Game 16: Denver Nuggets (10-5) @ New Orleans Pelicans (8-7) - 7:00 PM ET

[ducler]

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[THE J0KER]

Pelicans 24 free throws, Nuggets only 5!? So New Orleans with FG%50% leading at halftime vs Denver with FG%60%!?

Jokic scored 18 pts in 10 minutes of the 1st quarter then played only 5 minutes in 2nd!? Malone's brain is full of mystery

[Mickey8]

Free throws numbers , whole Denver team 13 for the entire game, Davis 21, ridiculous , NBA is rigged no doubt about that.

[THE J0KER]

Denver scored 8 points from free throws, Davis 20 alone, so we probably have no chance anyway with such criteria.

Jokic has an overall good 25-10-8 game, but in the game where Davis has 40-8-8 he should do better. He is 7-9 in the 1st quarter, but just 3-11 in the rest of the game. Credit to Harris and Morris, and also offensively to Juancho.

We played this 240pts game in a very 2017-18 way, which is not a good thing when it goes to road games.

[Mickey8]

Jokic was mauled few times in the second quarter and in the third refs of course called nothing .

[NuggetsWY]

Need to attack the basket more, if we want to get more free throws. 39 3pt shot attempts says we were sitting outside and not attacking the basket.

The real story was on defense. We played as though the first guy to play serious defense would be benched. By quarter, New Orleans scored 37 33 28 27. They are a high scoring team, but letting their top-3 bigs score 81 points? That's a real problem.

[The Rebel]

Jokic has gotten a bad whistle since the whole "no homo" incident, and it makes me wonder if it is the league telling refs to call him tight?

Effort seems to be lacking on one end or the other every night, it is making me wonder if our guys are just not in the physical shape they should be. A team this young should not need to constantly conserve energy on one end of the court. As a long term Nuggets fan it really concerns me when it looks like we run out of gas in the 4th quarter playing a game at sea level. We have a huge advantage of training a mile high above sea level, which should not only give us an advantage at home, but on the road where we should have extra energy. I put our guys not being in the best of shape on our training staff, coaching staff, and the players as a whole.

Being out of shape is also a big reason why our offense and defense is so inconsistent. It is hard to constantly move off the ball, and up until this year Murray, Harris, Juancho, Beasley, Craig, and Barton all did it well. This year it seems to come in spurts, early in the game or right after a guy gets in the game he moves well for a few minutes and then they start standing around. Last year it seemed as if we had guys cutting through the paint constantly, now we can go 5 game minutes and not have any one cut through the lane 1 time.

Defense we switch everything sometimes and then switch nothing at times, but guys are a step behind all the time through the 1st 3 quarters, and instead of moving their body they are reaching and grabbing. That is not a technique problem, that is not a scheme problem, that is a lazy problem. Our 4th quarter defense is considerably better just about every game, are we just not in good enough shape to play that way the entire game?

If I was Malone I would go short rotations, 5 minutes at a time at most for any player not putting in max effort. Jokic taking his time getting down the court for defense, send in Plumlee. Murray and Harris don’t want to move without the ball, in comes Beasley and Morris, Millsap doesn’t go after every offensive rebound then bring in Lyles. Those guys don’t put in the effort than bring in Craig, Lydon, Welsh, Akoon-Purcell, and do it for a couple weeks while telling them straight out that if you don’t want to put in effort we will use the guys that will. I would bet within a couple of weeks our effort problems are gone and we can go back to winning games against good teams.

[U hova]

I'm not sure if the "no homo" fine has anything to do with it, but this was another poorly reffed game.

[Mickey8]

From the start of the game Denver didn't have a chance to compete fairly , Randle and his buddies were allowed to play physical game while Denver players couldn't even look in the directions of Pelicans players, most of the fouls called against Davis were laughable , while Jokic and Milsap were mauled and refs decided just to let it go.

[NuggetsWY]

Jokic has gotten a bad whistle since the whole "no homo" incident, and it makes me wonder if it is the league telling refs to call him tight?

Effort seems to be lacking on one end or the other every night, it is making me wonder if our guys are just not in the physical shape they should be. A team this young should not need to constantly conserve energy on one end of the court. As a long term Nuggets fan it really concerns me when it looks like we run out of gas in the 4th quarter playing a game at sea level. We have a huge advantage of training a mile high above sea level, which should not only give us an advantage at home, but on the road where we should have extra energy. I put our guys not being in the best of shape on our training staff, coaching staff, and the players as a whole.

Being out of shape is also a big reason why our offense and defense is so inconsistent. It is hard to constantly move off the ball, and up until this year Murray, Harris, Juancho, Beasley, Craig, and Barton all did it well. This year it seems to come in spurts, early in the game or right after a guy gets in the game he moves well for a few minutes and then they start standing around. Last year it seemed as if we had guys cutting through the paint constantly, now we can go 5 game minutes and not have any one cut through the lane 1 time.

Defense we switch everything sometimes and then switch nothing at times, but guys are a step behind all the time through the 1st 3 quarters, and instead of moving their body they are reaching and grabbing. That is not a technique problem, that is not a scheme problem, that is a lazy problem. Our 4th quarter defense is considerably better just about every game, are we just not in good enough shape to play that way the entire game?

If I was Malone I would go short rotations, 5 minutes at a time at most for any player not putting in max effort. Jokic taking his time getting down the court for defense, send in Plumlee. Murray and Harris don’t want to move without the ball, in comes Beasley and Morris, Millsap doesn’t go after every offensive rebound then bring in Lyles. Those guys don’t put in the effort than bring in Craig, Lydon, Welsh, Akoon-Purcell, and do it for a couple weeks while telling them straight out that if you don’t want to put in effort we will use the guys that will. I would bet within a couple of weeks our effort problems are gone and we can go back to winning games against good teams.

Lack of consistent effort - yup, lots of that. Out of shape? Perhaps. Lack of motivation? Perhaps and your last paragraph addresses that quite nicely. Taking away playing time can seriously hurt players in the future because salaries and honors/awards are all based mostly on stats.

Our offense is best when Harris & Murray & Barton are cutting & moving.

I've said repeatedly, I can't find a pattern in our defense and laziness might just be part of that. Most coaches like to say, "Defense is all about effort" or something like that.

I'll go back to the last three years where many thought I was out of perspective (or exaggerating) when I kept complaining about "we need to play our young players". Malone likes to play the veterans and I get that, many coaches do. But he had veterans who were "mailing it in" and that means lazy. Our young players have learned from the veterans --- that's just my opinion and I've been wrong before.

Lack of effort - lack of motivation - lack of consistency --- either that's bad players or lazy players or poor coaching --- or a combination of those things.