Demoralizing last-second losses have altered the mathematics of the Nuggets’ playoff race, but they haven’t changed the team’s stance on its overall play recently.
After wrapping up a 124-96 rout of the 76ers on Tuesday, Nikola Jokic and David Adelman both resisted the idea that it was some sort of bounce-back win, maintaining that Denver played good basketball the previous week despite a 2-2 record that appeared middling. At the core of that shared opinion was the notion that the schedule dictates a team’s slumps and surges as much as the actual quality of performance.
“That’s the NBA, right?” Bruce Brown said.
“We had a really tough six-game schedule, and I think we played really good in all of those six games,” Jokic said, referring more broadly to a 3-3 stretch entirely against playoff teams. “… I think we just continued to play really good (against Philadelphia). And hopefully we’re going to continue to play like this.”
The six-game stint was highlighted by wins over the second-place Spurs, third-place Lakers and fourth-place Rockets. It also included stingers decided by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic at the buzzer, which added to Denver’s season-long trend of poor clutch execution. One lopsided loss to New York was nestled in there as well (and may not have been accounted for in Jokic’s assessment about “all” of those games).
“The positive for me — and I wasn’t saying this just to say something positive in the media — we played well last week. Flat-out did,” an adamant Adelman said, reiterating a big-picture perspective that has characterized his tone and messaging throughout the season. “We played the No. 1 seed in our conference, in the whole NBA. And the Lakers are playing a really high level. And (we) took them both to the end. Beat a Houston Rockets team very soundly, and won in San Antonio, which is a really hard place to win, no matter the circumstances, on a back-to-back. So this felt like just a connection to what that was last week.”
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After boat-racing Philly and entering a back-to-back Wednesday in Memphis, the Nuggets had compiled five games of film with their opening day starting lineup back together. The unit's playing time in those games had been limited by a combination of blowouts (wins and losses), minute restrictions (Aaron Gordon) and meddlesome minor injuries (Jamal Murray's ankle and shoulder).
Needless to say, the sample size isn't exactly resounding. But the lineup's net rating has exceeded 30 points per 100 possessions in that sample against quality competition.
It's helped to have Christian Braun and Cam Johnson finding a groove. Johnson was averaging 17 points on 55% outside shooting over a four-game stretch after the win over Philly. Braun was averaging 16 per game in the same window, in addition to his responsibilities as a lead defensive guard.
"We went through things to get to that (championship) point (in 2023), and I think this team is starting to go through things," Braun said. "We're starting to go through big games. Sometimes, you've gotta lose a tough game. Sometimes, you've gotta win a game. ... I think sometimes moments bring you together as a team. We're starting to have those moments. But we want to have winning moments. This last stretch can be really big. We've got a stretch where we can put a ton of wins together and get hot going into the playoffs. That's all you can ask."
The subtext: Denver's opponents are about to get a lot easier on paper. It started with the short-handed 76ers — a closing stretch of 14 games with only four teams currently seeded in the top six of either conference. Two of those games are against Oklahoma City and San Antonio to end the season. Even those might be fortuitously timed, as the Thunder and Spurs will likely have nothing to play for other than potential awards quotas.
The number that looms in the meantime, and in the background of Jokic and Adelman's optimistic perspectives, is a 10-14 record against teams with a .600 win percentage or better.
"We've been in some weird ones throughout, where it's like, we wish we would have closed it," Johnson said. "And right now, it's one of those situations where if we had closed some of those, we would be in a little bit better of a position. But it's a building process. You just want to peak at the right time in this league."
