It’s the Holiday season in Denver. The Nuggets’ second-round playoff series has been characterized by a wrinkle in Michael Malone’s rotation: increased bench minutes for 35-year-old Justin Holiday, who was in and out of the lineup throughout the season.
Holiday, who signed a one-year deal with Denver at the veteran minimum last July, was a DNPCD (did not play; coach’s decision) 24 times during the regular season. He averaged under 15 minutes per game. But despite being used as Malone’s ninth or 10th option, he also started nine games when the Nuggets needed to plug in somebody for Aaron Gordon or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
“The biggest thing with (being in and out of the rotation) is mentally,” Holiday said Sunday before Game 4 in Minnesota. “I’m gonna work out, right? I’m going to, day in and day out, shoot these shots. It’s about how you actually deal with the failures when you do play. How you deal with the success when you do play.”
In the first round of the playoffs, Holiday scored only three points against the Lakers, playing single-digit minutes in four of the five games as Malone went nine-deep into his bench. But against the Timberwolves, second-year wing Peyton Watson has been phased out throughout the series. His only second-half minutes have occurred during garbage time, and he was a DNPCD in Game 4. Dependence on Holiday has increased.
Why the change? Malone indicated before the playoffs that his rotations would be matchup-dependent rather than concrete for all four rounds of a potential championship run. Simply put, this is the earliest evidence of that philosophy being put into practice.
More specifically, it’s a decision to prioritize offense over defense for this matchup. The Timberwolves ranked No. 1 in the NBA in defensive rating this season. Even during the first two games, when Watson was part of Malone’s first-half substitution pattern, he wasn’t checking into games until after Nikola Jokic’s rest minutes. The second unit all series has been Jamal Murray, Christian Braun, Michael Porter Jr., Holiday and Gordon.
For most of the regular season, Watson played the four with Denver’s second unit. This Round 2 wrinkle has as much to do with Porter at the four as anything else.
“Just trying to find a lineup that can give us the best chance to have success,” Malone said last week. “With the way (the Timberwolves) guard and how effective they are defensively, sometimes you have to put your best offensive lineup out there to give yourself a chance to score and stay in the game. And obviously, I think we had four points at the five-minute mark of the first quarter (in Game 1), so to say our offense was struggling would be an understatement. So Michael at the four allows you to try to keep them a little bit more honest.”
Watson was a 29.6% 3-point shooter in the regular season. The Lakers played the percentages against him in the first round, not guarding him on the perimeter and establishing a template for other playoff opponents to do the same. That poses a risk to the Nuggets’ floor spacing, which is especially important against a defense as potent as Minnesota’s. Gordon also shot 29% from three during the regular season, so the Timberwolves already showed they were content inviting him to shoot open jumpers early in the series. (Slowly but surely, Gordon has out-kicked his coverage.)
Putting Watson and Gordon on the floor together in the usual second-unit configuration would be particularly suffocating for Denver’s offensive ambitions. Hence the sub pattern in Game 1 and Game 2, featuring a few minutes of Watson alongside Jokic while Gordon was getting a breather. The Nuggets have elected to spread out the defense more during Jokic’s rest minutes by surrounding Gordon with four shooters. Holiday was 40.4% beyond the arc in the regular season, including a scorching 48.6% on corner 3s, automatically making him a worthwhile $2 million investment for general manager Calvin Booth. And Porter can still spot up, drive and rebound at the four, which isn’t a foreign position to him.
Most NBA coaches shorten their benches and depend on veterans more as they get deeper into the playoffs. Malone is no exception. But if there’s an argument to keep the rotation nine-deep, it’s that Watson is already one of the best defenders on the roster. He blocked six shots in a win over Minnesota late in the regular season, limiting Naz Reid’s contributions. He makes electrifying, momentum-swinging plays (swats, dunks) exponentially more often at home than on the road.
But the numbers have backed up a Holiday-heavy eight-man rotation. Across the first four games, Holiday led the series in individual plus-minus (plus-38). He was 10 for 16 from 3-point range (62.5%). He was sixth on the team in minutes played, ahead of both Braun and Reggie Jackson. He was fifth in total points and total rebounds. And he was capable enough defensively to cross-match against centers on select possessions. The Timberwolves were only a plus-three with Jokic off the floor through those four games, failing to take advantage of their supposedly superior depth.
For Holiday, the difference between the first and second rounds has been night and day.
“At the end of the day, my job is to go out there and shoot,” he said. “And if I allow a few negative situations that are very temporary to mess up the next opportunity, that can be way worse for me than just that one missed shot. So I go out there, I think about it like as a machine. Say you have a machine that does something every single day. It’s gonna do that job every day. For a human, yes, sometimes it doesn’t work out. But I’m gonna be like a machine and do my job every single day. Go out there and shoot the shots that I shoot.”
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