This season's version of the Denver Nuggets appear to be a team constructed for the sole purpose of answering the question: Is it possible for a team with the best player in the world, having the best season of his career, to be kind of depressing to watch? Twenty games into the season, the answer is, "Wow. I guess so."
The Nuggets lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers Thursday night, 126-114, in a game that neatly displayed the structural and spiritual issues that currently plague Denver. The Nuggets are 11-9 after winning a franchise-record 57 games last season, and there's no shortage of explanations for the slow start. Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon missing games hasn't helped, and neither has Jamal Murray playing like a whisper of his former self. Depth is an issue. The defense is an issue. There are a lot of issues. But in the wake of last night's loss, all of those potential answers feel like red herrings.
The Cavaliers have the best record in the league, and are the best three-point shooting team. Watching them operate in close proximity to the Nuggets for 48 minutes made it clear that Denver is facing a problem that goes far beyond some lackluster defense and underperforming rotation players—it's possible that this team is just not built to thrive in this version of the NBA.
Throughout the Jokic era, the Nuggets have resisted the league-wide shift towards the three-pointer, which has now resulted in an almost religious dedication to that particular shot. They have instead relied on Jokic to consistently produce an ultra-efficient offense through his own unique style. This has gotten results in the past—the Nuggets were proof that if you have a player as dynamic as Jokic, it was often mathematically preferable to let him cook than to jack up 45 threes per game in order to be great. This is part of what has made watching the Nuggets so fun: the way Jokic allowed for a stylistic confrontation between them and the rest of the NBA's elite teams. For a while there, the Nuggets were consistently winning the Jokic Ball vs. Math battle, but with three-point shooting taking yet another leap forward this season, Math is starting to take some revenge.
The Nuggets shoot the fewest threes in the league, and last night against the Cavs they made six of their 24 attempts from deep. Cleveland shot 48 times from behind the arc, hitting 22 of those shots. More instructive than these numbers are the actions that produced them. The Nuggets' offensive philosophy more or less boils down to, OK, let's play Jokic 40 minutes per game, get the ball to him on every possession, and then rely on him to orchestrate every action on the court while using his historically unprecedented combination of scoring, playmaking, and processing ability to churn efficient offense out of nothing. Meanwhile the philosophy deployed by the Cavs, Thunder, Celtics, and the rest of the NBA's upper crust is something like, Hey, let's pass that ball around and get some threes up! You can probably guess which one is easier to execute.
Watching Jokic play under these conditions is like watching John Henry race the steam engine. He's currently averaging 29 points, 10 assists, and 13 rebounds per game. He's shooting 50 percent from three-point range, 55 percent from the field, and nabbing two steals per game. When he is on the court, the Nuggets are the best team in the league; when he is on the bench, they immediately transform into the Washington Wizards.
There are certainly potential areas for improvement for the Nuggets as the season goes along. Gordon is still getting his feet under him after missing 10 games, Murray can't play this badly for a whole season (right???), and the younger rotation players should gain confidence with more playing time. But as the league continues to grow in one direction, it's starting to feel less like the Nuggets are a sleeping contender just waiting to find their groove, but rather a structurally obsolete team that is being held up by nothing more than Jokic's broad shoulders. He's keeping pace—the Nuggets are still holding onto a playoff spot in a supremely competitive Western Conference—but for how long can this go on? After last night's game, Jokic was asked how the Nuggets can overcome the gap that is created by their opponents shooting threes at such a higher volume. "I don't know," he said. "I really don't know."
John Henry beat the steam engine, and then he died.
