Imagine you are the New Orleans Pelicans and you are in the middle of a heated contest against the Denver Nuggets. It’s the start of the fourth quarter in a game where you once led 61-41. This advantage has long since disappeared. You were joking. The best player in the world led a 27-point swing in about 17 minutes of play, giving his Nuggets a 99-92 lead.
But it is okay. Nikola Jokic has to rest at some point, right? He doesn’t even have his buddy tonight! Jamal Murray is out with a hamstring injury. The Nuggets lost their two best reserve players in the offseason. You can do that! You can beat the Denver bench around for four or five minutes and take back control of this game!
Four minutes and 58 seconds later, Denver’s lead increased from seven points to 11. Now you have to beat a refreshed Jokic by double digits. That will not happen. In the end, the Pelicans missed their chance and lost Monday night’s game 134-116.
This scenario is becoming more and more common. While Denver’s bench isn’t exactly lighting up the league, it has more than held its own through eight games. Jokic has spent 112 minutes on the bench this season, and Denver has lost those minutes by a total of 15 points. Not exactly ideal, but that gives a net rating of minus 3.7. Well, last season that number was minus 10.4.
That gave the opponents a formula. Just survive the Jokic minutes and dominate the rest. Denver was so vulnerable without its best player last season that the Nuggets lost several games in which they won by at least 13 points in the minutes Jokic played. The Suns were the only team to beat the Nuggets more than once last postseason. In those games, they won the non-Jokic minutes by a total of 19 points. But it’s looking more and more like opponents can’t rely on Denver’s depth to beat them. If anything, this might be the best bench the Nuggets have had during the Jokic era.
Monday belonged to rookie Julian Strawther, who scored 21 points in 19 minutes, including 12 points in the fourth quarter alone. It was initially difficult for Strawther to get minutes, but with Murray set to miss a chunk of games that almost has to change. Plus, second-year pro Peyton Watson was more than there for him defensively. He is currently averaging 2.6 blocks and 1.3 steals per 36 minutes. The Nuggets don’t even consider him a replacement for Bruce Brown because in their eyes he’s an upgrade. “Peyton is bigger,” general manager Calvin Booth told Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer in the offseason. “It’s longer. He is more athletic. He defends better. It fits better.”
The new faces already complement some of the older ones. Reggie Jackson struggled to stay in the rotation last season and ultimately barely played in the playoffs. So far this season, as he has more responsibility for shot creation, he’s looking more and more like he was with the Clippers. In fact, his effective field goal percentage of 52.8% is the third-best mark of his career, trailing only his two best Clippers seasons.
Strawther may be able to contribute extra points if Murray is sidelined and Watson can do some playmaking, but there is no replacement for a veteran point guard. Jackson looks like the player the Nuggets thought they were getting last February. Add in an even larger dose of the standard, high-IQ, even higher-effort reserve play that Denver acquired from Christian Braun last season, and right now the Nuggets are getting a lot from a bench that was among the NBA’s worst.
And that will pose real problems for the rest of the Western Conference, because the Nuggets are somehow even better in Jokic’s minutes than they were last season. Denver posts an absurd net rating of plus-17.6 with its best player on the field this season. It’s still early, but to put this number in perspective, the Warriors were plus-17.4 in 2017 with Stephen Curry on the field. Jokic is a one-man death lineup, and his backups are no longer the antidote. As the Pelicans found out Monday, you can no longer rely on avoiding the reigning Finals MVP by invading his bench. With that option no longer possible, there may no longer be a solution to slowing Jokic’s Nuggets at all.