Denver Nuggets: Watch us zag

The Step Back has been born from the aesthetics and traditions of the Hardwood Paroxysm Basketball Network. In the past, Hardwood Paroxysm has produced a massive stand-alone season preview. This year, that preview effort has been rolled up into the launch of The Step Back. 

The Step Back’s writers and illustrators have prepared a hefty deep-dive into each team, built from multiple smaller sections. This year’s theme is television comedies and each section is named after some of our favorite sitcoms. For links to all 30 teams, as well as details about the focus of each section, check out our guide on how to read this preview.

Community

By Daniel Lewis (@minutemandan)

“I don’t have to be old to know that disco isn’t coming back.”

Those were the wise words from the mouth of Jeff Winger, a student at Greendale Community College, uttered in the introduction to the Modern Warfare episode of Season 1.

The game isn’t what is important in that episode of Community — and for the Denver Nuggets, the games this season aren’t what is important, either. What is important is the Nuggets bringing back big basketball.

The Nuggets are approaching the 2016-17 season with the intention of starting Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic in the frontcourt together. The “Balkan Buddy Ball” lineup defies the current NBA trend of spacing the floor with a playmaking power forward, choosing to not only play but to start two seven-footers together.

The two international big men have combined for 174 games in their respective careers, but the Nuggets seem to trust that the best path forward is to put their talented big men on the court at the same time. With Danilo Gallinari (6-10), Emmanuel Mudiay (6-6), and Gary Harris (6-4) slated to be their ideal starting lineup when healthy, that’s a big lineup for a league that is transitioning to be more guard-centric.

But does the move to start the two big men make sense for the Nuggets? This is a team that struggled to defend the three-point line last season, choosing a defensive scheme where they collapsed into the paint to prevent shots at the rim while allowing shooters to roam free on the perimeter. They finished in the bottom half of the league in made three-point shots, with Will Barton — WILL BARTON — finishing the season as the team leader in made three-pointers.

If the idea of starting Jokic and Nurkic together really is the direction the Nuggets want to take this season, it would seem to indicate that while the team officials are publicly stating they’d like to improve on their win-loss record last season, they are taking a step towards moving up in the lottery instead. With veterans such as Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, and Kenneth Faried on deals that are expiring sooner rather than later, as well as a young core, the Nuggets are seemingly taking a huge risk that is likely to end up with them being the owner of another top-seven draft pick come draft night.

It’s a huge risk to zag when the rest of the league is zigging. For all anybody knows, the Balkan Buddy lineup could work out for the Nuggets. They could survive a tough first month, scrape together some wins before the All-Star break, and then flip some of their younger players for an established star that helps them make the playoffs. Or they could get blitzed in the first month, watch their veterans get injured and miss games, and pack the season in with trade deadline moves aiming for a shot at Jayson Tatum in the draft.

For the Nuggets, maybe there’s no such thing as priority registration. Maybe they’re just playing a pointless game of paintball where the points don’t matter and no prize is awarded to the winner. The play of the Jokic-Nurkic frontcourt will determine if this season is a success or a failure.

Seinfeld

By Chris Barnewall (@ChrisBarnewall)

You know what’s important for NBA teams? Home court advantage, and man-oh-man do the Denver Nuggets have a good ole home-court advantage. Thanks to the thin air in Denver, the Nuggets are a team that can take advantage and outrun their opponents. Think about the George Karl-led Nuggets after the Carmelo Anthony trade. They ran circles around the entire NBA on a nightly basis, and that was thanks to good ole oxygen. Perhaps other teams should invest in uniforms that come with scuba gear? Imagine LeBron James running around the court with a Bane mask. It would be terrifying. It would be incredible.

Yet, despite having this massive home-court advantage, the Nuggets don’t use it to their advantage at all! This is a team that should be one of the fastest paced teams in the NBA, yet last year they played a basic 98 possessions per 48 minutes, which isn’t slow but isn’t exceptional either. The Nuggets should be up to 100, MINIMUM. This is not a home-court advantage that should be just shrugged off as a cool little thing that you take advantage of against a group on a back-to-back. Nuh uh. The Nuggets need to go with sprints and run their opponent straight into the ground. Play the high energy guys. Let’s give Kenneth Faried 48 minutes a game. Sure, he’s not a great defender, but when you can out hustle the guys in this environment that’s all that’s important.

There is far too much age on this roster to play in this thin air? Jameer Nelson? Mike Miller? Come on, where’s the youth! Cut the vets. Sign D-League guys. Old legs are not capable of playing in a running environment, and it will be a damn shame if Denver lets something like “veteran leadership” ruin this opportunity. Emmanuel Mudiay-Gary Harris-Some guy-Kenneth Faried-A Kenneth Faried clone made in a secret lab. Play them 48 minutes. If they try to wuss out, cut ’em and give that spot to a guy that cares. This is Denver basketball, dammit.

Is Mike Malone really the future of this team? I mean…reallyyyyyy the future? How often does he take advantage of the thin air? Not enough to be honest, and until he starts to do that his seat is going to be very warm. Forget record. He could win 80 games, but if the pace isn’t 110 per 48 minutes, then what’s even the point of playing the damn game in Denver? Move the franchise to Seattle or something where they enjoy that boring, slow basketball. Here in Denver it’s all about pace, pace, and air so thin that people can barely breathe in the stands. They throw out oxygen masks during game breaks.

Maybe once this team starts running the fans will show up again. The attendance sucks, because everybody is too busy watching the Denver Broncos. You know what’s lame about the Broncos? They stop running every five seconds. That’s not how you take advantage of thin air. The Nuggets? They can take advantage until those wimpy teams call timeouts.

It’s time for the Nuggets to join the basketball revolution. Set a precedent for using home-court advantage in a real way besides fan noise. Run all day, keep the air thin, and win championships. Hopefully this will inspire other teams to use their natural born advantages. Miami? Take off the roof so everybody gets sunburned. Ban sunscreen. New York? Funnel in the noise from the outside traffic. It’ll distract the players, and those that thought they could play with a hangover will be sorely disappointed. New Orleans? Actually, New Orleans doesn’t have to change anything. Bourbon Street is advantage enough.

Hopefully Denver listens to reason. Use that natural home-court advantage. The haters will say it means nothing, but that’s why they’re the haters and not the winners.

The Odd Couple

By Matt Cianfrone (@Matt_Cianfrone)

Kenneth Faried is a very good player for good teams. With his energy, rebounding, and ability to send a bolt of energy through the crowd with one block or dunk, Faried shines on teams heading towards the playoffs.

Kenneth Faried is a very average-to-bad player on bad teams. With his inability to defend, create his own shot and his propensity to pout, Faried is the type of player who can drag a bad team down even more.

Unfortunately for the Kenneth Faried, the Denver Nuggets are most likely going to be an average-to-bad team this season. That is what happens when a team relies heavily on three young guards, two young but talented bigs, and two talented wings with recent health issues.

So, that is all to say both the Nuggets and Faried are left in an odd spot.

For Denver, it makes the most sense to start and play the duo of Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic together as much as possible. The Nuggets must find out of the pair of international imports can actually play together and be effective or if they must move one of them while their value is still high. On the surface, there seems to be plenty of reason to think that the pairing can work. Jokic can shoot threes and is a good passer, allowing him to clear out the lane and keep things spaced around Nurkic’s bullying post moves. Defense is the bigger issue, though, and the hope will be Nurkic’s rim protection can be good enough to cover some of Jokic’s issues covering power forwards.

Of course, that leaves Faried as the third big in the rotation, something that actually could be great for his game. Faried’s energy and athleticism is a combination that most bench big men would struggle against, and Faried could also enter games and play against starters that are already tired to give him an even bigger advantage.

But bringing Faried off the bench means getting him to buy into that decision, which won’t be easy. Faried sees himself as a big time player, someone who starred on Team USA not that long ago, and who was a great player for a playoff team in Denver already. A grumpy Faried is something that can sour an entire locker room quickly as he is never one to hide his displeasure.

So now the Nuggets are left with a tough choice. If they keep Faried, they probably have to start him and play him a fair amount of minutes. But if they do that they miss out on valuable time in evaluating the Nurkic/Jokic pairing, that could define the future of the franchise. If they don’t plan on starting Faried, they probably need to trade him. But no team is going to be willing to give up much of value for a player in the midst of a pouting fit who doesn’t exactly fit great as the NBA moves towards playmaking fours.

It sure feels like the tenure of Kenneth Faried in Denver is going to come to an odd end. Now we just need to watch and see when and how.

Perfect Strangers

by Matt D’Anna (@hoop_nerd)

Ten Word Analysis: This is unexpectedly spectacular spacing. On paper, at least.

TeamSPACE charts are based on mapped clusters of shot activity. These areas are affectionately called Hunting Grounds, because they are the areas on the court where a player hunts for shots — and successfully scores most often. TeamSPACE takes the Hunting Grounds of all five players in a lineup and puts them on the court together — because, you know, they have to share that physical space, and there is only one ball.

In the past, it was one color per player; which meant that blending colors represented overlapping spaces for shot activity. But this time around, these are not your ordinary TeamSPACE shot maps. Each lineup is analyzed in the aggregate — one color! — and that unit is compared that unit to the rest of the league. So you will see a persistent red layer on every chart, highlighting the league’s Hunting Grounds from last season. The most prolific locations should come as no surprise: the paint, the corners, most of the top of the arc, and a couple of dabs at the foul line and top of the key.

So…how were these lineups chosen for each team? In the past, it’s been about projecting the starting lineup, estimating the most used lineup, or even designing the “most favoritest” lineup. This year? It’s the these charts represent the “most interestingly feasible” lineups….what? That’s a loaded phrase, so let’s unpack it a bit.

The goal is to identify the collection of five players on a team that could potentially play together, and if they did, the offensive results could be glorious. Ideally these lineups aren’t too far-fetched, but also slightly off-kilter and confusing to an opposing defense. While this type of analysis is not conducive for assessing defense, somewhat reasonable decisions are attempted to be made. So while it’s tempting to just put all the best shooters together…how realistic is it (outside of Houston, at least)? And, full disclosure: I favor some stretch in my lineups. It not only provides plenty of high-octane potential, but getting stretchy is also on par with current league-wide trends.

Each TeamSPACE chart has a couple of other sitcom-related features:

Family Matters: You’ll notice a series of Jaleel White’s across half court. Each lineup is scored on a scale of 0-7 Steve Urkels for how well it matches league-wide trends. Remember, there’s seven league Hunting Grounds (right corner three; at the rim; left corner three; foul line/top of the key; right wing; middle 3pt; left wing). A lineup gains points for matching each area; it loses points for messy excess shot activity.

Odd Couple: “Most interestingly feasible” is obviously debatable, so in order to account for some of those decisions, you’ll see Oscar and Felix on each chart. Often, there are players that are in the lineup…and maybe/probably they should not be. They get the Oscar label. And, there are those players that are out of the lineup…and maybe/probably should be included. They are the Felix for their team.

And briefly, a word about data. These strange visual displays are based on last season’s shot data, weighted by made buckets — so rookies and season-long injuries are sadly excluded. This analysis is nothing without the help of Darryl Blackport, and the research materials available at Basketball-Reference and NBA.com. Further, these charts feature some of the best logo re-designs I could curate from the ol’ Information Superhighway, including Dribbble.com and Pinterest. I made none of the logos; I merely selected some of my favorites. Enjoy!

Everybody Loves Raymond

By Dan Favale (@danfavale)

NBA rookie likability alert!

It seems like there are a lot of cool characters on the Denver Nuggets. Danilo Gallinari definitely whispers sweet Italian nothings to himself while standing in front of a mirror. Wilson Chandler isn’t afraid to tussle with a 350-pound mutant fish, and his Twitter timeline is often a breath of fresh, you-said-what-we-were-all-thinking air. Mike Miller has a pet monkey…who once escaped from his house so he could ride one of Miller’s dogs around the neighborhood. Will Barton looks like the guy who plays pick-up basketball in short shorts and knee-high socks while almost exclusively jacking up half-court missiles. Jameer Nelson has probably bench-pressed Nikola Jokic in the locker room before.

And then there’s Jusuf Nurkic, who just has to be cool because anyone nicknamed “The Bosnian Beast” cannot be uncool.

With all that in mind, I’m going out on a fairly sturdy limb and choosing Jamal Murray as Denver’s most likable kiddie — largely because he is, in fact, a kiddie, and unafraid to show it.

This is something that gets lost amid the NBA’s millionaire talents and billion-dollar business. Some of these players are just so damn young. They’re thrust into the public eye, as handsomely paid fringe-celebrities, and expected to deliver the world. Being 27, I had to remind myself at the rookie photo shoot that these inbound players are six, seven, and eight years my junior. A few middle-aged writers have shared similar sentiments with me; every so often they’re delivered reality checks on the youthfulness of their reporting subjects.

Murray is one such wake-up call, in the best way imaginable. He acts like you would expect any 19-year-old man-child tossed into the spotlight to act — like a gracious goofball hell bent on enjoying every damn second of every damn minute of this incredible experience.

At the rookie photo shoot, Murray spent much of his time palling around with fellow Nuggets rookies Malik Beasley and Juancho Hernangomez. They were laughing, at times hysterically, amongst themselves and relished in the follies and foibles of their three-man dunking sequences.

At Denver’s media day, Murray was equally easy-going. He once again joked around. He made funny faces at the camera.

He acted like he was 19.

In other cases, and most certainly in other sports, Murray’s attitude would be questioned in addition to being extolled, portrayed as a harbinger of rampant immaturity. But he isn’t at risk of such stereotypical flotsam.

For one, Murray seems to interact really well with the media, which, right or wrong, always makes life easier for a player. Mostly, though, you know that he can take care of business, on a national stage, while basking in his youth. He led Kentucky in scoring last year, as an 18-year-old freshman, without ever taking himself too seriously. Not many other one-and-done teenagers could have forged the snarky, yet meaningful, rapport he clearly had with head coach John Calipari.

That Murray appears to be maintaining his flippant sense of self at the NBA level is grounds for celebration. Some rookies take themselves too seriously. They let the pressure change them, the expectations consume them. Top prospects get caught up in playing time and what their roles will look like. Murray comes off as if he doesn’t care — not in a bad way, though. He’s happy to be here and, as his point guard training in Denver suggests, ready to work.

Most importantly, he has rendered the Nuggets League Pass necessities, if only for the viral Vine appeal of his sideline behavior.

Boy Meets World

By Peter Nygaard (@RetepAdam)

We don’t talk about Nikola Jokic enough.

Don’t get me wrong; I get it. He was a second-round pick out of the Adriatic League. He plays in Denver. He logged fewer minutes per game last year than Meyers Leonard. He didn’t score at a rate that could not be ignored, so he largely was. Sure, he finished third in Rookie of the Year voting, but two-thirds of the voters didn’t even have him on their ballot. By a number of different metrics, Nikola Jokic was — give or take — one of the 30 most impactful players in the NBA last year… yet in the eyes of many, he wasn’t even one of the three best rookies.

So, let’s go ahead and rectify that. Go to YouTube right now, and type in “Nikola Jokic.” It’s OK. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.

[waits patiently]

Yeah, didn’t know he could do that, did you? I’ll bet you didn’t know he could do that, either. Jokic is a stupendous playmaker for a player his size, making his appointed nickname of “The Joker” a perfect fit, given how many plays he makes that leave onlookers saying “You’ve got to be kidding me…” The list of NBA big men who posted a higher assist rate than Jokic this past season is incredibly short and consists entirely of veterans a full decade-plus older than Jokic. If he exhibits this kind of a feel for the game at 20, imagine what he’ll look like once he gets a few seasons under his belt.

Defensively, he holds his own as well. He’s a fairly average rim protector and isn’t overly athletic, but his combination of active hands and overall savvy allows him to disrupt opposing offenses, making him a plus defender for his team. Putting him next to 2015 NBA All-Rookie Second Team center and all-around scary person Jusuf Nurkic just seems kind of unfair. If they mesh, Denver could bear witness to the return of the ‘twin towers’ lineup strategy that has fallen out of vogue in the era of pace and space.

The biggest question mark for Jokic at this point is how much he’ll continue to grow as a scorer. Jokic has flashed some catch-and-shoot three-point ability and is a crafty post scorer, but his overall scoring efficiency could stand to improve. The beauty is that given how strong his all-around game is, any additional scoring prowess is basically found money at this point.

Even if Jokic never develops into an unquenchable scoring machine, the Nuggets made certain to target players in this year’s draft who can pack a scoring punch. The headliner of their draft class was No. 7 overall pick Jamal Murray, who has parlayed his strong finish in Summer League into a solid preseason showing, averaging 12.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 3.6 assists with a .473 effective field goal percentage through seven contests. A natural combo guard, Murray’s versatility could pay significant dividends down the road, which is why the Nuggets have been feeding him plenty of minutes at point guard — presumably in an effort to build up his ball-handling and playmaking skills more so than anything to do with a positional switch.

The reason Murray likely won’t be switching positions anytime soon is that the Nuggets already have the player they hope will be their franchise point guard in last year’s No. 7 overall pick, Emmanuel Mudiay.

Mudiay went through his share of growing pains in his rookie endeavor, but the second half of the season showed plenty of promise for the 19-year-old. The biggest question mark for Mudiay has always been his jump-shooting ability, so the fact that he closed the year shooting 36.4 percent on three-pointers after the All-Star break would seem to bode well. Mudiay has plenty of defensive potential, which makes the prospective pairing of Mudiay and Murray an interesting notion, with each covering for the other on the end where they are weaker. But if Mudiay can develop into a reliable spot-up shooter, that would really open things up for a Nuggets team that could potentially have a multitude of players capable of making plays with the ball in their hands.

And then, of course, there’s Gary Harris, who was one of the most improved players in the NBA last year, showing off some offensive acumen to go with his characteristically solid defense. Harris was workmanlike in his approach to scoring, capitalizing on cuts and spot-up three-pointers for a large bulk of his scoring, but he also showed off a nice stroke from the mid-range. With Harris returning from a groin injury, it’s likely that he will resume his duties as starter, with Murray coming off the bench. But it will be interesting to see how this situation plays out moving forward. And that’s to say nothing of springy sixth man Will Barton, who broke out last season after adding a three-pointer to his arsenal. Or pure scorer and 19th overall pick in this year’s draft Malik Beasley. Or basketball’s version of Kevin Youkilis: The rebound-grabbing, foul-drawing, rail-thin rookie Juancho Hernangomez.

This almost certainly won’t be the year that the pieces all fall into place for Denver, but it will be fascinating to see how the puzzle starts to come together. The Nuggets have so many prospective rotation players that they can’t all be part of the solution… but as problems go, that’s a good one to have.