When coaches such as Michael Malone grouse about the erosion of defense in the NBA, it might sound like nothing more than curmudgeonly distaste. But they’re not off-base.
“There is no defense in the NBA right now,” Malone said recently after 70-point games from Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic.
The Denver Nuggets finished the 2022-23 regular season second in the Western Conference and fifth in the league with an offensive rating of 116.8, good enough to buoy them to a No. 1 seed and eventual NBA championship.
As they returned from the All-Star break this week, the Nuggets had a 117.1 offensive rating, which would have been third in the league last season. But that’s the past. In 2023-24, Denver’s per-100-possessions efficiency ranked 13th entering the home stretch, and seventh in the crowded West.
It’s not that Denver has gotten any worse at scoring this year. It’s that everyone else has gotten better at it.
Those analytics are indicative of the struggle in the standings. Unlike last year, when the Nuggets coasted to home-court advantage in the West, they’re trapped in a game of musical chairs for the top four seeds entering the last third of the regular season.
As much as staying the course with an identical starting five to last season has been by design, the stats relative to the other 29 teams are what matter. The 2022-23 Nuggets were already a bit of an anomaly. They were the first team since the 2010-11 Mavericks to win the championship despite finishing outside the top five in net rating for the regular season. Dallas was eighth with a 4.4 net. Denver was sixth at 3.3 — but that was at least second-best in the West by a substantial margin. This time around, the Nuggets’ 3.3 net rating at the break was tied for ninth in the NBA and fifth in the West.
How can they elevate that ranking before time runs out? Well, at the risk of sounding reductive: Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets are widely regarded as an offense-first team that plays its best defense when it matters most, so the obvious place to start the search for improvements should be at the offensive end. (And defense is too obsolete to move the needle in today’s NBA landscape anyway, right?)
The mission: score at a more commensurate rate with the rest of the league. The specific focal point: transition.
It’s a baffling area of regression. So when the Nuggets assembled for their first practice out of the All-Star break Tuesday, they spent time on fast-break fundamentals.
“Just not being efficient enough, whether it’s missing — we do a poor job finishing at times — and then obviously costly turnovers where we’re just not even getting a shot up,” Malone said. “So (we’re) just working on some 2-v-1 situations, 3-v-2. Advantaged breaks where we have to capitalize and score. At least get a shot up. There have been too many times when we come down in transition and have the advantage, and we don’t even get a shot up, and then we ignite their break.”
Denver tied for the league lead in transition efficiency last season with 1.21 points per possession. The champions were 10th in transition possessions per game and eighth in transition frequency. They were tops in effective field goal percentage on the break (66.2%) despite ranking fifth-lowest in shooting foul frequency in those scenarios.
The difference this year has been staggering. The Nuggets went into the break tied for the second-worst transition offense (1.07 points per possession, deadlocked with their recent NBA Finals opponent, Miami). It’s impacting the regularity with which they push the pace. As they practiced those man-advantage situations, they had the fifth-lowest frequency and fourth-fewest transition possessions per game. Their shooting foul frequency is identical to last year’s, but their effective field goal percentage is down to 58.2% (25th).
Reliance on the half-court offense doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Games tend to slow down during the playoffs, and the Nuggets are as unstoppable as anyone at generating open shots in the half-court when Jokic is on the floor. But Jokic also relishes opportunities to jump-start fast breaks with long outlet passes because, as he explains it, those passes can result in the easiest type of basket. A team that has succeeded at playing up-tempo basketball as much as Denver has in the past should be able to turn those easy baskets into easy points.
One hindrance is that going into the break, Jokic had the highest turnover percentage in transition (27.3%) of any individual with 65 or more transition possessions. (He had 88). Turnovers are always a risk with his style — the Nuggets understand and even embrace that reality — but Jokic’s passes in transition haven’t connected as cleanly as last year, when he had a 21.3% rate in twice as many possessions.
Still, that’s not the most pressing issue. Denver generally wants its second unit to get out and run more often than the starters. That’s meant to be how the bench can create its best scoring opportunities when Jokic isn’t on the floor.
Finishing has been lackluster. Christian Braun shoots at an eFG% of 52% in transition. Reggie Jackson’s is 52.6%. Jamal Murray’s is 53%. Those are Denver’s three players with the lowest individual turnover rates in transition (minimum 65 possessions), but their effective field goal percentages are three of the 25 worst in the league. On the other side, the Nuggets who make their shots more — Jokic, Aaron Gordon, Peyton Watson — are also the ones who turn it over the most.
“I think that for me, it’s just about slowing down, taking my time,” Watson said. “I feel like at the beginning, I was kind of pressing a little bit. I was like, I have to run that much faster than everybody else. Now I realize that I’m pretty fast when I’m not even running that fast. So I need to slow down, calm down and just stay composed.”
In 2022-23, the last month of the regular season was the only time the Nuggets seemed to lose composure. They still managed to protect the top seed, then roll through the playoffs. In their title defense, they have far less breathing room entering a home stretch with seeding on the line, not just physical preservation.
They can still succeed at both areas of emphasis. Better start by taking advantage of the easy scoring chances.
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