To a man, the Denver Nuggets echoed the “next man up” mantra following the disheartening 147-123 road loss in Miami Monday night. The loss was obviously overshadowed by the potentially catastrophic left knee injury to the best player in the NBA, Nikola Jokić, but the healthy Nuggets players – the few that are left – didn’t exactly step it up in his absence. Joker will never be confused for Bill Russell in terms of his defensive prowess, but without him, the Nuggets gave up 81 second-half points and got blown out.
How long they’ll be without their three-time MVP should be known sometime on Tuesday. But if you watched the play happen, you can’t be expecting this to be a short-term thing.
Next man up is one thing. Next coach up is something else.
It’s time for David Adelman to step up.
With four starters out, at least two of them – Joker and Cam Johnson – likely to be out for the month of January at least, it’s now up to the head coach to squeeze the best out of what’s left on his roster.
Writing Jokić, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon’s names into the starting lineup every night is the easy part. It’s when you don’t have that kind of a luxury that you find out what kind of coach/motivator you can be.
Can Adelman devise a rotation that allows Jonas Valanciunas to step into a role similar to Joker’s – minus the magical passing and playmaking of course – and allow Murray, Tim Hardaway Jr. and whoever else can get going and keep the offense rolling? Valanciunas is Joker’s equal as a defender and rebounder, so there shouldn’t be any more of the fall-off-a-cliff kind of defensive collapse as we saw Monday night.
In a back-to-the-future kind of moment, the issue will once again become the bench minutes. Can… Zeke Nnaji be adequate as a backup center? Can newbie DaRon Holmes II provide any sort of paint presence? He is 6’9” and should be able to play “back to the basket” kind of ball when needed. Can they go out and sign somebody?
A veteran coach would have gone through something like this before and know what to do. Adelman hasn’t, of course. On the job training with a team smack in the middle of its championship window and poised to make a deep playoff run isn’t ideal.
The postgame handshake between the Nuggets rookie head coach and Miami’s veteran Erik Spoelstra was quick and cordial, of course. You could see the disappointment in both coaches’ faces as they undoubtedly exchanged notes about Joker’s injury. You wonder if Spoelstra might have imparted a bit of experienced wisdom on the young coach on how to move forward and save Denver’s season.
Obviously, if Joker is down for an extended period of time, the Nuggets postseason hopes are pretty much toast, regardless of who their coach is. Despite all the shrewd maneuvering the Denver front office was able to do during the last offseason, there was no way to adequately prepare from a personnel standpoint for the loss of the league’s best player. But if the injury is shorter term – say perhaps a month or so – it will be up to Adelman to find a way to keep the Nuggets within shouting distance of a top four seed so that a healthy (fingers crossed) Denver team can make a decent postseason run.
Now is the time when Adelman needs to truly earn his promotion.
