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GSP wrote:As great as Jokic is it's gonna be tough having a strong enough playoff defense to win it all with him as your center. You're gonna need an All Defense wing and an elite shotblocking, pick and roll and versatile 4 that can switch on anyone except maybe Pgs. That's gonna be extremely difficult to find considering how much he gives up defensively at the rim as a rim protector, inability to contain penetration and struggles with pick and roll defense. You can't play drop for an entire title run

tell that to bucks, they are trying pretty hard to win in Spite of it

I can't remember the last playoff series where Chris Paul went for the jugular in every game. Its been a long time.

NinjaSheppard wrote:I can't remember the last playoff series where Chris Paul went for the jugular in every game. Its been a long time.

I think its more b/c Denver doesnt have a defensive guard with Dozier out.

Cp3 is getting to the right elbow at will and 5'9 Campazzo and Austin Rivers sure wont be able to do anything about that. Hunting Mpj who cant move laterally to save his life too

Next round should be sick if Conley is healthy theyve been the 2 best teams in the conference all year

Jokic is an amazing offensive player, but he's a center who can't anchor your defense; even if he was by far the best offensive player in history, being a non-defensive anchor center alone puts a massive cap on his actual value. Basketball fans have the shortest memory of any sports fans, maybe because no sport is so different from the daily/weekly grind to the big games. Every time the RS starts people forget the meta game of the playoffs. It's the weirdest thing, for years now the guy who wins MVP is then completely exposed as not even close to the most valuable player in the league in the playoffs, but then as soon as the next RS starts it's like people forget that happened.

That said, although he's not even close to being the MVP of the league, Jokic is super skilled and fun to watch. Hope Denver can figure things out around him, I think it'll have to be something close to the Dallas model with Dirk. You need to find a real center to protect the rim and anchor the defense and have Jokic play the 4

Nuggets defense was bad

Denver is short handed and exhausted. I wouldn't really read much into this series.

Or maybe the nuggets are just outmatched without their second best player and a starting backcourt of campazzo/rivers doesn't quite cut it defensively? It's disingenuous to put it all on jokic with a broad stance like that now that they're struggling. His current workload is enormous.

I also criticize Jokic defense at times, but it's silly to have all of that on him right now. Nuggets hace horrible defensive backcourt and MPJ doesn't help at all.

Yeah I'm drawing zero conclusions from a series where the Nuggets are starting this a 30 year old rookie and a guy who they signed off waivers iirc (not a shot at either but they're not really starters on a good team).

I can’t really blame Jokic for this series even if they get swept. There’s really not much more he can do with the backcourt getting destroyed, and MPJ and Gordon looking terrible.

Have to love the sharks coming out. MPJ and Barton are nowhere to be seen in the PnR either, but somehow this is epic proof that Jokic isn't as good as advertised.

Suns are a championship caliber team, the Nuggets are not.

All that needs to be said about this forum is looking at the post saying that Jokic doesn't deserve to win MVP - because his injured team is going to be swept by the team with the 2nd best record in the league lol.

Chris Paul was pretty easily picking off their ballhandling, and then went on to destroy them on the other end. Don't think Denver stood a chance.

Suns look pretty damn good. So is Utah. This will be a great WCF between two hungry teams.

Nuggets made a mistake letting some guys go in the off season which hurt their d and the Murray injury really hurts their scoring in the post season.

HeartBreakKid wrote:Have to love the sharks coming out. MPJ and Barter are nowhere to be seen in the PnR either, but somehow this is epic proof that Jokic isn't as good as advertised.

Suns are a championship caliber team, the Nuggets are not.

All that needs to be said about this forum is looking at the post saying that Jokic doesn't deserve to win MVP - because his injured team is going to be swept by the team with the 2nd best record in the league lol.

This, Jokic pretty much has no help and the Suns are pretty good.

A) The Nuggets are getting blasted and it's not a big surprise looking at the two rosters.

B) I think folks are going a bit far with the no help stuff. Murray is obviously a huge piece and him missing removes them from contender status for sure, but after that the only guy missing is Dozier. Morris/Rivers/Campazzo/Barton (limited) are all solid guards, this isn't a ???-year KAJ situation here.

C) In my opinion, the Nuggets are under-performing even given injury adjustments. Much of this is on MPJ, who's had an extremely rough series. But Jokic himself has also struggled to score efficiently with his help cut back (his volume has also been a bit unimpressive given what's called for without Murray).

I'm not gonna bury the dude, but this isn't a good series for Jokic at all.

It's hard to win when Austin Rivers is starting and playing 30 minutes. Speaking from personal experience here as someone who had to watch an entire season of that.

Don't think Denver needed to make that Harris/Gordon trade.. Harris was instrumental for them last season against Utah. Even with Murray back, their guard defense will still be an issue.

If anything it is usually the opposite. Jokic gets all the credit for the wins and no blame for the losses. The argument that Jokic has no help has been going for years. Murray carried them through the first round (Jokic was still good offensively, defensively he was not) last year, barely saving them from a first round loss against a lower seed yet there was not much talk about Jokic defense and him getting outplayed by his teammates. After the bubble, the narrative was how Jokic had proven himself in the playoffs. Murray was also partly blamed, at least here on realgm, for their mediocre season early in the year but people decided to mainly blame Grant for the defensive issues, an ok player but i never heard people crediting him that much for the team defense when he was playing for the Nuggets. Essentially, every player becomes pretty good as soon as he gets injured/ leaves and is pretty mediocre when he was playing. The team even went and got Gordon to play that role, yet Jokic has no help because he is missing his non all star (as Jokic fans say sometimes) teammate. Not that Jokic is not a good player but i feel people are focusing more on what he does and less on what he does not. Maybe its his lack of athleticism and doing it all with just "skill" that has caused people to be a bit less harsh in the their criticism.

Dupp wrote:Nuggets made a mistake letting some guys go in the off season which hurt their d and the Murray injury really hurts their scoring in the post season.

They tried really hard to keep Grant matching that big offer. He wanted to go. Letting Craig go hurt especially as he didn't get paid anywhere and Plumlee hurt but I understood their choice to keep Milsap instead.

I think what ultimately killed them was Gary Harris 2 years ago suddenly forgetting how to play NBA offense at all. No idea what happened there. He was never a great offensive player, but he was definitely a guy you could keep on the court. That old Harris would be helping them so much more than Aaron Gordon right now.

I also think long-term they need to decide between Murray and Porter Jr and leverage the other one for some smart role players. Problem is Murray might have to be the keeper now with that injury and already a guy whose value was really diminished as a max guy.

Hope they figure it out though. But yet another cautionary tale to those who think a team has this talented young core and a wide open window. They can close super fast.

I don’t think Denver made a mistake with the Gordon trade at all. The point of that trade was for Gordon to be a cutter/finisher and guard big perimeter players as the 4th option behind Jokic, Murray, and MPJ. The Murray injury really messed that up and now MPJ and Gordon have moved up the pecking order on team scouting reports. And the Nuggets 2 opponents have been guard centric on offense instead of the expected big wings (Bron/Kawhi/PG).

Nuggets decision making for the most part since last offseason has been all good process, unfortunate results. They offered Grant the same money my Pistons did but Grant had other reasons for wanting to leave. The version of Gary Harris a couple years ago who was an awesome cutter/finisher, great defender, and good shooter would’ve fit perfect but the man has forgotten how to shoot and injuries have taken away how finishing. A lot of tough breaks.

Hopefully Murray can recover well but I fear they’ve missed a huge opportunity this season to make a run through no fault of their own.