After an eight-year experiment in extreme basketball patience, the Nuggets have 10 scant days to grow up and become a legitimate championship contender.
The Nuggets don’t have another NBA season of center Nikola Jokic’s MVP prime to waste. It’s Finals or bust for Denver players who like to talk about it, but can’t seem to grasp the simple notion there’s zero room for excuses in a serious pursuit of the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
Don’t know about you, but I’m tired of waiting for guard Jamal Murray to round into his NBA bubble form, forward Aaron Gordon to hit a wide-open jump shot and Denver bench players to develop a reliable winning identity.
You can hear the tension growing in the voice of Michael Malone, who sounds like a coach feeling the pressure of championship expectations. Malone blasted his team after a dismal loss to lowly Houston that only encouraged doubters who’ve labeled the Nuggets a paper tiger in danger of a first-round flameout during the opening of the NBA playoffs.
“Playing like that this late in the year,” Malone fumed Tuesday, after an embarrassing 124-103 loss to the Rockets, “if that’s how we’re going to play, we’ll be out in the first round.”
The Nuggets have lost their mojo at the worst possible time, with the playoffs looming. Since thumping Memphis 113-97 on March 3 to take firm control as the top seed in the West, Denver has played uninspired basketball, with a 7-8 record during the past six weeks.
That’s not a slump. It’s an identity crisis for a team that fancies itself a championship contender. While there was an inspired victory against Milwaukee during this stretch, that shine has been sullied by clunkers against nondescript foes a true contender crushes for fun.
Maybe write it off as boredom with a long season, but a franchise with no championship hardware in its long history has not earned the right to be bored.
Who’s to blame here? Everybody except Jokic.
The NBA is a players’ league, and the Nuggets have only one bona fide all-star. Michael Porter Jr. and Murray can dazzle on any given night. But night-in and night-out they have not played to the level that matches the big financial faith Denver has placed in them. MPJ and Murray will either step up, or the laser focus on Jokic by foes during a seven-game series will grind him to a pulp before he can carry teammates to the Finals.
While new general manager Calvin Booth made very astute moves by adding veterans Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope prior to this season, Booth failed to bolster a sketchy bench in any meaningful way at the trade deadline. Reserve center Thomas Bryant looks shaky in the shadow of Jokic. While the birth certificate of guard Reggie Jackson insists he’s not quite 33 years old, his creaky performances could earn him a senior discount at restaurants and movie theaters nationwide.
And then there is Malone. He deserves all the credit for seeing the greatness in Jokic before anybody else in the basketball world did. Malone, however, now seems at a loss about how to build a championship rotation around the most brilliantly unselfish player on the planet. This coach has an extremely low tolerance for balderdash, and there’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact Denver tends to dump immature talent such as Malik Beasley and Bones Hyland, rather than exercising the patience to help them grow.
As the playoffs approach, do you think Steph Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant fear Denver, or do they all relish the opportunity to test the Nuggets’ mettle under pressure?
This Denver basketball franchise has prepared for this moment on the big stage for nearly a decade.
Under the white-hot glare of championship expectations, it’s no time to wilt like chicken Nuggets.
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