Will Denver Nuggets' Slow Start Put Brian Shaw on Early Hot Seat?
Seven games and six losses, three of the double-digit variety, into the 2014-15 NBA season, the playoff-hopeful Denver Nuggets have withered into a mess of bad offense, worse defense and all types of dysfunction.
Someone—or some people—has to take the blame for these putrid performances. The Nuggets need a change in the worst kind of way, and head coach Brian Shaw feels like the obvious scapegoat.
It's never too early in this business for a coach's chair to catch flames. Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer can already feel the heat emanating from underneath Shaw's seat:
Mike Tokito of The Oregonian can feel it too:
The only opinions that matter, of course, belong to Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly and the rest of the front office.
But the external pressure is mounting. That fire is building.
And neither Shaw nor his players are showing they can contain it.
"We're Getting Hit First and We're Not Hitting Back"
If such a thing exists as a must-win game in November, Denver's Wednesday night tilt with the Portland Trail Blazers was it.
The Nuggets were two full weeks removed from their last victory, sputtering through a five-game losing streak that included consecutive double-digit defeats at the hands of the Sacramento Kings. The Nuggets had dropped a 116-100 contest only three nights prior to the same Portland squad, and Shaw pleaded with his players to not let it happen again.
"I made it very clear to the team that I want us to win this game tonight," Shaw told reporters earlier that day, via The Denver Post's Christopher Dempsey. "... We want to jump on them early, we want to run them. So that's our mindset going into the game."
The odds seemed to be resting on Denver's side. Key Nuggets contributors Nate Robinson and Danilo Gallinari were off their minutes restrictions. The Blazers had survived a 102-100 clash with the Charlotte Hornets in Portland the night before then traveled to Denver without versatile forward Nicolas Batum.
Inside the Pepsi Center, where they had compiled an incredible 38-3 record just two seasons ago, the Nuggets looked ready to get things back on track. They sprinted out to a 9-2 lead then everything seemed to unravel at once.
By the time the buzzer mercifully brought the first half to a close, the Blazers had piled up 84 points. They carved up the Nuggets defense like a Thanksgiving turkey, putting on a masterful offensive display that produced a shot chart covered in green, per CBS Sports:
Blazers All-Star point guard Damian Lillard, who oversaw the NBA's fifth-most efficient offense last season, could not believe what he had seen.
"That's the points you score in a full game," Lillard told The Associated Press after his team completed its 130-113 thrashing of the Nuggets.
Unbelievable as the game was on Portland's side, it was uncomfortably familiar for Nuggets fans. As Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post observed, it might not have been Denver's worst defensive showing of the season:
The Nuggets are tied for the fourth-worst defensive efficiency in the league, surrendering 108.6 points per 100 possessions. And they have been particularly generous in the game's opening frame.
Opponents have averaged 115.1 points per 100 first-quarter possessions against the Nuggets, per NBA.com (media stats subscription required). To compound that problem, Denver's offense has only produced 85.9 points per 100 possessions during those first 12 minutes.
It all adds up to a league-worst minus-29.2 first-quarter net rating. And it's an issue Shaw has been unsuccessfully trying to combat all season.
"We're getting hit first and we're not hitting back," Shaw said earlier this month, per Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. "We have to hit first. At least go out swinging."
To his credit, Shaw has tried to light that fire under his players.
He has trotted out three different starting lineups so far. He has ripped his defenders, bluntly stating that "the sense of urgency hasn't been there to start out games," per Dempsey. He has recognized the need "to immediately go to the bench, use a timeout quicker, cut these runs" when his players stumble out of the gate.
But the messages Shaw has sent have not been received. That or they simply are not the ones these players need to hear.
He is playing all the cards in his hand, but those experiments could be keeping his club from finding its foundation.
"Complete Lack of Identity"
Technically, this is Shaw's second season on the job. But in a lot of ways it might feel like his first.
During his rookie campaign, Denver's roster was decimated by injury. Only four players cleared the 70-game mark: Kenneth Faried, Timofey Mozgov, Randy Foye and Evan Fournier (who was sent to the Orlando Magic in the trade that brought Arron Afflalo back to Denver).
Gallinari missed the entire campaign while rehabbing from the torn ACL he suffered in April 2013. JaVale McGee went down with a stress fracture in his left leg five games into last season and never returned. Robinson and J.J. Hickson both had ACL tears.
Putting so many moving pieces back in action is a challenge of its own.
"We're basically just trying to mesh and come together," Faried told ProBasketballTalk's Kurt Helin. "... Some guys haven't played with other guys in a while, so we're just trying to get it together."
That isn't as easy as it sounds, and it doesn't sound all that easy. Making matters worse, there does not appear to be a blueprint in place in which Shaw could fit these players.
"The biggest issue is a complete lack of identity," Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal wrote in an email exchange. "This team doesn't know if it wants to run as much as possible, it employs offensive sets that die after one screen is set, there's no continuity in the rotations...far too many players aren't committing on the defensive end."
In his quest for consistency, Shaw has tried playing just about every one. But that has prevented him from really featuring any of his players.
There are 13 players averaging double-digit minutes, but only one (Ty Lawson) has seen more than 29 minutes a night. While it makes some sense for Shaw to leave his options open, doing it this way makes it tough for his players to find their rhythm or build any chemistry with each other.
Without a good feel for one another or the direction they are headed, the Nuggets have seen wild swings in their production. Both their effectiveness and their effort have wavered, leaving them vulnerable to the type of in-game collapses that have quickly come to define their season.
"We have to be more constant during the game," Gallinari told reporters after Wednesday's loss, per Dempsey. "We have good stretches and bad stretches. Unfortunately, the bad stretches were really bad."
While this could be a personnel problem, that is a hard theory to buy. After all, this roster still features some of the most prominent pieces from Denver's 57-win team in 2012-13.
For all the problems the Nuggets have, talent doesn't seem to be one of them. And that begs the question, as CBS Sports' Matt Moore noted, whether Shaw is the right coach to lead this team:
"I actually still believe Brian Shaw can be a good coach, but I'm wondering if THIS situation is simply untenable for him.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) November 8, 2014"
Five different veterans, all entering at least their sixth NBA season, are on pace to post career-worst field-goal percentages: Afflalo (37.9), Gallinari (23.3), Wilson Chandler (35.4), Alonzo Gee (38.5) and Darrell Arthur (35.1). Faried, now in his fourth NBA season, has converted only 44.3 percent of his field goals, more than 10 points below his career average (55.0).
It's tough to say how much of that is a reflection of Shaw, but something obviously isn't clicking.
That means more changes need to be made. Maybe that's a coaching change, or perhaps it's an adjustment by the man currently occupying Denver's premier sideline seat.
"Shaw needs to commit to a system, dumb it down and see if his players can at the very least execute something with consistency," wrote SB Nation's Kevin Zimmerman.
That is how low the bar has already been dropped. And, yes, it started this season fairly high. A healthy Nuggets team was a popular sleeper pick for a number of analysts, including yours truly.
It's so incredibly early in the season to write this team off completely. But in the fully loaded Western Conference, the Nuggets may need a miracle to get back in this race. And Shaw doesn't exactly seem like a miracle worker.
"The Nuggets Aren't Dead Yet, But..."
Over an 82-game trek, every team is going to have its rough patches. This feels like something completely different.
Not only are the Nuggets losing, but they look completely disorganized while doing it. Shaw and Faried have already butted heads. Shaw has called out Lawson's "lack of aggressiveness," per Denver Stiffs' Nate Timmons.
And those guys are supposed to be Shaw's rocks. He dubbed Lawson and Faried as Denver's "cornerstones" in April, per Nuggets.com's Aaron J. Lopez. If Shaw cannot connect with his main guys, he's going to have an even tougher time reaching the rest of his roster.
The West is not going to wait for Denver to figure things out. As Moore quipped, the Nuggets are dangerously close to finding themselves without a pulse:
"The Nuggets aren't dead yet, but we're poking the body with a stick and it ain't movin'
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) November 13, 2014"
When things go this poorly this quickly on a club with this much talent, someone typically ends up taking the fall. It might be the middle of November, but, as Fromal explained, it could already be time for the Nuggets to consider making a move:
"It's by no means too early for [Shaw's] seat to feel warm. This is an unacceptably poor start, especially with two sets of consecutive games against the same opponent, as teams historically split those home-and-away outings. As good as the Portland Trail Blazers are, coming out flat at home...against a team on the tail end of a back-to-back is unacceptable. Denver had two days off, so it's even worse that it allowed 84 first-half points, showed no competitive fire and was deservedly booed out of the gym at halftime. That's rock bottom, and rock bottom is often accompanied by a seat getting rather hot.
"
Now, whether that fiery seat turns into something more could be a different issue.
The Nuggets could give Shaw more time to right the ship. These players could still find better chemistry together, and the coach might yet unearth the rotation needed for this team to reach its potential. Plus, the team needs to identify a better option—be that in-house or externally—before taking the reins out of Shaw's hands.
Denver may also decide that it has a problem but not one that exists on the sideline. The Nuggets could hit the trade market if they feel their pieces don't fit like they should.
Or, Shaw might take the fall for whatever is going wrong in the Mile High City. Even if this isn't entirely his fault, his position could make him responsible for what has transpired. That's just the nature of the business.
There is smoke under his chair and probably a fair share of fire. Unless he finds answers to the number of questions facing his club, those flames could become an uncontrollable blaze pretty quickly.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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