It feels like we are talking to a different team sometimes.
Jamal Murray is the same. Nikola Jokic is the same. The messaging is, somewhat, the same. But the feeling is mostly different. There’s a different level of effort and communication going on.
It’s unfortunate that it took the firing of a coach that gave a decade to this job to make it happen, but here we are.
Michael Malone didn’t really deserve to get fired. Josh Kroenke said as much last week. He’d given everything he had to this job, and so many of the factors that led to the dismissal were controllable. They were within Denver’s purview to change things up. There’s nothing that interim head coach David Adelman is saying now that he wasn’t saying a week ago.
But of course, when something as shocking as that happens, it tends to wake people up a but.
“I just think we’re playing much better and with more intent, much more mindful of what we’re doing,” Jamal Murray described about Denver’s shift in mentality over the last week. “We got some momentum, and like I said before, we’re going to carry that into the playoffs.”
“I think as a team, we’ve communicated a lot more,” Russell Westbrook shared at practice on Wednesday. “I think any time there’s a big change, a big shift within an organization, you can do two things: either spread apart or come together. I think we’ve done a good job of coming together over the last week or so.”
The Nuggets are pretty clearly finding their stride together. It’s conflicting that it had to happen the way it did though, because Malone was sharing so much of the same messaging over the course of this season. He cared more about the process and the day to day than anybody. Perhaps he cared a little too much, flew a little too close to the sun at times. Whatever the case, Denver needed the jolt of electricity that shocked the team out of its stupor.
There’s nothing like playoff basketball to get NBA players to amp things up a bit as well.
“I think the number one thing is, schematically, cool. Are you ready for the physicality?” David Adelman implored.
“The intensity,” Murray answered when asked about the primary difference between regular season and playoff basketball. “The refs might let some calls go. It’s kinda more competitive, stuff like that. The pressure and intensity behind each possession is a little bit higher…you just have to value the ball that know that it only comes down to one possession.”
Because of Denver’s slippage defensively and the perceived turmoil the Nuggets are currently facing, many experts have steered away from Denver to win this playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Two teams that are about as good as each other. One is playing the best basketball of their season for six weeks straight. The other fired their coach and general manager 10 days ago and doesn’t look the part. It’s no wonder national media members are overlooking Denver.
“Honestly, it don’t matter as long as we stay together internally,” Westbrook emphasized about keeping the outside noise from interrupting things. “That’s all that matters.”
“We’ve always been overlooked,” Murray stated plainly. “What’s new?”
Denver’s staring around and wondering why everyone left the bandwagon a bit. There’s an understanding of why people are skeptical, but in the end, these are the same players, many of which made a championship run relatively recently. The bones of Denver’s championship team are still in place, and the heart appears to be pumping blood again.
“I think we’re feeling good. I think we’re all feeling kind of a revitalized energy going into the playoffs,” Peyton Watson shared with me in a 1-on-1 yesterday (more on that in the near future). “Obviously, there’s been a lot going on in the past two weeks. Like you said, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions. But I think a lot of our guys, and myself included, have done a good job separating those feelings and all that suspense we went through and just handling what we gotta handle. We’re all leaning on each other more than ever now.”
Communication, accountability, support, and trust. It’s interesting how much we are hearing those words right now.
What it says to me: the Nuggets screwed up the regular season, and they know it. They knew things weren’t perfect and were willing to live with less than perfect for a long time. Less than perfect became good. Then it became okay. Then it became worrying. Then it became troublesome. At the end of it all, the coach and GM were fired, and the roster was left to pick up the pieces.
There will be plenty of time to reevaluate things in the offseason when it happens. What I’m more interested in is the championship habits. Denver mentioned those habits throughout the regular season as something they would like to do. Talking about it and being about it, those are vastly different things. The sense I get is that the Nuggets only recently started to be about the right things again. Those four buzzwords are what Denver’s concentrating on at the moment and hoping they can manifest it in a short amount of time. Most championship teams work on that stuff throughout the year. The best are practicing those things back in October.
The Nuggets were just trying to survive the end of 2024 for a while. Then, the Wizards game happened and woke everyone up for a while. Denver then went back to sleep on defense until the temperature started to rise pre All-Star break. They beat a bunch of bad teams in a row to maintain status quo and save Malone’s and Booth’s jobs. Then, they started playing real teams in March, and things got bad again.
So, my big question is: can you form championship habits in a week? 10 days? Can you fake it ’til you make it in this business? When is the bill going to come due for Denver for not doing those things throughout the regular season?
Because from my perspective, there was a lot of procrastination going on of the things Denver needed to be ironing out to be the best version of themselves at this stage of the year.
It’s been an emotional time for the team over the last week. Like Watson and others have said though, Denver’s had to compartmentalize those emotions for the good of this playoff run. They will have to face that eventually.
“When this is over, I think we’ll have a better emotional understanding and what this has all meant, including the players,” Adelman shared. “But our job right now is to focus in on the challenges we have, and we did a great job last week of doing that.”
Whether Denver can handle the high pressure and stress of the upcoming weeks, that remains to be seen.