lessthanjake wrote:Jamal Murray is not an all-NBA player. He has played like one in some playoff series, but that’s not what he is overall IMO and that’s *definitely* not what he has played like in this series. Murray is a borderline all-star player (who probably isn’t even playing at that level in this series). Gordon, MPJ, and KCP are of course role players, but they are all genuinely good starting NBA players. Meanwhile, the Nuggets bench is okay at best.
The overall picture in terms of talent for the Nuggets is not overwhelmingly high. If we are just evaluating rosters, their advantage on other teams (including the Lakers) comes obviously at #1, as well as at #3-5 (with #4 and #5 being particular strengths, IMO, regardless of which Nuggets starters you define as their #4 and #5 guys). Their #2 spot and the bench are relative weaknesses. The overall talent picture is good but not overwhelming.
But, as we know, stacking talent isn’t everything. Some teams just play better together and are better than the sum of their parts. There’s a ton of factors that go into that. There’s coaching, natural style-of-play chemistry between players, familiarity with each other, group confidence and mental game, etc. I think the Nuggets excel in this in general. Most obviously, Gordon and Murray both have fantastic chemistry with Jokic, in a way that really makes those guys substantially more valuable on this team than they’d be somewhere else. Of course, it also helps that a lot of the team has a good bit of experience playing together. Moreover, I think that mentally the team as a whole has a quiet confidence that isn’t over-emotional, which likely stems from the mental makeup of Jokic, Murray, and Malone and filters down to everyone—not to mention the obvious confidence a team gets from having won a title together. This sort of calm confidence is really helpful in key moments. Another chemistry thing that is also in part a mental thing is that I think Jokic’s style of play naturally filters down to the rest of the team and helps the team’s on-court chemistry a lot—with guys making the extra effort to make cuts and extra effort plays, having confidence that the rest of the team (and in particular Jokic) will reward them for it. It’s a lot more likely for guys to play stagnant basketball if they don’t think expending some of their limited energy to do something will actually be rewarded. Another thing about having success as a team and having an MVP-level guy like Jokic is that it makes players more likely to accept their role and to build on it more optimally. For instance, MPJ has IMO improved a good bit on defense, and I think part of that is that he’s accepted what his role is on the team and that he needs to contribute positively on defense—on a different team, I could see MPJ feeling like he needs to be a key offensive option and conserve his energy on defense.
Anyways, there’s a lot of other things as well. The bottom line is that I think there’s not a huge talent gap between the two teams (and to the extent there is, it’s largely just because of Jokic), but the Nuggets are better than the sum of their parts. Meanwhile, the Lakers are probably less good than the sum of their parts—at least they certainly were in the regular season IMO, though I think some of that was just trying out weird rotations, which doesn’t necessarily reflect on how good their actual playoff rotation is. That and some luck has resulted in the Nuggets having a huge win streak against the Lakers. It’s not like the Nuggets are just blowing out the Lakers left and right though—the talent is enough to keep the Lakers in it, but just perpetually slightly below.
This is stupid. The nuggets clearly have a supreme coaching advantage and 2-way talent advantage on the wings (KCP, MPJ, AG are an all time role player wing corp imo) which has been the core identity of their defense. Notice the plays where Aaron Gordon was down low vs 4 Lakers perimeter players and embarrassed all of them on the boards (and dominated LeBron on the glass) or the plays where MPJ just shot over Austin Reaves.
You can also see how well Nuggets are able to pack the paint on LeBron and AD because they're big and fast enough to play straight up help and recover to the smaller slower Lakers' shooters instead of having to play exotic coverages like the Lakers are doing with high strong side doubles with bump overs and X-outs on the weakside that forces the defense into rotations. And not only that, you can clearly see how poorly coached they are on navigating those help the helper actions on both a larger schematic level; and how poor their attention to detail is on having active hands in slowing down passes and moving into position early on rotations.
All you said about talent is well and good if basketball was played on paper, after all who can forget the legendary statement you made earlier in this thread that the Lakers aren't low on talent because they have LeBron and AD. But that's not how basketball actually works if you understand what goes on at a schematic level while understanding synergy and feedback loops on offense and defense.
LeBron's NBA Cup MVP is more valuable than either of KD's Finals MVPs. This is the word of the Lord