Can the Nuggets be more than the internet’s favorite team?

Without fail, a team emerges as the internet’s dark horse favorite every season. It’s usually a young team expected to make a leap from the lottery to the playoffs, fronted by an emerging star or two. It’s often a small-market squad that was entertaining to watch on League Pass the prior season, almost like an underground band whose ardent fans just know is about to hit it big. Recent examples include the 2016-17 Timberwolves (the internet got this one wrong) and the 2015-16 Jazz (the internet was a year early, it turns out), but you can trace the lineage of internet favorites all the way back to squads like the Baby Bulls and the Roc L.A. Familia Clippers as well.

With apologies to the Philadelphia 76ers, who despite their recent track record are too mainstream to be considered mere internet favorites, this year’s team is the Denver Nuggets.

It’s easy to see why. Once the Nuggets permanently inserted Nikola Jokic into the starting lineup on Dec. 15, they scored 113.3 points per 100 possessions the rest of the way. That was better than the Cavaliers, better than the Rockets, better than even the Warriors; it was the best overall mark in the NBA. At the same time they were scorching nets, they were getting torn apart on the other end of the floor. The Nuggets gave up 111.9 points per 100 possessions after Dec. 15, the worst mark in the NBA. Any League Pass addict will tell you that great offense and terrible defense makes for an entertaining show.

Jokic himself was at the center of it all. He averaged 19 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, a steal and a block per game while shooting 59 percent from the field and 34 percent on 3-pointers during that aforementioned stretch — and he did it in only 30 minutes per game, emerging along the way as one of the most dynamic big men in all of basketball, a true foundational offensive force. He’s become something of a divisive figure this offseason as the latest focal point of the seemingly never-ending eye-test vs. analytics debate (as if there’s any reasonable basketball person that doesn’t use both), but it’s a wonder that he doesn’t appeal to both sides of that fight.

Jokic has a rare combination of floor vision, finishing ability, and all-around flair for a player his size, and it makes him a tremendously entertaining player to watch. His passing is on a level with players like Chris Webber and Arvydas Sabonis, guys considered the best passing bigs of their generation. There just aren’t many big guys in NBA history that have been able to do stuff like this, you know?

It’s not just Jokic that has endeared himself to the basketball internet, though. The Nuggets are a team chock full of underground favorites.

Gary Harris has shown steady progression through his three years in the NBA, raising his shooting percentages from the field and from three with each passing season while consistently getting stronger on the defensive end as well. He’s already a positive two-way player at 23 years old, and still has plenty of room to grow and round out his game. He’s a wonderful offensive fit with Jokic, a player that moves extremely well without the ball and can rise and fire quickly off the catch.

His presumptive backcourt partner of the future, Jamal Murray, draws the occasional comparison — crazy as it may be — to Stephen Curry, though that is clearly more about style than substance at this point. But Murray is another player that has endeared himself to the online folk, with a(n offensive) game that allows him to play alongside nearly any other kind of player. He can work on or off the ball with equal effectiveness. With a pair of guards that don’t necessarily need the ball in their hands and a passing dynamo at center, the Nuggets can run one of the most aesthetically pleasing offenses imaginable.

There’s also Juancho Hernangomez — one half of the soon-to-be most popular duo of Spaniards in the NBA, along with brother Willy — a flexible forward that brings the enviable combination of 3-point shooting, strong rebounding, and a dash of playmaking off the dribble. Wilson Chandler, Will Barton, Jameer Nelson, Darrell Arthur… all of these guys have been popular for a while, for their games as well as their personalities.

Of course, the Nuggets want to be more than everybody’s favorite League Pass team during the 2017-18 season. They want to get back to the playoffs for the first time since 2013.

It’s no coincidence that the Nuggets’ last trip to the playoffs came in the last season during which they had an above-average defense during the regular season. They’ve won 36, 30, 33, and 40 games over the last four seasons, finishing with a defensive efficiency progressively south of league average. It’s only through offensive improvement that they’ve been able to drag their win total upward the last two seasons.

That’s a nice step and it’s made them fun to watch, but fun-to-watch offensive teams that can’t stop anybody don’t get to play into April and May. For the Nuggets to be more than just an underground sensation, they have to lock down on the less glamorous side of the floor. Again, they had the worst defense in the league from Dec.15 through the end of last season. There are a bunch of turnstiles on this team, and anybody giving heavy minutes to so many young players is liable to struggle to get stops.

Luckily for the Nuggets, they do have some pieces capable of holding their own on defense — Harris, Chandler, and Arthur, to name three. But the most important thing they did this offseason was bring in Paul Millsap, who himself is a bit of an internet favorite and also a picture-perfect fit for this squad.

Millsap is everything the Nuggets needed in a frontcourt partner for Jokic. He doesn’t need the ball in his hands all the time to make an offensive impact, but he’s fully capable of carrying heavy usage if need be. He’s whip smart and a wonderful passer. He can post up and knock down 3s, roll to the rim and pop out to the perimeter. He’s a great cutter. He knows where to be and when. He covers a ton of ground defensively and can effectively guard multiple positions. He greatest strength is his ability to shape-shift and thus disguise the weaknesses of whomever shares the floor with him. He’s an established playoff veteran on a team that will be leaning largely on neophytes to get to the next level.

The question, then, is whether the Millsap addition will be enough to get the Nuggets back into the dance.

Is it enough to paper over a point guard situation that is underratedly shaky? Nelson is getting up there in age, Murray is entirely unproven, and Emmanuel Mudiay has not lived up to expectations. Is it enough to make up for a wing group low on individual shot-creation? Harris is pretty good at it; Will Barton can do it on occasion; Murray can create but hasn’t yet shown he can make shots off the dribble; the less said about Mudiay’s individual scoring efforts, the better; and Nelson is a caretaker.

Is it enough to make up for an overcrowded frontcourt that seemingly doesn’t have enough in the way of back-line protection? Jokic and Millsap are supplemented by Mason Plumlee, Kenneth Faried, Arthur, Hernangomez, Chandler, Trey Lyles, and rookie Tyler Lydon. Who’s defending the basket and how are there enough minutes to go around for everyone?

Is it enough when the Western Conference has so many postseason hopefuls? The Warriors, Spurs, Rockets, Thunder, and Timberwolves all seem assured of playoff spots; can the Nuggets beat out three of the Blazers, Jazz, Grizzlies, Clippers, and Pelicans for one of those final three spots?

Next: 25-under-25 -- The best young players in the NBA

They have a budding star, a worthy sidekick, and a bunch of intriguing supplementary players. They’re fun and they should be on the rise. The internet is convinced this should be the year when everything comes together. And the internet is never wrong.