Beat writer Bennett Durando opens up the Nuggets Mailbag periodically during the season. Pose a Nuggets — or NBA — related question here.
How long do you think it will take for Michael Malone to give Julian Strawther consistent minutes off the bench? Do the Nuggets need him, or the other rookies, to step up this year?
— Matt, Lincoln Park
The Strawther minutes will come with time. As good as the second unit was in Denver’s first four wins, there are too many young players coming off the bench for Malone to not get frustrated with one or two of them occasionally. Peyton Watson’s start to the season has been massively encouraging, but he has also disappeared for stretches. Growing pains are natural. Rotations will change. Malone wants to experiment within reason to find out who plays well with whom, and he does want to make sure promising rookies like Strawther get reps to develop this season. I expect the appearance of the second unit will have its ebbs and flows throughout the season. Strawther is the Nuggets’ 10th option right now, but the preseason showed he’s capable of cracking the top nine.
Hunter Tyson and Jalen Pickett might have a harder time appearing in NBA games this season outside of garbage time. If the Nuggets need to reach 12-deep into their bench, I think the next two men up are Justin Holiday for the backcourt and DeAndre Jordan for the frontcourt.
Where does Jamal Murray rank among Canadians across the NBA all-time after winning an NBA championship in 2023?
— Dash Hamster, Cheyenne
There’s not exactly a deep history of Canadian stardom in the NBA. Excluding active players, the list is pretty much just Steve Nash followed by a respectable list of solid but not Hall of Fame-caliber players. This is clearly a golden era of Canadian hoops, so the silver medal behind Nash (or maybe even gold?) feels authentically up for grabs over the course of the next decade or so. In the last two seasons, the second-best player on both NBA championship teams has been from Canada: Murray and Andrew Wiggins.
Looking forward, Murray’s biggest competition in the legacy race is another Kentucky Wildcat born 16 months after him, also drafted as a mid-lottery pick. Murray already has a ring and remains an offensive fulcrum for a team that has him positioned to win multiple more before his career is over. The biggest knock on Nash is that he never won a title as a player. But Murray isn’t going to win two MVPs, much less one. After all, he’s still seeking his first All-Star and All-NBA honors. It’s almost impossible to envision him supplanting Nash in terms of individual accolades — that’s no insult to Murray at all — whereas Shai Gilgeous-Alexander seems to have the higher ceiling and higher potential to be the No. 1 option on a title-winning team at some point in his career. The Thunder point guard made first-team All-NBA at 24 years old. MVP crowns are feasibly in his future.
I have no issue calling Wiggins and Murray the third- and fourth-best Canadians in NBA history. Wiggins has the edge currently by virtue of longevity — he’s a No. 1 overall pick (sorry Anthony Bennett) and Rookie of the Year, an All-Star for a team that won the championship and a career 19.4 PPG player — but Murray should be well on his way to passing him.
Shout out to a few distinguished Canadians of past eras: three-time NBA champion teammate of Michael Jordan, Bill Wennington; three-time NBA champion teammate of Kobe and Shaq, Rick Fox; and Jamaal Magloire, the only other member of the Canadian All-Star club with Nash, Gilgeous-Alexander and Wiggins.
Who is going to step in to replace Bruce Brown’s trash talking?
— Benny G., Denver
You’re not the only person who’s been wondering that, Benny. At preseason media day while Christian Braun was fielding a barrage of “replacing Bruce Brown”-themed questions, he was asked whether he planned to replicate Brown’s talent for getting under opponents’ skin. Braun laughed and gave a firm no. He felt Brown had been around the league a few years, long enough to earn the right to be an antagonist. Braun isn’t there yet, as he sees it.
The issue here is the Nuggets truly do model themselves after their leader, and that’s Nikola Jokic. The extent of attitude you see from him on the court is the occasional baffled expression directed at a referee. He’s one of the least boisterous superstars the NBA has had in years, and his teammates absolutely notice that.
Before the Finals, Michael Porter Sr. told me how glad he was that his son has gotten to learn from Jokic’s work ethic and mindset. Think it rubs off? In the locker room after the Nuggets won the season opener, Michael Porter Jr. said this unprompted during a question about the Lakers, seemingly alluding to the “Who’s your daddy?” chants at Ball Arena: “I just think it’s hard to beat our team in this building. I know our team doesn’t really appreciate all the trash talk that the fans and everything do. We just want to go out there and play basketball and let our game talk for itself.”
It’s noteworthy that in spite of all the offseason trash talk Anthony Davis and Co. mentioned, none of it came from any of Denver’s current players. They’ve steered clear of it every time they’ve been asked about it.
This isn’t to say the Nuggets lack personality. I actually think Jamal Murray has a knack for indirectly getting under opponents’ skin simply with his demeanor and dramatic facial expressions. But right now, I don’t have an answer for you in terms of explicit trash talk.
So far, what differences have you noticed between being on the Nuggets beat vs. the Avs beat?
— Alec Gwin, Denver
When I covered college sports, the challenge — but also the rewarding perk — of basketball season after football ended was the smaller roster. I haven’t taken a math class since I was a college freshman, but I think fewer players and coaches theoretically equals fewer stories to tell. Same goes for the switch from hockey back to basketball now, but the added challenge of an NBA beat (as opposed to college hoops) is that you’re covering players who have been on the team for years.
With Denver especially, there’s not a constant flow of roster turnover like there is in the transfer portal era of college sports. I covered Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler at Auburn. They were obviously a huge deal there; they also only spent one year on the team. Then a completely new core replaced them. It’s a shorter lifespan for a fanbase to become acquainted with its favorite athletes. Here, the readers have already gotten to know Jokic and Murray and others. The fun obstacle is in finding something new.
The Avalanche beat was a different kind of challenge for me because I came in as a relative outsider to hockey. I was focused on learning the intricacies of the sport and its strategy as much as getting to know the team. Basketball is more familiar territory for me. I’ve played the sport more (not well) and written about it more.
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