The morning after the Nuggets’ season-opening win over Detroit, here are three observations I took away from the game.
Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried goes up for two of his 22 points against the Pistons on Monday night. (Photo By Andy Cross / The Denver Post)
1. Winning ugly. The Nuggets held Detroit to 79 points, the second time in the Brian Shaw era that his team has held an opponent to 80 or fewer points. The Nuggets are 2-0 in those games. Style matters, and winning these types of games matters. The Nuggets have proven over the years they can win when the games are high-octane. Where they’ve struggled is in getting victories in games that have a huge defensive tilt. Not on Wednesday. They held the Pistons to 36 percent shooting, they forced 16 turnovers and scored 17 points off of them. They won the rebounding battle 51-45. They held Josh Smith to seven points on 3-of-10 shooting after he scored 15 points on 6-of-12 shooting in the first quarter. Alonzo Gee completely wrecked the Pistons offense at the point of attack in the fourth quarter, getting up into Detroit point guard D.J. Augustin, which didn’t allow him to get the offense going in rhythm.
“He made D.J. Augustin uncomfortable, something he wasn’t the whole game,” Nuggets guard Ty Lawson said. “We need that energy. You could see that in training camp and in the preseason games. When I see things like that, itap contaigous. I feel like we’re going to be a better defensive team this year by far.”
2. Getting spacing. No team is well-oiled machine in the first game of the season, but the Nuggets spacing in the game – particularly in the first half – left something to be desired. Multiple players playing in and around the post pretty much organically cut off driving lanes for point guard Ty Lawson. And without the ability to get into the teeth of the defense on a regular basis, Lawson’s offensive game struggled. Things got better in the second half, but the Nuggets played an inside-out game against the Pistons. But to get the offense revving the way we’re all used to seeing, they’ll have to do a better job of spacing the court and creating driving lanes.
3. Center musical chairs. The Nuggets three centers – Timofey Mozgov, Jusuf Nurkic and JaVale McGee – all saw action, against the Pistons and combined for 20 points, 20 rebounds and three blocked shots. Mozgov played the most minutes (25), followed by Nurkic’s 13 and McGee’s nine. Get used to it, at least in the near term. Nuggets coach Brian Shaw has no desire to play any one of them 30 minutes or more.
“Right now, the minute distribution between those three, if all three of them play 16 minutes in a game and we can get a good number of boards and low-post scores and runouts and put foul pressure on the other team because of their running, I’m not afraid to continue that system of platooning the three of them and splitting those minutes like that,” Shaw said.
Follow Chris Dempsey on Twitter @dempseypost or email him at cdempsey@denverpost.com
