Written by Jonathan Peter on October 24, 2022.
The Nuggets started the regular season in classic Nuggets fashion. A poor 3-point shooting performance and a lack of effort resulted in Denver losing their season opener to the Utah Jazz. They quickly bounced back with impressive back-to-back wins against the Golden State Warriors and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It’s unnecessary to draw any major conclusions about the team this early into the season, but I am still going to do it.
If they can stay healthy, it’s obvious how versatile this Nuggets team is. Unlike many iterations of past teams, these Nuggets are able to matchup well against any team and there have been glimpses of that through the first three games.
Coach Malone has been notorious for hockey-style line shifts when playing his bench unit and his starters. He likes playing units with either all bench players instead of staggering them in with the starters and vice versa. Malone did this a lot of this last season and it resulted in the starters returning to the game with a major deficit to makeup.
To his credit, Malone has been adjusting his rotations constantly over these three games. He’s starting to mix it up by putting players in different spots. There has been an all-defensive minded unit consisting of Bruce Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Christian Braun, and Aaron Gordon around Nikola Jokic. Michael Porter Jr. is getting minutes to stagger with some of the bench players. It is likely that many different lineups will be tinkered with during the season.
This is one of the best things for the Nuggets to do going forward because of how it can help them in the long run. The ability to go to different lineups in various situations is a luxury because the Nuggets can either compensate for a weakness or showcase their strengths.
The defending champion Golden State Warriors are the perfect example of why having versatile lineups is helpful to be a successful team. The Warriors got through last season’s playoffs by altering lineups to expose or challenge their opponents. They played Jordan Poole against the Nuggets because of Denver’s lack of perimeter defense and the inability to stop them. But during the Finals against the Boston Celtics, the Warriors subbed Gary Payton II for Poole because they needed more defense rather than offense.
The Nuggets have many resource available this season. Watching this team develop chemistry is a going to be a blast.
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