lessthanjake wrote:I think the idea that the Nuggets’ supporting cast is a particularly good fit for Jokic is pretty weak.
Jokic’s biggest weakness as a player is his lack of rim protection. A great fit for Jokic defensively would be having another big that could cover for that weakness. He doesn’t have that. Aaron Gordon is a good player, but that’s just not something he provides, and they don’t have any meaningful big off the bench at all. So that weakness is just left out there unmitigated. Jokic does enough stuff well defensively that he can make up for it overall, but the team would be better off if the supporting cast could actively provide the thing Jokic most lacks.
When we get to offense, the fit doesn’t have quite such an obvious flaw, but it’s still far from uniquely good. And we saw some important examples of that in the series they lost. Jokic likes to run things either through the post or with DHOs. What we’ve seen is that the best way to slow down the offense from Jokic’s post ups is to have two big bodies, such that you can put one on Jokic and still have a rim protector behind him, and then double Jokic and force a pass out to someone that will be met by a rim protector if they attack the close out. We’ve seen the Nuggets not always be able to get good offense out of that situation. But this defensive game plan being at all effective is really pretty contingent on flaws in the Nuggets supporting cast. Most obviously, why is that rim protector even able to be roaming near the paint in the first place? On a lot of NBA teams, that wouldn’t be possible, because everyone else besides the center would be a shooter. But Aaron Gordon isn’t. So Jokic passes out of a double, and if his teammate attacks the close out, they just run into a rim protector. That’s not ideal at all. And that’s not even getting into the fact that multiple key players aren’t good at attacking the close out anyways. If Jokic passes out of a double to someone, it’s basically either to guys that can’t put the ball on the floor very well (KCP and MPJ), that aren’t going to be closed out on hard (Gordon), or that are small and easily deterred by the roaming rim protector that’ll be there (Murray). Overall, these deficiencies make it way easier to shut the advantage Jokic creates (and we saw that occur against the Wolves). Meanwhile, the same basic problem goes for mitigating the effectiveness of Jokic picking out cutters—one of the things that Jokic is GOAT-level at. The lack of floor spacing can mean that some defenses can meet the cutter with a roaming rim protector, which can really limit what the Nuggets do against some teams with a GOAT-level skill Jokic possesses. Not being able to optimally exploit one of your superstar’s GOAT-level skills is not an ideal fit! And, of course, the same goes for what is created out of DHOs. DHOs are supposed to get the opposing big out of the paint and give the receiving player a head of steam to get past the defenders in the action and get to the basket. The Nuggets’ lack of floor spacing puts a real wrench in that against certain types of teams/lineups, who can just park a big near the basket during the DHO action—a particular problem when Jokic’s primary DHO partner is a relatively small player.
Ultimately, of course, all supporting casts have some weaknesses, but a supporting cast isn’t some uniquely good fit when it doesn’t at all mitigate its superstar’s biggest weakness, while also having obvious flaws that clearly allow certain teams or types of lineups to meaningfully mitigate what the team can do with what is created by the team’s GOAT-level creator. Nor is it really that big of an ask these days to be able to space the floor around your center, to have guys that can put the ball on the floor, and/or even to get some rim protection from a power forward. It’s not like I’m saying the Nuggets’ supporting cast isn’t an ideal fit because it’s not perfect—its lack of fit is caused by some pretty basic flaws.
Granted, Jokic and the Nuggets are good enough in general that an opposing team exploiting these deficiencies in Jokic’s supporting cast is still unlikely to be successful—it took the rim protector being Rudy Gobert, having very long and athletic wing defenders, and Murray and MPJ being abnormally cold, etc. to actually beat the Nuggets this year. But Jokic being good enough that the margin of error in beating them is small regardless of the team’s flaws doesn’t mean the team is a uniquely good fit.
I feel people hear something and it goes in one ear and out the other
So defensively, what makes the nuggets a good defensive team is they’re generally running relatively aggressive coverages (not saying they’re blitzing but catch hedges high drops) and are a very strong rotating team. Beyond that, you have strong positional help defenders at every position aside from Murray (I mean MPJ grew to 7 foot lmao, AG obviously). Now, of course there is the fact that they don’t have a true rim protector beyond Jokic… at the same time, there are very few rim protectors in the league you can run with Jokic with it making sense to have that level of slow at the 4 and 5 spots outside of very high caliber players. You lose AG in that situation too, so you then need someone with the same level of intelligence as a cutter or dunker spot guy, and off ball screen etc and also you lose your best wing stopper since KCP is more of a guy to guard 1s and 2s.
You generally need an anchor big more so than a rotation one too in this context as that’s the missing role, but they also have to be strong at crisp rotations to support aggressive coverages since teams put Jokic in those actions in the playoffs. So what ends up happening once all the moving pieces end adjustments wise against a smart offensice team is you put Jokic on the worst offensive player in this context but you end up ina. Similar situation to all poor defenders who are hidden but a bit more exploitable size wise and less general rotation ability overall.
There are players that fit the bill, but generally they aren’t gonna cause voids on the other end and it more mitigates than cures
The idea of the post offense not being great solely because AG isn’t a good shooter doesn’t really hold much weight when you consider what a post offense needs and the type of weaknesses help creates in terms of areas of exploit, and beyond that the type of help defense that the wolves were employing succesfully.
The most common type of help the wolves employed overall was a high double and a bump to slightly take away the pass right to the top guy helped off of and scram switches, which would be mixed up with softer digs and occasionally weakside lurks which is what’s being talked about here.
The idea behind basketball driving lanes is creating positioning to make large gaps, and an idea beyond that is to create number advantages with less people in areas of weaknesses so it’s easier to exploit. AG being a three point shooter doesn’t mean everyone sticks to him on the weakside, we saw when the nuggets thought of that and tried have AG give the entry pass that they still just rotated off KCP and stopped the cut early.
What ends up happening is instead of having a 2v1 weakside advantage it’s a 3v2 since one guy steps up a bit anyways, except he doesn’t have to do quite as much since now rathe than watch the dunker and potential cut he only has to watch the cut. Beyond that if it’s Rudy who steps up then he gets way more freedoms to disrupt the weakside passing lanes since he doesn’t have to watch the lob to AG, and then you can adjust the help defense to more strongly take away the strong side kick out and have the weakness be at the weakside where the nuggets would have fared even worse in. In fact, what teams that go 5 out do is often have a guy set a screen on the dude whose helping off a bit baseline to watch the cut to create a true 2v1 on the weakside, which was accomplished anyway!
The DHO point literally makes no sense because 100% Jokic’s biggest strength in the short roll is the short lob like Dray used to do with curry. Off the cutting DHO actions where they didn’t run short roll and Murray got stuffed it would be the guy on Jokic would help and stop the shot at the rim, it’s inherently a bit harder to playmake out of that as the BH since ur going downhill recklessly almost especially if ur talking passing it behind you to a guy who hasn’t shot that well the series.
In fact I went through every DHO Miss murray had inside the arc that he got off a Jokic handoff, I think almost every single Miss was Jokic’s defender being the guy to switch or help off of him.
Now it is valid to say that AG at the dunker if a guy like Gobert is there means it’s a tad bit easier to stop cuts… but again he’s likely stepping up anyway because of the aforementioned 3v2 being easier than the 2v1.
People often misunderstand and oversimplify what’s going on, on the basketball court and think shooting solves everything or that the only thing that stopped Jokic was size and bigs constantly doubling him. Those examples stick out because when they put AG on the strong side to the the entry and cut then yes you have two bigs hard doubling shutting down the passing lanes which honestly were markedly smaller
When Jokic was able to get some sort of penetration before the double came or established deep position pre catch they generally had good results, but usually he was settling for passes right after the catch because he doesn’t attack that quickly that often, and since defense has more time to come over and bug him the pass if he got in but was just getting swarmed was harder
Denver has basically been the blueprint for an intelligently designed post up offense for the last few years for a reason, whether you want to say that’s on Malone, adelmen, the whole team itself and their chemistry, who knows. Without the constraints of a salary cap and reality then sure it’s not perfect, but within those constraints having a top 3 HC, in Xs and Os at least that’s the best at designing a post offense (and no one here is gonna evaluate that side of basketball better than me lol let’s be real), great defensive rotation principles and positional size/positional help defense all’s round, 2 movement shooters, pick and roll player whose best strength is finding the pocket pass and making difficult shots and willing to accept those roles, etc etc, intelligent top tier dunker spot guy whose also the best wing stopper on the team and general high level team intelligence from a read and react standpoint vs help in terms of not being stagnant off help
Like if the idea is that they weren’t great because they couldn’t consistently create great looks off not so great advantages passing around and having to do a lot of work still, then you can really say the same about a ton of players, like early Gianni’s before they shifted to 4 out 1 in offensively getting stifled by prerotations in the playoffs, or even KD on the nets vs the Celtics getting stifled on some stunts. The idea is creating large enough advantages, not small enough ones that a perfect team could capitalize on, some possessions were just good looks missed or great advantages created but plenty were pass outs resets desperation fallback actions after a post up didn’t create anything etc etc.
A lot of times when a player struggles or isn’t ready or has some sort of defining flaws it’s more so an inability to force large advantages in non-ideal circumstances, but the offensive Goat tier guys can create fantastic results even in those situations. The idea of circumstance often gets too tied down to preconceived notions of overall talent levels rather than actual things going on, on the court.
The issue at the end of the day is a ton of people (not saying you) hide behind advanced data with occasional vague on court insights or buzzwords or quotes online without having the actual on court knowledge to dissect what’s going on at a deeper level, you see some people bend over backwards, use absurd explanations, or point out flawed videos and extrapolate those things to some absurd levels to justify data that honestly is much simpler and mundane to explain at times or likely comes from something g entirely unrelated to that players on court or off court play. I mean the Gobert glaze as if he was the main guy or reason stopping Jokic was absurd lol.
I think the wolves were a tough matchup for Jokic and he struggled, I think people think saying Jokic struggled or he’s arguably not BITW is some sort of absurd hate and it really isn’t, all it means is I think he’s more peak curry on offense than a peak jordan/bron/magic and think he has flaws defensively that you don’t see in the RS nor in raw season impact data based upon how teams approach RS matchups and personnel issues
Me saying Jokic is in a uniquely good fit does not mean I think in other situations similar to the other top in the league guys he’d be worse or all of those guys would be better, or that he doesn’t have an argument in a vacuum. I think the 4 of them have a reasonable claim to BITW (shai if his defensive numbers aren’t fake I don’t watch OKC), but people will hear me say I think an optimized Giannis clears and think that’s some sort of thinly veiled shot at Jokic and not me simply saying that I think he didn’t get fundamentally far less talented as a defender than a few years ago because of impact data because I understand these are human beings and have common sense, and offensively even with some awful coaching some role alignment this year and a more diverse usage of his skillset allowed him to have a fantastic offensice year overall and if he combined this with DPOY level play in the playoffs or just general improvement on both ends from a good coaching staff which he’s never had in the postseason that’s probably a generational two way peak
Me thinking Jokic is overrated is much more pushing back at the “Goat offense!?!?!” Stuff which just isn’t warranted yet, even before this series I do think he’s likely a top 5 offensive player ever, and overall he’s a more volatile curry peak wise for me which is still quite high, but I more so think other players are underrated. I just think some people look at data and have that completely shape their opinions rather than support it and view themselves as open minded towards data rather than blinded by it, and thus think that me having the top at a similar tier is hate rather than just me being a bit lower on Jokic than some of his bigger supporters and higher on other players. My criticism of this series is more so pushback against the idea that it’s all the role players fault and Jokic isn’t to blame and it’s because everyone around him was historically bad because that’s only ture only looking at direct averages rather than look at games at an individual level to see what’s going on in each game.
