Ty Lawson: People are sleeping on Denver Nuggets

The Denver Nuggets were a mess during the 2013-14 season. The team was decimated by injuries and underperformed massively, winning just 36 games a year after entering the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.

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Because of such a disastrous season, it’s not a surprise that pundits and talking heads are down on Denver heading into the 2014-15 NBA season. Ty Lawson, Denver’s star point guard, has taken notice of that and seems to think it could work to the team’s advantage.

From Jeff Caplan of NBA.com:

"“People,” Lawson said, “are probably going to sleep on us this year because of what happened last year.”"

Lawson made it clear that he expects a big year from his Nuggets.

"I think at every position we’re pretty deep. At center, we’ve got JaVale and Timofey Mozgov, who started playing well throughout the last year. We’re so deep, I think that’s a gift and a curse. Everybody is going to want to play. I already told B-Shaw, I was like, ‘yeah, it’s going to be a problem that you’re going to have, divvying up minutes and making sure everybody’s still happy.’ That’s a gift because say somebody goes down, God forbid, we’ll still have somebody step right in. Also, there’s so many different lineups we can have. We can go small, go big, we’re so versatile."

Denver will absolutely be an improved team next season for some of the reasons Lawson mentions. But playing in a incredibly competitive Western Conference, it’s unlikely we’ll see Lawson and his crew in the postseason.

Lawson averaged 17.6 points and 8.8 assists per game this past season for Denver.