Do The Denver Nuggets Have A Defense Problem?

U-G-L-Y, the Denver Nuggets ain’t got no alibi for how bad they’ve looked defensively through much of their first week of the season.

Despite some positive stretches of solid play on that end of the court, most notably in their road win against the Golden State Warriors, for the most part Denver’s defense had been, well, ugly.

The question now is whether this is the beginning of a worrisome trend that will persist through the season, or just a fluky, aberrant start that the Nuggets can put behind them before it transforms from a mere red flag into an ongoing problem.

“We were embarrassing tonight,” head coach Michael Malone said after the Nuggets’ recent blowout 135-110 loss at the Portland Trail Blazers. “It was a poor effort after that first quarter, did not defend at all. We can’t guard one-on-one right now at all.”

Guards Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons combined to score 60 points for Portland, collectively shooting a blistering 21 of 33 (.636) from the field and an even more daunting 11 of 19 (.579) on three-pointers.

Malone also cited Denver giving up 18 “blow-bys” (when the ball handler drives past his defender towards the rim) for 22 points against Portland, and 16 blow-bys for 31 points against the Oklahoma City Thunder in their previous game.

And those blow-bys were just the tip of the iceberg.

“We gave up 60-plus points in the paint, we gave up 48 points off threes, we put them on the foul line 31 times, they had 20-plus in transition,” Malone lamented, checking off box after box on a fairly exhaustive list of defensive transgressions the Nuggets committed against Portland.

“We did zero defensively tonight.”

And the statistics through Denver’s first four games, while admittedly needing to be taken with large grains of salt due to it being such a small sample size, would indicate they’ve done little on defensive overall.

The Nuggets are allowing the most opponent points per game in the NBA at 124.5, and according to Cleaning the Glass, the 123.1 points they’re giving up per 100 possessions (a more accurate measure than the per game number since it’s pace-adjusted) make them the next-to-worst defense in the league so far this season. Poor performance on defense is the main culprit in Denver now having the sixth-lowest net rating in the league, getting outscored by their opponents by 7.5 points per 100 possessions, despite putting up 115.6 of their own, for the tenth-best offense.

For a Nuggets team which focused on defense over the offseason by acquiring ostensive defensive upgrades at the guard and wing positions in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, and subsequently making defensive the central focus of training camp and the preseason, this was clearly not the result they were expecting. And the completeness of the multiple fronts on which they’ve seen defensive failures so far, and which Malone so thoroughly catalogued, points to a frustrating lack of progress – at least so far – toward achieving his stated goal of Denver becoming a top-five defense.

While the lack of effort Malone cited is certainly disappointing from the perspective of the Nuggets failing to play up to the high standards they’ve set for themselves as title hopefuls this season, it could potentially be a silver lining. Committed and persistent effort is a major part of any good NBA defense, and simply trying harder is one of the most realistically achievable cures to Denver’s struggling defense, as compared with reconfiguring defensive schemes or juggling lineup combinations.

For Malone, this means bringing the effort early, and at the point of attack. “With a guy like Simons, you can’t let him get going,” he said. “That’s a tough fire to put out. We’re not firemen. We don’t want to put fires out.”

“And we closed short to him,” Malone added. “We closed with our hands down to him. He is a shooter, and that wasn’t the game plan. So we did a really poor job with our game plan discipline tonight.”

With increased focus, effort and awareness, improving game plan discipline should be relatively easily within reach for the Nuggets, as long as the willingness is there.

And it’s not as if some bumps in the road were not to be expected. With two of their three top stars in Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. returning from long injury absences, the Nuggets were not only anticipating but planning a slow ramp-up for both as they work their way back to game shape and full health.

Their return, along with the acquisition of at least four new regular rotation players (if rookie Christian Braun is included, as it appears he should be), also results in the Nuggets having a very changed roster this season despite some through-lines of continuity, with, for example, second-year guard Bones Hyland playing alongside Murray for their first time. Yes, Caldwell-Pope, Brown and Braun are defensive-minded additions, but with so many new players in the mix, it seems inevitable that some time will be required for everyone to adjust to each other’s games and for the team as a whole to gel and develop good chemistry.

Perhaps Denver’s biggest ongoing challenge, even it it’s one that has clearly been overblown at times, is constructing an effective defense around back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic. While Jokic’s defensive prowess markedly improved last season, and is generally better in that department than the bad rap he gets from some corners of the NBA mediasphere, he is not a traditional center as a rim-protecting, shot-blocking back line defender. And lacking that failsafe, the Nuggets have to employ some creativity which will often rely on Jokic’s frontcourt teammates Porter and Aaron Gordon to make timely rotations on help defense to prevent opponents from reaching the rim on those aforementioned blow-bys.

But it’s also incumbent on Denver’s guards and wings to batten down the hatches at the perimeter and prevent those blow-bys in the first place, a task at which, as Malone pointed out, they have not been up to snuff at as yet this season.

With two wins and two losses, the Nuggets are far from needed to panic about falling behind too far in the standings, and there are still 78 regular season games remaining for them to figure these issues out.

A big part of that responsibility falls on the shoulders of newly-hired assistant coach Ryan Saunders, formerly head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who is essentially playing the role of Denver’s “defensive coordinator.” Since this, as with their new player additions, represents another personnel reshuffling for the Nuggets, it is reasonable to expect that coaching staff changes and readjustments might take a little time to get ironed out as well.

But if the current trajectory doesn’t improve of Denver’s defense not only underperforming, but doing so across nearly the entire swath of three-pointers, paint points, fouling and transition, and the Nuggets continue getting blown out by opponents who look completely comfortable scoring at will, then the pressure on both Malone and Saunders will almost certainly start to heat up.