What's Behind Denver Nuggets' Stunning Turnaround?
During the early portion of the 2014-15 NBA season, the Denver Nuggets nosedived from being a trendy sleeper pick to a discarded bottom feeder.
But with seven victories to show for their last eight contests, the Nuggets are finally making the type of noise the basketball world expected to hear. With an identity established and a commitment to playing both ends of the floor, Denver is forcing its way back into the playoff picture.
Despite possessing one of the deepest rosters in the business, the Nuggets seemed destined for disaster just a few weeks back. An opening-night victory over the Detroit Pistons was washed away and forgotten amid the six-game skid that immediately followed.
And the losses alone weren't the most concerning aspect of Denver's problems. Rather, it was the overall lack of energy that had the Nuggets in jeopardy of losing a season that had barely started—and head coach Brian Shaw coming dangerously close to the chopping block.
"If we don't have that kind of effort from everybody, then we're not going to ever get out of this situation, and I won't survive it," Shaw said, per Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post, after their sixth consecutive loss. "And it's that simple."
But something helped pick this dazed Denver team up off of the canvas. After splitting their next two games, the Nuggets rattled off five straight wins, which included victories over Eastern Conference juggernauts in the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls.
And, again, it isn't the results that have mattered most but the process that led to the Nuggets' recovery. This group looks like it's all pursuing the same goal, which didn't appear to be the case earlier this season.
Lacking an established superstar, the Nuggets need all hands on deck to find success. As much as Shaw wanted to see a more consistent effort from his players, that was hardly the only thing missing from Denver's formula to start the year.
"It takes some smarts, it takes some execution, it takes togetherness," guard Arron Afflalo said of turning things around, per Dempsey. "There’s a lot of things that have to fall into place for a team to play well as a group."
In the post-Carmelo Anthony era, the Nuggets aren't set up for one player to shine. Nine different players on this team average between 16.2 and 7.3 points per game. That means there are a number of mouths to feed, and some guys on this team had reasons to feel less than satisfied with the portions they were given.
Afflalo arrived in Denver this summer after posting career highs in points (18.2) and field-goal attempts (13.8) for the Orlando Magic last season. Kenneth Faried spent his summer raising his profile with a starring role on Team USA then capped his offseason by inking a four-year, $50 million contract extension in early October.
Plus, the Nuggets had a small army of players to work back into the rotation who missed significant time due to injury. Danilo Gallinari (torn ACL) didn't see the floor during the entire 2013-14 campaign. Ty Lawson (rib, ankle), Wilson Chandler (hamstring, hip), Nate Robinson (ACL) and JaVale McGee (leg) all missed at least 20 games last season.
Roles needed to be handed out, learned and embraced. As Lawson told NBA.com's David Aldridge recently, the Nuggets' resurgence coincided with the players gaining trust for each other and for their head coach's vision:
"Coach made everybody's role defined. At first, everybody was trying to go out there and be a 30-point scorer, and be searching for the ball. He defined everybody's role. And we all bought in at the defensive end ... now we're making sure that players aren't getting into the paint, and they're not getting a lot of paint points.
"
Denver's incendiary offense is what originally painted this team as a sleeper.
The Nuggets use the fact they don't have a go-to scorer to their advantage. This team shares the wealth and, as a result, owns the NBA's 10th-most efficient attack. Lawson, in particular, does a tremendous job of taking advantage of the weapons around him. He ranks second in assists (10.1 per game) and third in points created by assists (23.9 per game), per NBA.com's player tracking data.
But Denver's work at the opposite end has keyed this turnaround.
During the Nuggets' 2-7 start, they surrendered an average of 108.2 points a night. And that unsightly number was actually skewed by matchups with the offensively challenged Detroit Pistons (79 points) and Indiana Pacers (87).
But over this most recent eight-game stretch, the Nuggets have allowed just 101.9 points per game. And that figure includes both an overtime contest, when they held the Los Angeles Lakers to 94 points, and a 120-point outburst by the fiery Phoenix Suns.
To contextualize those figures, only the Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves have yielded more than 108.2 points per game to their opponents. Conversely, a 101.9-points-per-game scoring average against would at least rank 24th in the league.
A bottom-third defense is nothing to write home about, but the Nuggets have still shown signs of progress on that side of the ball. As Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal noted, this team has started to display a commitment to playing defense:
"While this team lacked any sort of defensive identity and displayed horrific rotations early in the year, it now seems as though everyone on the roster has bought in. Even if the team hasn't put up truly impressive numbers on the less-glamorous end, it's at least committed, and that's great news for future success.
"
With an offense this potent, the Nuggets don't have to be great defensively. When they hold opponents under 100 points—something 17 teams do on a nightly basis—they are a perfect 6-0.
"I think now everybody’s buying in to what we’re doing on the defensive end," Shaw told reporters recently. "That, first and foremost, is the reason we’ve been able to turn it around and win some of these games we were losing early in the season."
| First 9 Games | 108.2 | 46.3 | 37.4 | 41.6 |
| Last 8 Games | 101.9 | 42.6 | 35.2 | 37.3 |
The Nuggets are clogging the interior, baiting their opponents into taking longer, lower-percentage shots. While the goal of any defense is to force teams into inefficient field-goal attempts, doing so pays particularly high dividends for Denver.
For one, this team has no trouble creating point-blank looks of its own. The Nuggets average 30.1 restricted-area shots per game, the fifth-most in the NBA.
Denver also grades out as an above-average team on the glass. Its 75.8 defensive rebounding percentage is the 10th-highest in the league.
Long shots, or forced passes into a crowded paint, can also turn into transition opportunities. That happens to be another of the Nuggets' strengths. Only eight teams average more fast-break points per game than Denver's 14.1, per TeamRankings.com.
The Nuggets are not—and with this roster, probably never will be—a defense-first team. But they are putting down roots on that end of the floor that allow them to supplement the things they do well.
And this is only the beginning. There is expansive room for improvement.
Lawson is converting only 41.6 percent of his field-goal attempts. He's been a 47.1 percent shooter for his career. Gallinari has an even bigger gap between his field-goal (34.7, 41.7 percent for his career) and three-point (30.5, 36.7) percentages. Faried isn't scoring (11.4 points) or rebounding (7.0) like he did last season (13.7 and 8.6, respectively).
"I just haven't been playing my game," said Faried, per Dempsey. "I know it. My teammates know it. My coaches know it. ... For me, [my season has been] awful. You've got to be able to look at yourself, look at the man in the mirror and say that to yourself."
Time is on Denver's side. Time for Lawson to find his shot, for Gallinari to rediscover his rhythm, for Faried to unleash the Manimal, for Shaw (or the front office) to find the best way to use McGee.
And, most importantly, time for the Nuggets to rid themselves of the bad taste left from their disastrous start and continue climbing the Western Conference ladder.
This recovery hasn't saved Denver's season, but it's given the team an opportunity to do just that.
"It definitely gives us something to build on," Chandler said, per Dempsey. "It definitely gives us something to build on. We can take that as a positive and go from there. Just take it game by game, in incremental steps."
As long as those steps keep pushing Denver in the right direction, this team can still play the role of pesky sleeper so many had envisioned for it at the start of the season.
With this type of talent, strong performances should not be surprising for the Nuggets; they should be expected. If they keep stringing them together, expectations will continue to rise—along with the significance of these triumphs.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
