NBA Season Preview 2017-18: Denver Nuggets need to get easy stops
By Ian Levy
The Denver Nuggets were one of the most exciting teams in the NBA last season, exploding after Nikola Jokic was re-inserted into the starting lineup for good on Dec. 15. From that point on, Denver scored 113.3 points per 100 possessions, the best mark in the league. The problem was that they allowed 111.9 points per 100 possessions, the worst mark in the league.
Fixing the defense was a major focus of Denver’s summer, and one of the reasons they acquired Paul Millsap — an excellent defender capable of switching onto a variety of offensive players large and small. The Nuggets don’t need to become an elite defense this season; maintaining their offensive efficiency and becoming even a league-average defense should be more than enough to get them into the playoffs. But it’s going to take more than just Millsap to get there.
The Nuggets had a variety of problems on defense last season — they were last in the league at forcing turnovers and 28th in opponent effective field goal percentage. One of the major causes of the last number was how many easy buckets they gave up in transition.
The Nuggets didn’t necessarily stand out by overall defensive transition numbers — they were a not terrible 21st in defensive transition points per possession and 20th in the percentage of their defensive possessions that came in transition. However, they were terrible after made baskets.
After your offense scores is usually the situation for a defense. It means the opposing offense has to take the ball the full length of the court and that your defenders have time to get into position and pick-up their individual assignments. According to Inpredictable, the Nuggets were last in the league in opponent possession length after a made basket, at 16.7 seconds, and 29th in defensive efficiency after a made basket, allowing 1.08 points per possession. To put those numbers in context, Nuggets’ opponents, on average, scored as efficiently on the possession after Denver scored as the rest of the league allowed after a missed basket.
This quick is probably an amalgam of several different variables. The Nuggets took the third-highest percentage of their shots at the rim last season, which means a scoring possession often ended with at least one player buried under the basket. The Nuggets also ran a lot of cuts and dribble hand-offs which meant an inverted offense with Jokic at the top of the key and guard and wings cutting through the middle of the floor or along the baseline.
It’s also, almost certainly a product of just being a bad halfcourt defense. Not all of these opponent scoring possessions were from running off a maker against a disorganized Nuggets effort. However, some of these defensive lapses were and there is probably a meaningful amount of defensive improvement the Nuggets can achieve simply by paying more attention to their offensive positioning, their effort level changing ends, and their communication after made baskets.
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Millsap should be enormously helpful. His defensive versatility will allow the Nuggets flexibility and he’s effective — with a Defensive Real Plus-Minus of +3.3 points per 100 possessions last season, the 14th-best mark in the entire league. But the rest of the roster has changed over that much and Millsap can only do so much. If the Nuggets are going to become a defense effective enough to get into the playoffs it’s going to mean improvement up and down the roster, and picking up some of this low-hanging fruit like getting set and getting stops after a made basket.