Elevator doors: As bad as it gets

When we first opened the elevator doors about a month ago, I started with nearly 1,000 cheery words about the experience of watching Nikola Jokic play basketball.

The best player in the sport has somehow elevated his game to another unprecedented, unforeseen level. He is currently either first or second in every major scoring statistic and has the ability to win basketball’s Triple Crown, leading the NBA in points, rebounds and assists. He is so good at basketball that it borders on the surreal.

What has changed in the month since you posted that column? Well, the team around him is crumbling to ashes, for one thing.

The Denver Nuggets entered Saturday night’s game against the Washington Wizards hovering just above the .500 mark and reeling from a disappointing 126-114 loss in Cleveland. The Cavaliers are one of the best teams in the league and there’s no shame in losing to them at home, but all nugget except for Jokic, Gordon, Russell Westbrook (credit where it’s due – a welcome bright spot during this stretch) and the decent bi-weekly shooter from Michael Porter played like their feet were stuck in wet cement.

The problem with the 2024-2025 Nuggets has been how the vast majority of the roster around Jokic treats their game-to-game effort like a tidal wave. Sometimes it’s high tide (the Dec. 3 win over Golden State, the 25-point drubbing of the Los Angeles Lakers, the five-game winning streak in early November). Other times, it’s low tide (the Nov. 25 disaster against the Knicks, the sleepy Nov. 15 game in New Orleans). Michael Malone seems to have no idea who is going to show up from game to game around Jokic, and neither do we.

After the lackluster outing in Cleveland, Denver needed a make-right game in Washington. The Wizards didn’t win a single game in November and were working on a winless December heading into that game against the Nuggets. Outside of some exciting young players still figuring things out, this team barely resembles an NBA roster. Dead last in offensive rating. Dead last in defensive rating. Dead last in wins. Dead load in general basketball activities. This team’s priority is to put itself in position to draft Cooper Flagg – if not, Ace Bailey or Dylan Harper.

The Denver Nuggets couldn’t lose this game, could they?

Let’s pause for a moment: the NBA is an incredible league. Anyone who plays serious minutes for an NBA team is a skilled, talented, phenomenal basketball player. Any NBA team can, in theory, beat any other NBA team on any given night—especially in this high-variance 3-point era. A “bad” team beating a “good” one happens all the time. These are circumstances that distinguish “surprise losses” from “gut-check disasters.”

The circumstances surrounding Denver’s trip to DC? The vibes sucked (how’s that for high-level basketball analysis).

It’s not just that the Nuggets can’t quite string together consecutive high-stakes plays. It’s not just that this team is now on the play-in bubble in the extremely competitive Western Conference. It’s that the rest of the team doesn’t seem to care that they’re wasting one of the best seasons from one of the best players in basketball history.

We’ve seen the viral clip a million times by now: Jamal Murray spots up the wing, watches the ball bounce away from him, and ignores Aaron Gordon, who is frantically calling for a team. We’ve also seen the non-viral clips of Murray struggling to get separation and Jamal Murray struggling to stay in front of other top guards. We’ve seen Porter—supposedly a high-level 3-point killer—miss one out of every three free throws he (rarely) takes. We’ve seen Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, Hunter Tyson — pretty much every young player drafted in this Calvin Booth era — get blown up in point-of-attack defenses against every good one. We’ve seen Zeke Nnaji’s 4-year, $32 million contract take up plenty of bench space. We’ve seen Dario Saric’s 2-year, $10.5 million contract in the seat right next to Nnaji. We’ve seen tweets saying the Nuggets would have to attach a first-round pick to relieve Nnaji and another first-rounder to relieve Saric in any trade.

We’ve seen enough.

Denver’s 122-113 loss in DC wasn’t just another loss. This was a forensic examination of everything that has gone wrong with this team since Booth took over for Tim Connelly. Jokic played the sport as well as it can possibly be played, but it wasn’t enough to beat the worst team in the league. It defies logic. Jokic scored 56. Every other Nugget scored 57. Jokic pulled down 16 rebounds. Every Nugget not named Westbrook (again, surprising bright spot!) pulled down 20. Jokic went 3-5 from 3-point range (No. 2 in 3pt% this season, if you’re scoring at home). Every other Nugget went 2-19 – both from Strawther.

No Gordon, no Murray, for sure – but since when does it matter when you play a team on a 16 game losing streak? Gordon’s injury-riddled 2024 has been a major factor in the fluctuating efforts. He is this team’s second most important player, most important defender and best IQ/chemistry guy along with Jokic. Gordon is a mainstay in this list. Without him, everything crumbles.

Murray…hmm. How do we discuss what’s going on here? First, let’s acknowledge that this team wouldn’t have a title without him. The Jokic-Murray two-man game was the NBA’s most riveting, hypnotic, unstoppable offensive tap dance. All credit is due. But the man simply hasn’t been the same basketball player since landing the $208 million extension. A small market team that has the unfortunate habit of blowing draft picks and free agent signings can’t also blow it on the $200M+ contracts. Unless Murray’s game/attitude/all-around vibe gets back to 2022 levels, this team is sunk – simple as that.

It’s not fair to Jokic. They must know that. They see what we see, only with a far better vantage point and all the behind-the-scenes work that makes Jokic’s game sing. Only Westbrook and Gordon seem to realize that.

Jokic is not screwing up this season. It would have been so easy for him to look around at this team and decide to pack it in, go back to Serbia, look after his horses, enjoy his life. Instead, he hung 48/14/8 on the dangerous Atlanta Hawks (one of the only teams with wins over both Boston and Cleveland this season) on Sunday.

That’s a two-game stretch of 102/30/16, and the Nuggets went 1-1 with a disastrous loss to the worst team in the league and a win over a potential playoff team. What’s going on here?

The rest of this list still doesn’t fit a player of this historical magnitude. Something has to happen – something big. Jokic is too important for this to continue.

And 1’s:

• Speaking of all-time greats hovering around .500, Giannis Antetokounmpo is also having the best season of his career – which by extension is one of the best seasons in NBA history. He leads the league in scoring with 32.5 points per game. game (just ahead of Jokic), with 11.6 rebounds and 6.4 assists. He’s the same lane-swarming demon he’s always been, but only 5% better in every facet of the game. The bucks around him still look a little old/slow, but that might have a little more to do with Giannis’ intensity than anything else. Since a disappointing one-point loss in Charlotte on Nov. 16, Giannis and the Bucks have picked up eight wins in their last 10 games — albeit against a softer stretch of the schedule. While the Bucks have righted the ship from the horrendous 2-8 start, the rest of the squad must rise to Giannis’ level of effort if they hope to advance more than one round in the playoffs. Maybe Giannis and Jokic should host their own support group.

• Time to panic in Lawrence? The Kansas Jayhawks entered the season as one of the favorites to cut down the nets in San Antonio in April, but after back-to-back losses to Creighton and Missouri, things are looking a little shaky. All-American Hunter Dickson was outplayed by Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner, and the Jayhawks’ point-of-attack defense had no shot against Missouri’s Tamar Bates. Let’s see how these Jayhawks react to seeing two different crowds storm the floor against them in less than a week.