Game 6: Denver Nuggets @ Atlanta Hawks 4:00pmMT

[psimanic1]

Weird game - Nuggets won but it wasn't a very impressive game anyway. Sure, some players had a great night and I enjoyed that. But the defense was not good.

Jokic - 16:28 minutes with 21 pts & 14 reb only 3 foul
Plumlee - 33 minutes and 10 pts & 7 reb and 5 fouls
seems strange to me

Millsap 41:48 - that can't continue
Chandler 37:42 - that can't continue

Jokic played almost 30 minutes last game, where did you get those minutes?

[The Rebel]

It's pretty apparent the team had a poor offseason. If they could have somehow nudged the defense up to middle of the pack and not skipped much of a beat on offense they'd be a very dangerous team. The Plumlee trade and subsequent awful extension has put us in a rough spot as far as improving the roster. But not an impossible one. Denver still has enough young pieces and soon to be expiring deals on marginally productive players to perhaps figure out something.

Letting Gallo walk has sank the offense (although he's been horrible in his own right in LA), the murray PG experiment is off to a rough start, and the lydon/lyles moves have done nothing to enhance the roster.

I feel like this will be a pivotal week to see if it's just a "slow start" or representative of larger problems.

You asked why I can criticize the Nuggets and you can't and this post is the perfect example of why. One of us watches and has followed the Nuggets religiously for decades, they other keeps making comments that only show how little they know about the team.

Yes Plumlee is a bad contract, but Gallo despite putting up big numbers for himself was no help last year. He did not play defense at all, and was one of the last ones to accept that the ball should be going through Jokic. For all the bitching about Millsap, Gallo was just as bad with Jokic for at least half of last year.

The PG experiment with Murray, is no experiment, to those of us who watched last year it is not even a question if Murray is a PG, we already know the answer. The question is if he is too young to be trying to run an offense for a playoff team at 20 years old, many of the great PGs struggled to run an offense at such a young age. While his offensive numbers sucked before last night, his defensive numbers have been great, so it is only a matter of time before he puts it all together.

Lydon and Lyles both add something that this team desperately needed, and while some of us disagree with their choices, I doubt you will find a single nuggets fan that will tell you we did not need young forwards for this roster. If you follow this team since Josh kroenke took over, the Nuggets draft young players for the future and develop them to push out the veterans, it happened in the backcourt, it happened twice with Nurkic pushing out Mozgov, and than Jokic pushing out Nurkic, and they are hoping it happens again with Juancho pushing out chandler and Lyles pushing out Faried and eventually Milsap. We had 1 young forward going into the offseason, now we have 3 and we needed them.

[MidMountain]

Yes Plumlee is a bad contract, but Gallo despite putting up big numbers for himself was no help last year. He did not play defense at all, and was one of the last ones to accept that the ball should be going through Jokic. For all the bitching about Millsap, Gallo was just as bad with Jokic for at least half of last year.

The one thing I miss with Gallo is his ability to get to the free throw line at will. When the opposition goes on these 10-0 runs it would be nice to have a player that could get to the line, slow things down, and help dissipate the building momentum.

[NuggetsWY]

Weird game - Nuggets won but it wasn't a very impressive game anyway. Sure, some players had a great night and I enjoyed that. But the defense was not good.

Jokic - 16:28 minutes with 21 pts & 14 reb only 3 foul
Plumlee - 33 minutes and 10 pts & 7 reb and 5 fouls
seems strange to me

Millsap 41:48 - that can't continue
Chandler 37:42 - that can't continue

Jokic played almost 30 minutes last game, where did you get those minutes?

Interesting - I watched the game and felt like Jokic played more than 16 minutes but NBC's website had those numbers listed. I even double checked to see that they had the game as a final - and they did. Now their site has different numbers. My bad.

[NuggetsWY]

Do Jokic & Millsap fit well on the floor together on offense? Nope, not in my opinion. The ideal players to play with Jokic, as has been pointed out, are guys that are constantly cutting and moving. This is the same problem we had last year with Jokic & Nurkic in my opinion. Malone is basically running that same offense again.

Could Jokic & Millsap fit well on the floor together on offense? Sure! Gallinari wasn't a great cutting-moving type of guy and he worked great. All Malone has to do is station Millsap & Chandler or Barton in the Hernangomez region (wings at the three). Toss Jokic the ball in the key; let Murray & Harris (or Beasley or Mudiay) start cutting & moving. When Millsap/Chandler/Barton get open or have an open lane, they can either take the three or drive. That's basically what worked last season with Gallinari & Chandler - even Barton & Nelson (none of whom play like Harris & Murray).

[skywalker33]

Weird game - Nuggets won but it wasn't a very impressive game anyway. Sure, some players had a great night and I enjoyed that. But the defense was not good.

Jokic - 16:28 minutes with 21 pts & 14 reb only 3 foul
Plumlee - 33 minutes and 10 pts & 7 reb and 5 fouls
seems strange to me

Millsap 41:48 - that can't continue
Chandler 37:42 - that can't continue

Perhaps Malone was saving Jokic for the game against the Knicks, 2nd on a back-to-back