Denver Nuggets: Playoff contender in the West?

Why not the Denver Nuggets?

I’m reaching into Russell Wilson’s automated bag of quotes for that one, but it’s true: Why not the Denver Nuggets?

Last season, the Denver Nuggets went 36-46 and finished 11th in the Western Conference. While the record looks bad now, in hindsight, the Nuggets never had a chance. The season was over before it even started.

It all started way back in the 2012-13 season. Denver, then coached by George Karl, won 57 games and were the third-seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Let me repeat: Denver had the third-best record in the West. While that’s common knowledge to some NBA fans, people need to be reminded of how good of a team the Nuggets were two seasons ago.

Karl won the NBA’s Coach of the Year award in 2013. And, how did the organization reward Karl for his efforts and wins? They fired him; Denver fired the NBA Coach of the Year directly after the season. Karl’s Nuggets did lose in the first-round to a young Golden State Warriors team after Danilo Gallinari blew out his knee at the end of the season, although it had nothing to do with his firing.

While I can spend 5,000 words re-hashing what happened and why Karl was fired, I’ll sum it up in a few sentences. The Denver Nuggets’ front office was in a state of flux during the 2013 season. General manager Masai Ujiri was moving on to the Toronto Raptors, and the Nuggets’ new general manager Tim Connelly wanted to start fresh. That also meant replacing the head coach of a team that won 57 games.  It was the classic “New regime wants his own coach” move that happens so often in professional sports.

Anyway, Connelly and the Nuggets replaced Karl with former Lakers’ and Pacers’ assistant coach, Brian Shaw, and the rest was history.

Well, kind of.

Regardless of how you feel about Shaw’s hiring, you must agree firing the coach of a successful team had negative repercussions in the locker room. Here’s how the Nuggets’ players felt about it:

*Tweets from Bleacher Report's Dan Favale's story.

Besides having to deal with the trauma of replacing one of the best coaches in the league and learning an entirely new system before the season, the Nuggets also lost former All-Star wing Andre Igoudala, one of their best players in 2013, to Golden State in free agency, which made total sense after these reports.

If you’re keeping track, prior to the start of the 2014 season, the Nuggets were already staring down the barrel of a gun without their head coach and their two best wings from the previous season. The odds were definitely not in the Nuggets’ favor. If the 2014 season was the Hunger Games, the Nuggets were the tribute that is blown up for stepping off the platform too early. If you get that reference, you’re as nerdy as me. Congratulations!

The 36-46 record in Shaw’s first season now doesn’t seem so bad, does it? And, I haven’t even got into the real injury problems.

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Generated 9/5/2014.

Including Gallo’s 82 games missed, Nuggets’ players missed 170 games combined due to injury last season, according to Kevin Keller’s calculation. Only Timofey Mozgov (82), Randy Foye (81), and Kennetth Faried (80) played 80-plus games in 2014. Ty Lawson and Wilson Chandler missed 20 games. J.J. Hickson and Darrell Arthur missed 13 and 12 games, respectively. JaVale McGee missed 77 games. Nate Robinson missed 38 games. It was a pure injury disaster for the Nuggets last season.

The lineup of Lawson-Foye-Chandler-Faried-Mozgov, what I considered the Nuggets’ best lineup, only played a total of 185 minutes in 21 games last season, according to NBA.com.

Considering the whole coaching change situation, losing one of their best players in free agency, and having the most injuries in the entire league, a 36-46 record seems pretty good for the Denver Nuggets’ “year from hell,” as Grantland’s Bill Simmons would call it. The Nuggets were only ten games under .500 in a ridiculously tough conference. That’s not so bad after all.

According to Kevin Keller, all of the Nuggets who were injured last season are on track to be healthy for the start of training camp, which will absolutely be a huge boost for the Nuggets heading into next season. That’s great news for Nuggets’ fans and all the fans of the league, as the Nuggets should be incredibly fun to watch.

While getting healthy was the major concern for the Nuggets this offseason, Connelly wasn’t happy standing pat on a roster that only won 36 games last season and made a major move that makes the Nuggets considerably better. In one of the most underrated trades of the summer, Connelly traded backup wing Evan Fournier and the 56th overall pick in the 2014 draft to the Orlando Magic for shooting guard Arron Afflalo, one of the players the Nuggets gave away in the Dwight Howard trade.

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Generated 9/5/2014.

At shooting guard, Afflalo is an immediate upgrade over Foye, although Foye played pretty well for the Nuggets last season. Afflalo is an above average defender and a great three-point shooter. He fills a need for the Nuggets and gives them the versatility to play a variety of lineups.

Projected 2015 Nuggets’ Rotation (Starters/Backups)

PG: Lawson/Robinson

SG: Afflalo/Foye

SF: Gallinari/Chandler/ Quincy Miller

PF: Faried/Hickson/Arthur

C: Mozgov/McGee

I love this team! I’m all-in on the Nuggets. As a Trail Blazers’ fan, that’s saying a lot.

Of course, the Nuggets aren’t going to play much defense, but they’re not built to play defense anyway. They’re built to run, fly around, jack up tough shots and make them. Any combination of those players has the ability to score enough points to win and compete on a nightly basis in the NBA. It’s not perfect, but this is a complete NBA roster, and most importantly, the Nuggets have an identity again.

To me, that identity is built around one man, or dare I say one “Manimal.”

I have no way to prove this, but I think over the last season, Shaw and Connelly had to make a decision whether to blow this whole team up and start from scratch or continue to roll with the punches and make moves on the fly. There was a time, around the start of last season, when it seemed like the Nuggets were going to have a fire-sale on players. It just felt like that was about to happen after the Karl firing and the reactions of some of the players, especially Faried.

Of course, Connelly could still trade Faried and start over, but it seems too late when looking at the progress Faried has made in his career, especially considering how good he’s been with Team USA.

In the right system, Faried can be the half-man, half-wild animal that he is and dunk all over everyone in the league. I’m fully expecting that is the style Shaw and the Nuggets use this season.

Last season, Shaw caged Faried up a bit and tried to use him as a more conventional forward; however, that’s not Faried’s game. He’s much more dynamic and explosive in the open court. It’s time to let the Manimal run wild, like Karl did in 2013.

Just put the ball near the basket and let the Manimal go get it.

The more I look at this Nuggets’ team, the more I think they’re actually trying to recreate 2013.

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Generated 9/5/2014.

I mean, they already have most of the same pieces in Lawson, Faried, Gallinari, Chandler, and McGee. Now, replace Igoudala, Corey Brewer, Andre Miller, and Kosta Koufous with Afflalo, Foye/Miller, Robinson, and Mozgov, and it’s virtually the same team. In fact, the 2014-15 team might even be better than the 2013 team, and that’s scary.

If Shaw and Connelly are fully embracing the up-tempo style of play, there’s only one thing I ask: Don’t let JaVale be JaVale.

I’m officially starting the #DontLetJaValeBeJaVale right now. Get ready twitter!

There’s no question the Nuggets have improved this offseason, but the question I asked in the beginning still remains: Why not the Nuggets?

If they were in the East, I’d say they could be a possible top-five seed in the playoffs. In the West, it’s semi-hard to imagine the Nuggets winning more than 50 games, which is what it took to make the playoffs in the West in 2014.

Right now, there’s three locks to make the playoffs in the West, barring major injuries, and they’re the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Los Angeles Clippers. After that, I’ve got the Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and Portland Trail Blazers in a tier just below the three top teams. The Denver Nuggets fall just outside of that group with the Phoenix Suns, for me, and I think I’m a lot higher on the Nuggets than most people.

Is there a team that could slip up and miss the playoffs? Of course! Injuries happen every year. I guarantee at least one of the top eight teams in the West will have a key player suffer a major injury. The most vulnerable teams in the West are the teams in that second tier.

Marc Gasol only played 59 games for Memphis this season because of injury, and the Grizzlies were the seventh-seed in the playoffs. That could happen again. For Dallas, Dirk Nowitzki is getting toward the end of his career; it’s not a given Nowitzki stays healthy. Plus, they just traded for a center, Tyson Chandler, who’s missed 43 games the last two seasons. Perenially, David Lee and Andrew Bogut get injured for Golden State. Who knows if they can stay healthy for an entire season? If James Harden or Dwight Howard miss any length of time for Houston, the Rockets are missing the playoffs. The same goes for Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge in Portland.

It’s that close of a race in the West, and the season hasn’t even started. It’s going to be a bloodbath in the West again.

Ultimately, it’s going to come down this:

If the Nuggets can lead the league in points per game, like they did in 2013, they will make the playoffs.

Other than the “San Antonio Sweat Box,” Denver has the best home court advantage in basketball when used correctly. Karl figured out how to use the altitude in Denver to his advantage, and the Nuggets won 38 of 41 of their home games in 2013. I’m expecting the 2015 Nuggets to do the same, which give them a great chance to make the playoffs.

So…Why not the Denver Nuggets?