Christian Braun as the leader of the Denver Nuggets?
Get out of here with that noise, man.
Everyone knows Nikola Jokic is the Nuggets leader, and Braun was incredibly disappointing during this year’s playoff flop.
Christian Braun isn’t the leader of the Nuggets
When he’s at his best, Braun is a decent fourth or fifth man for the Nuggets. He’s not a leader, and he’s definitely not the leader of the team.
But, for some reason he decided to speak out and say just that to Bennett Durando of the Denver Post.
“I just think I’m the leader of this team. I’m the vocal leader of this team. I didn’t play well enough as an individual, and I didn’t have this team ready enough to play in a tough series,” Braun said.
And this follow-up from Durando, “FWIW since this is getting aggregated a lot, I’ll just add that Braun always redirects blame toward himself when Nuggets play bad. Think he sees it as part of his role. In same interview: ‘You can’t point at Jok and all those guys. They’re killers. … I’ve gotta help those guys.’
The issue with Braun’s comments are two-fold.
One, Jokic is the vocal leader of the team. He has been for many years, and has especially taken on that role in the huddle during the David Adelman Era. This was during his injury this year, and he’s done it while healthy and while participating in games, too.
Jokic is arguably the smartest player in the NBA today. And there’s not really an argument to be made; maybe LeBron James rivals him? Maybe SGA for the way he understands how to play the refs?
I still put Jokic head and shoulders above those guys. No disrespect.
Besides coaching his team up in terms of effort, Jokic even knows opponents’ plays.
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Nikola Jokic is the Denver Nuggets leader. Not Christian Braun.
On most teams, being a generational talent like Jokic is would be enough to anoint him as the leader of the team. And yet Jokic takes it another step further by actively demanding respect form his teammates, sharing the ball so they score, and setting up the team to win games.
Without him, the Denver Nuggets wouldn’t have won their first NBA Championship in 2023. No doubt about it.
Braun completely disappointed during the playoffs
The second issue with Braun’s comments about being the team leader is he vanished during the playoff loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Braun’s points per game fell to 8.3 from 12.0 during the regular season. Furthermore, his rebounds (4.8-3.5) and assists (2.7-1.7) were each down as well.
Braun’s play was not only a letdown compared to the regular season, he failed to step up when the Nuggets needed him most. With Aaron Gordon injured and Jamal Murray being hounded by the incredibly physical Timberwolves defense, Braun was a no-show.
He was supposed to be Denver’s best perimeter defender, at least outside of Gordon, and lacked intensity. His shooting was so terrible, that Minnesota regularly left him alone outside the arc and he bricked shots. To wit, his 3-point shooting this year was down to 30.1% vs. 39.7% last year; that’s a massive drop off. And even if he did hit 42.9% of 3s in the playoffs, his shooting was so infrequent that Minnesota just left him open.
He was also scared to handle the rock. Braun had multiple turnovers just trying to inlet the ball to Jokic in the high post. He let 19-year veteran Mike Conley hound him. That’s embarrassing.
Finally, Braun didn’t do what he does best, which is get out on the break and score easy buckets.
It got so bad one had to wonder, what is it you do here?
In fact, it was so bad Braun was getting roasted on social media during the series.
And now, Braun is getting absolutely obliterated online for saying he’s the leader of the team.
I appreciate Durando’s clarification on the viral statement, explaining Braun felt like he needed to step up.
But, come on dude.
Just like Jaden McDaniels shouldn’t have given the Nuggets bulletin board material about Jok and Murray being bad defenders (he wasn’t wrong), Braun shouldn’t have said this after he was a no-show in the series.
Being a 15-year veteran of the sportswriting business, I know “Are you a leader?” questions are some of the most frequently asked in all sports. And sure, if you’re on an NBA team which only has 18 guys on a roster and half of them regularly play, everyone has to be a leader to some degree.
But declaring yourself the leader when arguably the greatest player in NBA history is playing alongside you is just utterly ridiculous nonsense.
Braun’s not a bad guy. He’s not a selfish guy and seems to have just stuck his foot in his mouth here.
But the biggest problem for the Nuggets is they gave him a 5-year, $125M contract. There’s no team who’s going to take him in a trade, and Denver desperately needs to remake this roster to squeeze out the most of Jokic’s prime as possible.
Aaron Gordon is too often injured and makes too much to be traded, too.
It looks like the only guy Denver could reasonably trade is Murray, which will hurt if it comes down to that.
