems to happen. Chandler and Barton could have covered the other 24 mpg at SF with Chandler playing against the larger SFs and Barton against the smaller ones. Hernangomez & Mike Miller would have been the emergency SFs.

Speaking of Miller, 16 games played with 5 mpg average? Why did they sign him? I get that he's nice to have as a mentor type but he could have done that as a shooting coach or some other slot. That would have opened another slot either for a young player or for an emergency 3rd SF (or somewhere else). Malone doesn't play Miller much even when we are short 4 or 5 players. Yup, Miller is "old" but he understands his body and is smart enough to be able to be effective with or without the ball on both ends of the court. Elite? Not any more but still effective (or don't sign him).

But PG is where I am really, really confused. Malone started Mudiay all but 2 of the games he played in last year, even though he struggled through much of the year. This year, Murray struggles to get minutes and he's actually playing much better than Mudiay did his first year. We've heard that Murray is "too young" - but he's the same age as Mudiay was last year. Why does Malone treat one player so much different? I get it, some players need time to learn the NBA, especially point guards. However, when a player struggles, why play him for 1.5+ years before saying "not a starter" while not even giving a similar player a reasonable chance?

Edit: Forgot to mention, the Nuggets top 3 shooters from 3pt range are Arthur, Harris, Hernangomez in that order. They are the only players shooting 40% or better yet two of them don't have enough shots to even register on the NBA.com stats list.

[Powder Blue]

I questioned Arthur's deal the minute it happened. Made no sense at all but he was "rewarded" for being a good locker room in previous seasons. Why they gave him 3/$23 beats the hell out of me, it's a terrible signing.

Mike Miller doesn't bother me, you have to fill your bench out somehow and he's only costing 3.5 with a team option next year. He's basically a player/coach and this team is MUCH better behind the arch, he's probably helped with that at practice.

Mudiay was the name the franchise really toted as the leader of hope and change when he was drafted but the course has changed given he hasn't shown any development.


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