What in the Hell Can the Nuggets Do?

[TorontoBarneys]

Send Westbrook to China

This.
The small consolation being that Westbrook is now in a small market so you don't hear about this idiot nearly as often as the last couple years.

[celtxman]

They are the victim of the CBA. It WILL affect your team if you are a championship contender. It is so incredibly punitive where an NBA minimum salary becomes a $10 million penalty if you are over the 2nd apron. Even if there was a way to sign Bruce Brown, ultimately him and KCP could not have been kept due to the apron. They lost quality depth they couldn't replace.

[Chuck Everett]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

[guynumber45]

They are the victim of the CBA. It WILL affect your team if you are a championship contender. It is so incredibly punitive where an NBA minimum salary becomes a $10 million penalty if you are over the 2nd apron. Even if there was a way to sign Bruce Brown, ultimately him and KCP could not have been kept due to the apron. They lost quality depth they couldn't replace.

The bigger issue is Jamal Murray regressing from an elite 2nd option to a mediocre 6th man at best. If Jamal Murray actually played up to his max contract, the Nuggets would at the very least be a top 4 seed.

[guynumber45]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

This isn't even Malone's first screw-up with a backup big. He had Hartenstein back in the day and had him buried on the bench. He is absolutely horrendous in developing young players, but has gotten away with it because Jokic covers up so much. Dude deserves to be canned at the end of this season.

[Ssj16]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

I'm not going to lie, I rarely look at Malone when I think about the Nuggets issues and that's because I believe Murray or the GM (for giving Murray his contract) the biggest pieces of the blame pie.

That being said, now that you point it out, I think this is a fair criticism.

[LeBronSpaghetti]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

Thank you, I’ve been saying this all year. Even if the Nuggets got a true backup big Malone wouldn’t know it if he was sitting 6 feet away from him… which is literally true in the case of guys like Huff and Hartenstein. Makes me wonder if Nnaji is actually bad or Malone just doesn’t know how to use him.

[Chuck Everett]

Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer got sacked and yet Malone is just untouchable in many people's eyes. People act like the guy is Pop or Kerr.

[JonFromVA]

Mike Malone has had a good run, but most coaches wear out their welcome eventually. Moving on from Mike is one option (and David Adelman is a good option already with the Nuggets), but seems to me their primary challenge is rebuilding their depth on the cheap. That doesn't happen overnight unless you get extremely lucky.

[Wolfgang630]

Zeke naji has the 5TH highest salary on the team and he doesn’t play. This is vastly on Calvin booth. His mentality completely screwed this situation and he put this team in a corner where it’s hard to make moves. It all starts with him because he gave Jamal the extension. Where is the bench??? Where is the backup Center Jokic has never had??? Where is the 3 point shooting?? This is all on him.

Jamal gets the next blame because he is the number 2 guy and has completely regressed. What happened to him? Forget the contract he’s not playing at an even regular season level. And he’s already had arrogance issues. He’s never been a great number 2 and a couple years in the playoffs he managed to pull off looking like Kobe doesn’t speak for who he’s been overall in his career.

The bench is next, but that goes back to Calvin Booth. Malone should be after that for his weak development and getting carried massively by Jokic that he gets little criticism. How is your team barely shooting threes in this era? I don’t like how teams shoot this volume, but it is what it is and this team playing like a team from 15-20 years ago on three point volume ain’t going to cut it.

[Godymas]

Take Zeke Nnaji and Dario Saric’s contracts and start hunting for a guy at the deadline. Use a pick.

The Nets will be sellers and Denver should be VERY interested in Dorian Finney Smith and maybe Cam Thomas

[Snake3]

It's fixable, but I think they have to trade to get the off some bad contracts.

The starting five is good. They don't have to do anything about that. They could trade MPJ for depth.

But they really need to get off Zeke and Saric contract.

They could resign Justin Holiday. He's a cheap 3d guy. They could sign RoCo, he's a 3nd guy, but old. They could get Lonnie Walker, he's a microwave bucket, but inconsistent. Still better than what they have. They could get Kendrick Nunn. He could help with the shooting. They probably can't get all of them, but they could get at least one or two. This is from the buyout market.

If they do get players from the buyout market, they still may have to trade for a big and cap room.

But overall it's fixable despite it looking bleak. The problem is that can you trust Booth to make the right moves or can he even make the move to fix the situation that he put put them in? He really wanted to build role players through the draft and that ain't working out. Apparently there is conflict between him and Malone.

I don't know if they could buyout Saric and some of the other players. If they can't and no one wants to trade for them, then they are screwed this season. They could try to trade for Cam Thomas and Cameron Johnson. That would help, but they would likely have to trade for MPJ and one other player and a pick. Cam Thomas is free agent next year, so he's going to try to get paid and he won't be able to stay. That's a win now move. They still need to add depth to the bench.

[PlatinumState]

Giving MPJ the max was the nail in the coffin. You dont give a player like that the max. Letting go of Bruce Brown amd KCP was also when the dominoes started to fall and giving Murray the max (while understandable) wasnt great

[Blame Rasho]

Their core players( making over 20 million) outside of Joker need to step up. You don’t get paid so much to be mediocre.

The thing is that if you remove Joker from them, who is exactly calling the Nuggets for any of their assets.

[BelgradeNugget]

Every member of the starting 5 still has a positive EPM, despite some of their individual struggles.

Collectively, Murray-Braun-Porter-Gordon-Jokic sport a +12.5 net rating 164 minutes of action. It's a healthy lineup.

But there's a steep decline after their 5 best players. Their 6th-ranked player is Westbrook with a -1.4 EPM. Then it gets even worse, and fast.

Basically, this suggests that Denver's starting 5 is fine, but that they have no depth and that their bench guys aren't even NBA players. Whenever their bench guys come in, their performance plummets.

The front office placed its bets on the wrong prospects in the draft, and losing KCP depleted their bench, by domino effect.

They need to trade their remaining draft picks and bench guys salaries for NBA players who can provide two-way play from their bench. They're not getting equal value for Murray or MPJ on the market.

Good analysis of the current state of the Nuggets, but there is more. Last season Braun with bench bad. This season Braun with starters great. This season Watson/Westbrook/Strawhter in 2 man lineups with Jokic NETRTG +6.2/+3.8/+1.2. Their overal NETRTG this season is -2.4/-13.3/-10.4.

Without Jokic on the court Nuggets look like g-league team. And that is the secret, they don't look like a team, nobody knows what is he soposed to do without Jokic.

During last night game vs Wizards Katy Winge from Altitude reported how Nuggets last TO was all about Jokic. He was talking how they are sopposed to play defense, offense, drawing plays. We saw it in the playoffs in 2022/23, and multiple times last season. My question is what is coaching staff doing?

So, the answer is simple FIRE Malone.

[Snake3]

People keep dissing Porter Jr, but he's been their second best player and has not missed a single game (unlike Jokic, Gordon and Murray). Malone sat two starters against the Wizards, while also not building any confidence in his bench. When is the coach going to get blame for sucking? Every other coach gets smoke, but this guy somehow escapes it. Jay Huff is averaging nearly 10ppg off the bench for Memphis this season and the guy wouldn't play him last year.

Thank you, I’ve been saying this all year. Even if the Nuggets got a true backup big Malone wouldn’t know it if he was sitting 6 feet away from him… which is literally true in the case of guys like Huff and Hartenstein. Makes me wonder if Nnaji is actually bad or Malone just doesn’t know how to use him.

I do agree with this that Mike Malone don't know how good he had with the bigs he had before under Jokic. Zeke could be good under a different system like I.Hart and Jay Huff.

They still don't have good pieces on the bench even if Zeke is lowkey good. And they can't seem to score at all. It appears they don't run any actions. They run iso. If that's the case, they should get a player who is solid at isos and get more 3nd guys. They can barely score anyway. They have by far the worst bench in the league when it comes to net rating.

I don't think firing Mike Malone is going to do anything with the roster that they have.

[Statlanta]

Nothing but search the waiver wire/buyout market, this roster is cooked until a major trade or a draft miracle presents itself.

[OmniDEN]

Every member of the starting 5 still has a positive EPM, despite some of their individual struggles.

Collectively, Murray-Braun-Porter-Gordon-Jokic sport a +12.5 net rating 164 minutes of action. It's a healthy lineup.

But there's a steep decline after their 5 best players. Their 6th-ranked player is Westbrook with a -1.4 EPM. Then it gets even worse, and fast.

Basically, this suggests that Denver's starting 5 is fine, but that they have no depth and that their bench guys aren't even NBA players. Whenever their bench guys come in, their performance plummets.

The front office placed its bets on the wrong prospects in the draft, and losing KCP depleted their bench, by domino effect.

They need to trade their remaining draft picks and bench guys salaries for NBA players who can provide two-way play from their bench. They're not getting equal value for Murray or MPJ on the market.

Hello, Nuggets fan for over 20 yrs here. I have never seen anyone else accurately describe the Nuggets situation as you just did. Nice job. 100% agree.

[zero rings]

There's nothing we can do. Calvin Booth traded or tied up all of our picks in nothing moves, and guys like Porter and Gordon have little value. Murray is obviously untradable.
 
Let the season play out and then fire everyone. Booth obviously needs to go, and I'd say Malone does as well. You can't roll out the worst bench in the NBA for 5 straight years and not take the fall as a coach. Booth has certainly done him no favors, but other teams have scrubs coming off the bench and they manage to look like NBA players. The Nuggets look like a Chinese team anytime Jokic isn't on the floor.

After that we build up our draft capital over the next couple years, then use the remaining Murray/Porter/Gordon contracts + picks to acquire some good players to pair with Jokic. Maybe then we can salvage the tail end of Jokic's prime.

[Lala870]

The west is way too stacked yet again. Trading Jokic needs to happen ASAP to get rid of Murray/MPJ

Its wild people think players like Justin Holiday are gonna make the Nuggets contenders lol

Im looking forward to the inevitable MPJ tell all in a podcast years from now where he says he was playing injured when they gave him that contract