The Rebel wrote:Reading this thread I cannot figure out if you guys do not realize how stacked this team is compared to other contenders or if I have lost my mind. We are 5-1 without our 2nd best player, and a lot of those games have been blowouts. Teams that lose their 2nd best player do not usually continue win streaks.
We have 6 starting quality players when healthy, we have 10 guys who are rotation players on good teams. There are literally contenders starting guys who were paid to go away by their last team or Gleague quality players in their rotation. We have 2 guys who were starters for conference finals teams last year that are competing for minutes off the bench this year.
Losing Murray hurts, but let's be real Morris is a starting quality PG. Gordon was the 2nd option on a playoff team, he is arguably the best 4th option in the league, and is a well above average 3rd option. Jokic is having the best season in the league, and it isn't particularly close. While MPJ is only in his 2nd year playing, he is putting up star quality numbers on a nightly basis. People can talk all the **** they want, but this team was easily a contender fully healthy.
I do not get this whole idea that we should be making short term moves, the only way to add talent is through the draft and ring chasers once you become contenders. TEams are not signing the top free agents, they are signing low level guys because of the way the salary cap is structured. We have a young contender, why the rush to **** it up?
You are talking about the ability of this team to make a similar winning record without Murray, but this thread is not about regular season W/R record at all, but about the Nuggets' inability to make "the next step" without Murray. The next step for the Nuggets is to reach for the first time ever NBA final in 2021 or 2022, which was a realistic goal just a week before but not so much right now. Talking about regular-season winning records, remind you that in the season before Kawhi goes to Toronto, the Raptors were better seed (#1) and have a better W/L record than when Kawhi comes, and the very next season after Kawhi gone they repeated #2 seed on EC. But everyone knows they are for playoff battles truly competitive only that season with Kawhi Leonard, so in 2018 and 2020 they won only one PO series but all four (aka ring) in 2020!
Compared to the 2020 playoff, Jokic is clearly better now than last year in his post-COVID version, Porter too, Barton is healthy, while Gordon is a fair replacement for Grant. But without Murray who played last summer as a HOF monster and without notable (Harris-like) backcourt defender we are at best on the same level as in 2020. LeBron James played last season playoff as a backcourt player, so In the last 30 years, the only team which won Western Conference without an all-star level guard was the 1999 Spurs. Without Murray, and losing in the past two seasons notable guards Beasley, Harris, and Hampton, every WC team right now have at least one better guard than our the best ones!? So how Denver is going to win the 2021 WC title?
The Rebel wrote:Reading this thread I cannot figure out if you guys do not realize how stacked this team is compared to other contenders or if I have lost my mind. We are 5-1 without our 2nd best player, and a lot of those games have been blowouts. Teams that lose their 2nd best player do not usually continue win streaks.
We have 6 starting quality players when healthy, we have 10 guys who are rotation players on good teams. There are literally contenders starting guys who were paid to go away by their last team or Gleague quality players in their rotation. We have 2 guys who were starters for conference finals teams last year that are competing for minutes off the bench this year.
Losing Murray hurts, but let's be real Morris is a starting quality PG. Gordon was the 2nd option on a playoff team, he is arguably the best 4th option in the league, and is a well above average 3rd option. Jokic is having the best season in the league, and it isn't particularly close. While MPJ is only in his 2nd year playing, he is putting up star quality numbers on a nightly basis. People can talk all the **** they want, but this team was easily a contender fully healthy.
I do not get this whole idea that we should be making short term moves, the only way to add talent is through the draft and ring chasers once you become contenders. TEams are not signing the top free agents, they are signing low level guys because of the way the salary cap is structured. We have a young contender, why the rush to **** it up?
I agree that we should not be making short-term BIG fixes and have said so.
I do believe this team, without Murray will not only make the playoffs but can win a first round series if they can remain in the top-4 of the West have said just that.
I have said that I believe this is a time to figure out just which guards are going to be long-term Nuggets: Barton, Dozier, Howard, Harrison, Morris, Campazzo. I do not object to keep any of those, but the question ends up being, who is going to start next to Murray and who are the top two backups?
I do not believe this team, without Murray, can compete with LAL, LAC, and probably Utah & Phoenix - not in a seven game series. There are two reasons I do not believe we compete with the elite. 1. Our guard play is inadequate on defense and inconsistent on offense. 2. Our bench play is inadequate on defense and inconsistent on offense.
Like Malon said, no single player can replace Murray so I agree that no way should they make panic moves now and take some awful contracts, it's not like Murray's career is finished.
The Rebel wrote:Reading this thread I cannot figure out if you guys do not realize how stacked this team is compared to other contenders or if I have lost my mind. We are 5-1 without our 2nd best player, and a lot of those games have been blowouts. Teams that lose their 2nd best player do not usually continue win streaks.
We have 6 starting quality players when healthy, we have 10 guys who are rotation players on good teams. There are literally contenders starting guys who were paid to go away by their last team or Gleague quality players in their rotation. We have 2 guys who were starters for conference finals teams last year that are competing for minutes off the bench this year.
Losing Murray hurts, but let's be real Morris is a starting quality PG. Gordon was the 2nd option on a playoff team, he is arguably the best 4th option in the league, and is a well above average 3rd option. Jokic is having the best season in the league, and it isn't particularly close. While MPJ is only in his 2nd year playing, he is putting up star quality numbers on a nightly basis. People can talk all the **** they want, but this team was easily a contender fully healthy.
I do not get this whole idea that we should be making short term moves, the only way to add talent is through the draft and ring chasers once you become contenders. TEams are not signing the top free agents, they are signing low level guys because of the way the salary cap is structured. We have a young contender, why the rush to **** it up?
You are talking about the ability of this team to make a similar winning record without Murray, but this thread is not about regular season W/R record at all, but about the Nuggets' inability to make "the next step" without Murray. The next step for the Nuggets is to reach for the first time ever NBA final in 2021 or 2022, which was a realistic goal just a week before but not so much right now. Talking about regular-season winning records, remind you that in the season before Kawhi goes to Toronto, the Raptors were better seed (#1) and have a better W/L record than when Kawhi comes, and the very next season after Kawhi gone they repeated #2 seed on EC. But everyone knows they are for playoff battles truly competitive only that season with Kawhi Leonard, so in 2018 and 2020 they won only one PO series but all four (aka ring) in 2020!
I use current season data because the is the only data we have right now, and I still do not see how this means that a year from now we are not a contender. If anything this should make our case considerably better a year from now, and does not hurt us near as bad as all the drama queens are making it sound.
I hate to be the one to tell you or anybody else, but we were not contenders a week ago, and we were never going to be contenders this year. Our entire 2nd half offense depended on the 2 man game with Jokic and Murray, while it is nearly impossible to stop the Lakers figured out how to stop it, and the other top teams have the tape. I think this team maxed out at a conference finals team this year with or without Murray. I think deep down every single Nuggets fan knows that as long as Murray and Jokic stayed healthy that was going to be the plan once the playoffs hit, and we could be beat.
THE J0KER wrote:Compared to the 2020 playoff, Jokic is clearly better now than last year in his post-COVID version, Porter too, Barton is healthy, while Gordon is a fair replacement for Grant. But without Murray who played last summer as a HOF monster and without notable (Harris-like) backcourt defender we are at best on the same level as in 2020. LeBron James played last season playoff as a backcourt player, so In the last 30 years, the only team which won Western Conference without an all-star level guard was the 1999 Spurs. Without Murray, and losing in the past two seasons notable guards Beasley, Harris, and Hampton, every WC team right now have at least one better guard than our the best ones!? So how Denver is going to win the 2021 WC title?
Gordon is a fair replacement for Grant? Grant was **** terrible for us last year, what the **** happened where suddenly everybody thinks he was some world beater? He had 3 good games all of last year, 2 of which were in the conference finals while we were getting blown out and Jokic, Murray, and Millsap were all in foul trouble. Gordon is easily a better player than Grant in our system. For **** sakes, Grant was literally a negative player with Jokic last year, the only other one last year that was a negative with Jokic was Craig.
For this team to move into contender status it was and is always going to be contingent on MPJ growing into a true star player, and just as importantly Malone using him as a star player. Does anybody who has watched the Nuggets these last 2 years even have an argument that MPJ was being used as a star? I cannot see it, until Murray went down we maybe ran 2 plays a game for him, we run more **** plays for Barton than **** MPJ, yet MPJ still has managed to put up 18 and 8 on crazy efficiency, while playing out of position half the time. Now Malone has to design plays for arguably our 2nd most talented player that we have had in Denver in 25 years, which will make us a considerably better team now and next year.
Barton and Murray never fit together, someone else used to post about how they never had good games at the same time, and I started watching and they were right. Both need the ball in their hands a considerable amount of time, while Morris has gotten very good at playing off the ball. While I certainly would rather have lost Barton than Murray, having Barton play better on top of the growth that we should see from MPJ allows this team to still be really damn good.
Also you talk about Lebron playing PG last year, he was forced into it because their guards sucked, they were considerably worse than any of our top 4 guards (except for Rondo having a great series against Murray). They were literally starting Javalle McGee at Center, Avery Bradley who was their starting SG is out of the league right now, so please quit trying to act like that team was stacked at all their positions. Like the Clippers the Lakers had to great forwards and a bunch of role players, the difference was the role players on the Lakers bought in and fulfilled their roles while the Clippers guy's didn't. We have an amazing Center, a very talented young PF, and a very good SF, with a ton of great role players acting like we don't have the talent that those teams had is a cop out.
While we are discussing it, who are the great guards that the Lakers and Clippers have now? the guy that was traded along with a pick in a salary dump 2 years ago? Lebron playing out of position? Rondo who only plays hard when he feels like it and without the help of the refs is ineffective at best? Who do the Celtics have at Center? Who do the Suns & Jazz have at forward? The Nets are starting buyout guys at their Center position. What you and so many do not seem to get is that the Nuggets were the most stacked team in the league when it comes to quality at every position, every contender has weaknesses in the lineups, now without Murray that includes the Nuggets.
We are not likely to make the finals this year, but I never believed we would this year anyways. Not when everybody under the sun knows what play we were going to run the entire 2nd half of every single playoff game. Next year we should be **** favorites if MPJ is who he has looked like. Murray should be back in Mid-February at the latest, which is plenty of time to get his legs under him, we replace Barton with a 3 and D SG and find a bench scorer, and we have a stacked team that has 3 true stars and a 4th that is arguably the best 4th option in the league.
