Very long article, but interesting

[NuggetsWY]

Daniel Lewis - 82 Stats

http://www.denverstiffs.com/2017/4/19/14609546/82-stats-nuggets-2016-17-season

Long article, but worth the read. Here are a few of my observations. If it's not a direct quote, my comments are in italics.

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"The Nuggets were the 20th-fastest team in the league, with an average speed of 4.14 miles per hour. That was tied with the Sacramento Kings and Boston Celtics - gone are the days of Ty Lawson rocketing past the defense to score in transition.

"The Nuggets 2016 draft class had small contributions this season, but they lead the team in average speed. Jamal Murray (4.54 MPH), Juancho Hernangomez (4.40 MPH), and Malik Beasley (4.37 MPH) were the three fastest players on the team. I’m going to guess this is part youth, part element of their game, and part 'Oh crap I’ve made a mistake on defense and I have to hustle back into position.'”

"The three slowest players? Jameer Nelson (3.91 MPH), Wilson Chandler (3.96 MPH), and Darrell Arthur (3.97 MPH) took home the title for slowest players on the team. Nelson I understand (old), Arthur I understand (knee injury), but Chandler? Put a little scoot in your step, grandpa!"

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"On the flip side to their stellar offense, the Nuggets finished with the second worst defense in the league, with a defensive rating of 110.5. That’s barely ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers, who were blatantly trying to lose games at points in the season to help increase their odds of retaining their draft pick, who finished with a defensive rating of 110.6.

"Part of the Nuggets defensive woes is the fact that the Nuggets opponents shot 47.7 percent on field goal attempts, the second-worst mark in the league, just ahead of the Lakers.

"On top of that, the Nuggets had the third-worst 3-point defense in the league, with opponents shooting 37.5 percent on 3-point attempts."

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"The Nuggets were the second best rebounding team in the league, with impressive showings on both the offensive and defensive glass. They grabbed 53.2 percent of all available rebounds on the season, with only Oklahoma City Thunder ahead of them at 53.4 percent."

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I'm not including all the very nice stats regarding Jokic because we've probably seen most of them and we all KNOW how great he is.

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"Jokic is a skilled 3-point shooter, but there was another 21-year-old on the team that finished with more made 3-point shots this season. That’s right, Juancho Hernangomez, with 1196 fewer minutes, made one more 3-point shot (46 to 45) than Jokic did.

"Juancho has a beautiful jumper, and shot 41 percent on 112 3-point attempts. There were 20 rookies that had more 3-point attempts this season than Juancho - none of them converted those attempts into makes at a higher percentage than Hernangomez."

"Juancho had the most win shares of all the rookie class, with 1.8 win shares. That’s good for 14th all time in Nuggets history, behind Danny Fortson (1.9) and ahead of Jusuf Nurkic (1.6)."

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"Arthur wasn’t much of a distributor this season, finishing with 42 assists, just over one per game. He had 10 assists to Jamal Murray, his most productive target for sharing the ball."

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Like him or not, Nelson had some nice stats too.
Gallinari also had a statistically good year.
Chandler also had a great year statistically.
(It helps that Malone likes to play his veterans. Except for Faried who had career lows in some respects, mostly due to his limited minutes.)
Top three ISO players? In order: Chandler, Gallinari, Barton.

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"The Nuggets were happier with Mudiay passing the ball to his teammates than pulling up to shoot the basketball. The Nuggets first round pick in 2015 pulled up off the dribble for a jump shot 154 times for an effective field goal percentage of 28.2, the worst mark on the team.

"That’s a discouraging stat. But a more encouraging stat for Mudiay was his catch and shoot numbers, where he was middle of the pack on the team. Mudiay had a 53 percent effective field goal rate on catch and shoot jumpers, better than Will Barton and Wilson Chandler (52.2, 51.1 respectively) and just behind Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray (56.1, 54.9 respectively).

"Mudiay was better on catch and shoot 3-point attempts than Jokic, and just behind Murray (Murray 36.9, Mudiay 35.8, Jokic 35.2). That’s a good rate for him - he should be able to get more of those attempts if the Nuggets run more offense through their big men next season."

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"Gary Harris - wow. Talk about taking a jump this season. He missed time due to injury, but when he was on the court, he was efficient on offense. Harris shot over 40 percent the whole season on 3-point attempts, and averaged 16.8 points per game after the All-Star break.

"One way that Harris was able to get buckets was by being on the receiving end of Jokic’s passes when Harris would cut to the basket. No guard cut to the basket more than Harris, and he averaged 1.39 points every time he got the ball on a cut.

"Harris’s field goal percentage and 3-point percentage has increased each season he’s been in the NBA. For his 3-point percentage, there was a 15 percentage point increase from his rookie to sophomore year, and a seven percentage point increase from his sophomore to junior year. Obviously this means that for his fourth year in the league, he’s going to shoot 45 percent on 3-point attempts."

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The Nuggets had the lowest attendance of any team in the league.