The Denver Nuggets simply didn’t have it on the second night of their back-to-back with the Charlotte Hornets in a blowout loss last night.
Denver struggled to score, outside of Jamal Murray at the beginning of the game and Julian Strawther at the end. The Nuggets simply didn’t shoot well enough to keep themselves in the game. They looked tired out there, unsurprisingly given what the team has had to do to stay afloat over the last few weeks.
On a night when Aaron Gordon sat on a back-to-back following 32 minutes the previous night, of course joined by Nikola Jokic, Cam Johnson, Christian Braun, and Jonas Valanciunas, it was clear that the Nuggets were undermanned and overwhelmed in a lot of facets. Most notably, Denver’s effort wasn’t high enough on the glass and on closeouts on the perimeter to keep up with a high-powered Hornets offense.
This game got out of hand quickly with the Nuggets down by 20+ points at halftime. It got to the point that head coach David Adelman took Murray out relatively early in the third quarter and never played Tim Hardaway Jr. in the second half. The Nuggets were more or less forced to throw in the towel or risk injury with players who were fatigued.
“We had a really poor shooting night, and then it hit a point where I just felt like it wasn’t worth playing the guys heavy minutes,” Adelman shared postgame. “Once they took that lead and shot it like they did, it was enough.”
Adelman also reinforced that this kind of night happens during January, the dog days of the NBA calendar.
“It wasn’t for a lack of trying or attitude. It was an NBA night.”
There was a heavy emphasis on Denver’s rebounding issues, in which the Hornets out-rebounded the Nuggets 52-29. This is where the Nuggets seemingly miss the trio of Jokic, Gordon, and Valanciunas the most right now.
“It’s tough. Missing AG, obviously, and [Jokic] — he dominates that team, especially on the boards,” Jamal Murray stated plainly in postgame. “We were one-and-done, and they were getting second and third chances. That’s both ends of the floor.”
“We never really gave ourselves a chance to fight back or get back in it.”
The Nuggets are now 7-4 without Jokic on the floor, and by and large, they’ve done a fantastic job of surviving without him. This past week, they played two separate back-to-backs shorthanded and won three of those games, often through pure force of will and incredible shotmaking.
But the rebounding is an issue. Last week, the Nuggets had — by far — the worst rebounding week of any team in the NBA with a rebounding rate of just 42.3%. They’ve been last in the NBA in offensive rebounding, and the defensive rebounding has started to erode. Ever since Jokic went down on December 29th, the Nuggets are dead last in rebounding rate.
This past week was a particular struggle though. Aaron Gordon is capable of rebounding but is also undersized at 6’8” as Denver’s starting center (outside of last night). Zeke Nnaji has had rebounding issues for most of his career. DaRon Holmes is trying to figure it out in his first full season, but he’s worst rebounder of the three by far at this stage and gets muscled out of the paint often.
Others have helped Denver on the glass with Peyton Watson averaging over 6 rebounds per game, Jalen Pickett at 4 per game, Murray at 4 per game, etc., but it’s such a high energy initiative for the Nuggets perimeter players to take on, on top of creating all of the offense on the other end of the floor.
So, are we seeing the first cracks without Jokic out there? Definitely. The Nuggets are playing very, very hard right now as a team. They give up mistakes, but the rebounding issues are a product of personnel, not desire. When Gordon’s out there, he’s another bigger body they can trust and has mitigated some issues. Remove him, and the card tower falls out from under the Nuggets’ interior structure.
Officially, Jokic is three weeks removed from his hyperextended knee. The Nuggets gave a timetable of four weeks before he would be reevaluated. It’s possible he returns slightly sooner because he’s a tank, but if he keeps to the plan, the Nuggets shouldn’t expect him back until the following week.
Denver plays four games this week, a final home game on Tuesday vs the Los Angeles Lakers before taking another road trip to play the Washington Wizards on Thursday, Milwaukee Bucks on Friday, and Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday.
Can the Nuggets survive for another four games? Absolutely. Is it getting more and more difficult for them by the day? Without question.
It’s clear that Denver’