Nuggets bench had more turnovers (7) than points (6) in game 3 loss to Clippers. Bench went 2-14 FG, 1-8 3PT, 1-4 FT.
What will Denver do in the offseason to address their depth?
Box score
Trade Jokic for more role players
To OKC for all the picks!!!
I know it’ll never happen but the thought of SGA (who is basically a super saiyan Jamal Murray) running actions with Jokic is insane
He’s super saiyan Jamal Murray who is a bit taller and can actually play solid defense lol.
Damn you’re right. Jamal and Zeke Nnaji for SGA?
idk I think they need OKCs elite cast of 3 and D role players to make it work optimally. Topic for Jokic straight up. If you squint hard enough the name on the jersey kind of looks the same so it’ll be like Jokic never left
There will definitely be a bunch of high quality players ready for poaching from OKC in the coming years. Since they wont be able to afford JDub, Chet, Hartenstein, Dort, Wiggins and Caruso.
JDub and Chet are RFA in 26⁄27 and they can both get really big contracts. LIke at least 30 mil per year.
SGA, Dort and Hartenstein are UFA in 27⁄28 and they can all get really big contracts. SGA is definitely up for a 50+ mil per year contract.
Wiggins and Caruso are UFA in 28⁄29 and they can both land 20+ mil per year contracts.
So there will be one more year of OKC being insanely good, then they are going to have to reach into their pocketbooks for 3 straight years.
Wiggins will be UFA in 29⁄30, we have a team option on him for 2029.
Caruso also will be UFA in 29⁄30.
The deals with Joe and Wiggins are cheap enough that they definitely will finish their contracts here, and I’m guessing we’ll hold onto Caruso as well.
As much as I hate to say it, but with the Wallace extenstion looming, Dort will probably be the odd man out when 2028 comes.
Hartenstein will be on the fence, his contract is going down to 28,75 next season and he’ll still make 28,75 if we pick his option up. There will be some cap crunching there for sure.
All in all, this team was built to contend at the highest level for this season and the next, after that we’ll see how things go.
Honestly Jokić deserves better and we really can’t improve the team, I’d like an OKC fit
Jokic to OKC for the fucking GOAT haul is a fascinating scenario to think about. It’d be fucking bonkers, id have said impossible before the Luka trade. But if piled together a massive amount of picks + a great young player, could the Nuggets consider it?
We saw the Nuggets falter last season, they look to be again. The league is too good for Jokic to win with a supporting cast that is bottom half. Do you keep your guy to win 50 games and some playoff series but without being able to put a contender around him? Or, if the kitchen sink is offered, do you take that and try to create a new window?
Jokic really does deserve better. His skill level and peak right now is probably THE greatest of all time throughout every generation of ball and that’s nutty to think about.
Take team accolades aside and just look at what he’s doing, his advanced stats, his intangibles. Everything.
Maybe if you don’t count defense. I like Joker too but this is a little too much glazing for me.
Nah man, prime LeBron was carrying mother fuckers to the finals lol. I think Jokic is insanely good but he is not prime LeBron good.
Jokic isn’t prime LeBron James I love Jokic but this amount of glazing is too much
You’d like the greatest player in the history of your team to be traded? To a division rival?
It’s funny bc the Nuggets wanted to draft Shai but he was the 11th pick that year and they were at 14. That’s how they ended up with MPJ. They also tried to get Luka on that night and might have been successful had Vlade not passed on him and gone for Bagley.
The hardest road pt 2
I’ve got a 4 time dpoy and a deeep bench, hire Nico Harrison and lesdoit @ nuggets
Definitely trade Michael Porter Jr for some good squad players. He’s not playing anywhere near levels that need to play
I don’t know if anyone is trading for MPJ or Jamal. And i don’t know if Denver wants to move Braun or AG
They just might end up running it back
You think the owner that fired the coach and GM with three games left in the season would be ok with running it back?
It’s feasible ya. Some minor tweaks
Well, wasn’t the entire point that the team was so dysfunctional from the top that they don’t know how the players can actually perform?
You think any other GM is going to want to pay MPJ 35+ mil per year for 2 years?
The Nuggets for sure want to get rid of MPJ, finding someone who wants him is the hard part.
I dont think he cares that much he owns a heckuva bunch of other teams not just one like most rich doods. Arsenal is playing well. Let’s go Gunners…win the Champions League and become the best club in the world!
Yes. He just didn’t like Malone.
False
Then why did he also fire the GM?
So they can run it back and then get new GM and coach that won’t make a stink about the decision.
MPJ’s contract is bad, but it’s only 2 more years and he’s only 26.
I wouldn’t be totally shocked if a team like Brooklyn might be interested.
Murray though… woof
Apparently Booth almost traded Jamal + Zeke for Coby White, Caruso and Vucevic but owner/Malone were against it
Also was after Paul George.
He had no vision seemingly last 2 years. Probably denvers best chances at a title gone. Will be hard to rebuild another title core.
Summer of 23 they could’ve got someone like Derrick jones to try and replace Bruce brown. Could’ve used their pick to trade for a vet
So many screw up. And it’s gotta eat at any Denver fan because they honestly didn’t fully try and put together a title team last year or this year.
I get being frustrated but things like Derrick Jones are hard to point to. We can’t simply assume we could’ve gotten him instead.
I think they tried but unfortunately differences in philosophies were our downfall, as well as both sides being too stubborn to make it work, resulting in them bringing both of each other down. There’s a lesson to be had in there somewhere, but it ain’t about basketball.
Funny thing is I think both sides had merit, it was just the disagreement itself that killed us
I dont think they tried honestly. There’s not a single move they made post title that said they’re trying to win a title again. And they spent a fair bit of money and picks in this time frame.
I feel like that’s being super disingenuous. The FO just sat there and didn’t try?
You can say they made the wrong moves, you can say they didn’t go all in, you can hate on their philosophy of aiming at a 5 year window instead of going hard for it every year… but to sit there and say they didn’t even try seems pretty ridiculous and even a bit out of touch to me. They didn’t just sit there and say “whatever happens happens”.
If that were the case, there would likely have never been such a cold war internally, because that only happens when both sides deeply care and believe they’re right
They kinda did. Booth said “it’s not about going back to back”
I dont see how they tried to win a title.
They traded 10 2nds and 2 1sts for essentially nothing of value
Look at the depth chart. They had a flawed roster from day 1. And no way to make any moves cause booth traced all picks
Yeah, a pretty clear cut case of a failure of leadership. Which means it might be Josh who deserves most of the blame but, he’s at least on the right track at the moment.
Should be sent to purgatory for stopping that trade.
GMs are not as clever as you think. Someone will 100% bite the bullet on MPJ.
Nico should trade AD for him
Ya maybe. Only 2 years left on his deal
I would be extremely surprised if we simply run it back, but everything will depend on whoever we hire at GM
Nobody can match Jamals 50 mil. MPJ probably has zero value and hard for any team to match his deal.
I could see the starting 5 being back
MPJ is a mystery. He has everything in looks and shot to be a KD or KD-lite type player, but he’s just missing something. I can see why he was chosen near the tail end of the lottery instead of like top 5, like most 6’10” type players with nice shots get taken at
MPJ’s value right now won’t get you any decent squad players unless they throw in a bunch of picks for the salary dump.
Definitely they’ll have to take on a bad contract or attach their 31 1st.
It’s hard to match his salary but there will be some options if they are desperate to move him.
Sacramento Chicago Brooklyn could do deals for him.
Idk about Heat, but they could dump Rozier by adding Jaquez and Jovic to get MPJ 🤷♂️
MPJs contract is terrible, so the Nuggets front office is going to have to take a major hit to get rid of him.
MPJ and Jamal are getting paid star $$$ while playing like role players
When is the last time this happened?
iirc last year in game 1 vs the nuggets our bench scored no field goals so maybe then
I checked now. Taurean had 11 points and 4 field goals while the rest didn’t score. Lakers did have 12 turnovers so it still fits
god damn that’s even worse than i thought how does a bench unit wrack up 12 turnovers??
I’m stupid, it wasn’t the bench but the whole team. Ignore me😭. I forgot to look at just the bench stats
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This was the first game the Nuggets bench got outscored by us.
They might as well give facundo campazzo a call at this point 😭
It’s sad cause Denver had so much depth on the come up of the jokic years. Then last year and this year the cupboards just ran bare and they burnt out their guys.
That’s generally how it goes for champion teams, unless you can pull huge value out of random vet mins or draft a rotation player in the second round every year. You can keep the top guys, but all the good role players you have eventually leave for bigger contracts elsewhere and you’re left with a few good players and garbage.
The thing that hurts is they gave nnaji and saric 14 mil combined.. and traded 3 premium 1sts and bunch of 2nds for Watson strawther Holmes Pickett essentially
They didn’t leave any flexibility for any sort of moves after 23 draft they had given away all roster spots.
The problem is that we have 2 players on our team that are on 170+ mil contracts, and are not playing like they earn that kind of money.
We are out here paying MPJ 35 mil this season, the same amount OKC is paying SGA. But OKC also has JDub at 5 mil this year, and Chet at 10 mil.
How are we going to compete against that?
If OKC were not allowed to have any input on a trade completely controlled by the Nuggets, then we could trade MPJ and Murray for SGA, Chet, JDub, Wiggins and Dort.
Suddenly our starting 5 is Jokic + SGA + JDub + Dort + AG while we have Chet to fill in for Jokic and Wiggins, Braun and Westbrook/Watson as rotation players.
I think a lot of people think this because of their championship run but it really isn’t true. They’ve made some good additions to their roster like Aaron Gordon obviously. But a lot of the other guys are somewhat overrated by nuggets fanbase because they only think of those guys during the context of winning.
There’s a reason none of them have won any individual awards besides Jokic.
Wretched dogshit is the quality of the bench and the team outside of Jok and AG.
Look at the roster you’ve got 6 playoff caliber guys:
After that it’s just a wasteland of benchwarmers.
Braun should be coming off the bench. He became a starter as a replacement Kcp and now he is having a horrible series. His defense and shooting has gotten worse.
Its unfortunate since his fast break game which he’s excelling at this year just doesn’t work in the playoffs when the pace slows significantly. His perimeter defense has always been cheeks though.
He can still be inpactful in a 20 mpg role.
And even him was only brought in cause Jokic pushed for it apparently.
Booth turned down guys like Malik Beasley and Josh green this summer.
Just an embarrassing group of perimeter guys Booth has them relying on. But he poured huge assets into front court and got nothing from Nnaji saric Holmes too
That’s probably why he got fired
Oh he is really impactful. That’s for sure!
Played a big role in why they won game 1 including the 3 that gave them the 2 point lead with under 30 seconds left in regulation + caused the turnover to seal the game in OT and then helped keep game 2 close where he should of closed instead of either Braun or MPJ. People so blinded by their hate for Russ that they ignore that outside the 9 minutes of him playing on a screwed up ankle last night, he’s been a strong player this series especially on defense
Seriously. He’s had maybe the worst playoff stretch ever over the past 5 or so seasons.
They need a kcp type guy or maybe a bruce brown
Hell, uncle Jeff would do at this point.
They could’ve got Josh Green in a sign and trade for KCP to Dallas it was rumored. That would’ve made their depth chart a lot deeper with Green coming off bench.
I don’t think they wanted to help out a conference foe coming off a Finals berth
Shouldve been focused on their own team.
I don’t think they want this years KCP
Russ is the only bench player who can score on his own and he was injured pregame and only made it 8 minutes.
And reportedly the team only signed him because Jokic requested it. Their bench scoring would be even worse if he hadn’t.
This is why Jokic is my MVP for this season. Nuggets legit would be a lottery team without him whereas OKC is still very good without SGA
SGA having a stinker series (by MVP standards) and so far OKC has gotten the 5th largest margin victory in NBA playoff history and the 2nd largest comeback in NBA playoff history. OKC is an incredible team, with and without him.
Braun and Mpj have been bad, and then the bench has been embarrassing
The Nuggets should go all in on a team of role players and trade Jokic to some poverty franchise like Golden State
Fr, they need some elite players like Kuminga and Buddy
Denver should’ve been trading for a Quentin grimes or Schroder or anything at the deadline. They needed another body clearly.
Its the Warriors trajectory: your championship core is getting expensive but only the star player is still playing at a high level. Every season, the bench is full of either vet mins trying to rebuild their value or new rookies in hope of a breakout star. It was a hit or miss: we were lucky in 2022 but duds for the following seasons.
If Nuggets want to maximize Jokic’s championship window, someone has to go be it Murray, Gordon ,or MPJ cause you really need a good bench player. I doubt Westbrook wants to go vet min so I dunno how you would find a better free agent than Dario Saric lol.
👇 Joker after a triple-double effort
https://youtu.be/nFeuSkmk7VA
Get Will Barton to come back
This team got to bench, if Jokic can’t sit with a giant lead or if Jamal isn’t hitting insane shots this team is dead in the water
Easy. Trade jokic to the Lakers for len and dalton.
They fucking suck
They’re just trying their best to give Jokic a chance at stealing the least help title from Giannis
Nuggets owners dont like winning. Fires head coach few games away from Playoff. Let go of their key players. Dont get good caliber players to surround Jokic. Another year wasted fo Jok.
The Nuggets being extremely top-heavy is the reason they are losing, not injuries.
I mean… the two are kinda related. It’s both