The Nuggets are reluctant to turn it up to 11.
The back end of their rotation has been easily the most time-consuming topic of the preseason for David Adelman and his staff. He went into training camp uneasy about their depth, which took a hit with the starting lineup getting more expensive and bench players like Peyton Watson and Tim Hardaway Jr. going out the door. “The worry for me,” Adelman said, “was do we only have nine players?”
The last two weeks have reassured him. This Nuggets team, at the very least, appears to have more than 10 partial players. Now that dynamic is creating a different sort of quagmire.
“We were in there (Sunday) for an hour talking about the 10th spot,” Adelman said.
DeMar DeRozan and Spencer Jones (once healthy) are understood to be locks. Tyus Jones and Marvin Bagley III seem to be a common-sense package deal for pick-and-roll purposes, unless the Nuggets want to play without a true backup point guard or backup center on certain nights. Then it comes down to Julian Strawther and Alpha Diallo, who provide polar opposite services but are arguably the bench’s two biggest standout performers of this preseason.
It begs a natural question: Why not just go to 11?
Over the course of the season, maybe even over the course of a week, that will certainly happen, Adelman says. But the second-year coach prefers not to play more than a 10-man rotation in a 24-minute half, essentially because jamming an 11th man into his sub pattern throws off the rhythm of how he rotates his starters.
“It gets really junky,” he explained. “When you get to 11, there’s gotta be a reason for it. It does happen if you have minute restrictions on people — you can get away with it. But nobody flows well with 11. Even teams that play 11, it usually isn’t all in the first half. … It’s tough on the guys, man. Starters, they don’t want to come out, and they also don’t want to sit there for an hour before they go back in. So you’re protecting them in two different ways. It’s not just (lowering) the minutes. It’s how long do they sit? … So it’s an equation we go through every year. It’s one of the hardest things that people don’t realize, is how to do that properly and have a good flow to your team nightly.”
The trouble is that narrowing to 10 players for any given game means choosing between skill sets. It’s the nature of Denver’s roster. Adelman’s options at the end of the rotation each offer a trait he desperately needs — Diallo’s screen navigation and ball pressure, Strawther’s spacing and paint penetration off the bounce, Tyus Jones’ ball-handling relief –but none are proven contributors on both ends of the floor. None of them have a reputation for being multifaceted.
That leaves Adelman with a more complicated, nuanced decision than simply choosing the best overall player. It’s about which attribute he’s willing to sacrifice in order to maintain a 10-man flow that satisfies his starters. He foresees it changing based on the opponent. Or if one 10th man doesn’t work in the first half, he can try another in the second-half rotation.
“It could be somebody the first night in OKC. It could be somebody completely different against the Pelicans at home,” Adelman said. “Last year was a very obvious 10 for me. This is very different. Last year, who really pushed us was Spencer. Spencer came out of nowhere — not out of nowhere, but in the preseason, he just played really well. This has been different. There’s been signs of life from a lot of different people.”
The five off the bench last season were Watson, Hardaway, Jones, Jonas Valanciunas and Bruce Brown, though Adelman ultimately had to tweak his rotation almost nightly to account for a deluge of injuries.
One thing he’s already decided, regardless of what happens in Denver’s last two preseason games this week: He wants to keep trying some all-bench lineups into the regular season, at least early on. That’ll be a departure from the usual philosophy he and former coach Michael Malone have shared, that one starter needs to be on the court at all times, health permitting.
“We’ve looked at all the metric stuff,” Adelman said. “We’ve had some success with Cam (Johnson) out there with those (bench) guys. We’ve also had some success with no starter out there.”
DeRozan has been Denver’s first sub into the game, about halfway through the opening quarter of each preseason contest, beginning a gradual pattern of starters trickling out one-by-one. Nikola Jokic has been the last starter to sit, checking out around the 3-minute mark. That would also be a slight change if it carries over to the regular season; the star center often plays out the entire quarter.
The Nuggets were outscored 36-35 combined in 14 first-half all-bench minutes against Utah last week — a solid outcome if it can translate. They were outscored 16-11 by Chicago in that stint Sunday, but with Zeke Nnaji at center instead of Bagley.
Johnson, who staggered a bit last year as the token starter during the non-Jokic minutes, has been the first starter to check back into the game in the second quarters this preseason. Denver had a minus-1.8 net rating over 163 minutes last season with him as the only starter on the floor, a promising number if Adelman decides to return to that stagger eventually. If the Nuggets can play close to even when Jokic is resting, they’ll celebrate it every time.
If they can accomplish that while also keeping their dominant starting five tethered together for more of the game? Even better.
“I do not want to play a starter with the second unit if I don’t have to,” Adelman said, “to start the season.”
It’s just a matter of figuring out which all-bench lineup has the best chance of pulling it off. The final two exhibitions in Los Angeles will help, but Adelman’s evaluation process has also been hindered by the absence of Jones, who remains non-contact at practice with a hamstring strain. Rookie Bryce Hopkins was a bright spot against Chicago, Adelman said. Cam Whitmore has offered a few tantalizing displays of his first-round athleticism. Trevon Brazile and Nnaji could be stop-gaps at backup four if Jones isn’t ready for opening night in nine days.
But for the most part, this Nuggets preseason seems to be narrowing to a Strawther vs. Diallo dilemma. Both have been convincing. Strawther is averaging 27.5 points per 36 minutes on 46.9% shooting. Diallo added another handful of menacing defensive possessions to his highlight reel Sunday, including a steal and coast-to-coast dunk through traffic.
“DeMar’s gonna play, and what do you put around him?” Adelman pontificated. “What’s the most successful way to do that? … When Spencer comes back, is it three defensive players, two offensive players? Do you go Tyus and Marvin in pick-and-roll, and DeMar is your isolation guy? And then you have to decide does Julian complement those guys the best, (or) do you want a defensive player out there?”
He’s still asking himself those questions more than answering them at this point.
