Math is catching up with nuggets

This season’s version of the Denver Nuggets appears to be a team constructed for the sole purpose of answering the question: Is it possible for a team with the best player in the world having the best season of his career to be a little depressing to watch ? Twenty games into the season, the answer is, “Wow. I think so.”

The Nuggets lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday night, 126-114, in a game that nicely displayed the structural and spiritual issues currently plaguing Denver. The Nuggets are 11-9 after winning a franchise-record 57 games last season, and there’s no shortage of explanations for the slow start. Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon’s lack of play hasn’t helped, and Jamal Murray hasn’t played a whisper of his former self either. Depth is an issue. Defense is a problem. There are many problems. But in the wake of last night’s loss, all the potential answers feel like red herrings.

The Cavaliers have the best record in the league and are the best three-point shooting team. Watching them operate close to the Nuggets for 48 minutes made it clear that Denver faces a problem that goes far beyond a weak defense and underperforming rotation players—it’s possible that this team just isn’t built to thrive in this version of the NBA.

Throughout the Jokic era, the Nuggets have resisted the league’s shift toward the three-pointer, which has now resulted in an almost religious dedication to that particular shot. Instead, they’ve relied on Jokic to consistently produce an ultra-efficient offense through his own unique style. This has paid off in the past – the Nuggets were proof that when you have a player as dynamic as Jokic, it was often mathematically preferable to let him cook than to raise 45 threes per game. game to become awesome. This is part of what has made the Nuggets so much fun to watch: the way Jokic allowed for a stylistic confrontation between them and the rest of the NBA’s elite teams. For a while there, the Nuggets consistently won the Jokic Ball vs. Math battle, but with three-point shooting taking another leap forward this season, Math is starting to get revenge.

The Nuggets shoot the fewest threes in the league, and last night against the Cavs they made six of their 24 attempts from deep. Cleveland shot 48 times from behind the arc and hit 22 of those shots. More instructive than these numbers are the actions that produced them. The Nuggets’ offensive philosophy boils down more or less to, OK, let’s play Jokic 40 minutes per game. game, get the ball to him on every possession, and then trust him to orchestrate every action on the court as we use his historically unprecedented combination of scoring, playmaking and processing ability to produce an effective offense. of nothing. Meanwhile, the philosophy implemented by the Cavs, Thunder, Celtics and the rest of the NBA’s upper crust is something like, Hey, let’s pass the ball around and get some threes! You can probably guess which one is easier to do.

Watching Jokic play in these conditions is like watching John Henry ride the steam engine. He is currently averaging 29 points, 10 assists and 13 rebounds per game. He shoots 50 percent from three-point range, 55 percent from the field and grabs two steals per game. match. When he’s on the court, the Nuggets are the best team in the league; when he is on the bench, they immediately transform into the Washington Wizards.

There are certainly potential areas for improvement for the Nuggets as the season goes on. Gordon is still getting his feet under him after missing 10 games, Murray can’t play that bad for an entire season (right???) and the younger rotation players should gain confidence with more playing time. But as the league continues to grow in one direction, it’s starting to feel less like the Nuggets are a sleeper contender just waiting to find their groove, and more like a structurally outdated team held together by nothing but Jokic’s broad shoulders. He’s keeping pace—the Nuggets are still in a playoff spot in a highly competitive Western Conference—but how long can that continue? After last night’s game, Jokic was asked how the Nuggets can overcome the gap created by their opponents shooting threes at such a higher volume. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

John Henry hit the steam engine and then he died.