The Denver Nuggets Will Be Both Very Different And Very Familiar This Season

“Same same, but different!”

Anyone who has traveled to Thailand has more than likely heard this jaunty “Tinglish” (Thai-English) catchphrase repeatedly exclaimed by local market vendors, who use the expression to mean “similar,” but with a dash of playfulness and humor that can both charm and confuse tourists. From long ago, this figure of speech became so iconic as to make its way onto popular t-shirts and trinkets sold in stalls and shops around the country, and its (literally) ambiguous nuance somehow communicates volumes while still keeping things amiably mysterious.

In the upcoming NBA season, “same same, but different” is a perfectly fitting description for the new-look Denver Nuggets roster, which with a combination of returning stars in Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., and an offseason overhaul that created a significant, if under-the-radar personnel shakeup, will feature both new and familiar faces, but even in the cases of some returnees, teammates who have yet to take the court together in any actual games.

The Departed Players Leave Behind A Minutes Vacuum

To start with, purely in terms of total minutes played by Nuggets players last season, more than half the team is gone from the roster. Of the 19,805 total minutes Denver players logged in the 2021-22 season, 9,988, or 50.4% of them were played by guys who are no longer with the team. The majority of these minutes, 8.265 of them, were from regular rotation fixtures Will Barton III, Monte Morris, Austin Rivers, Facu Campazzo and JaMychal Green, with Bryn Forbes, DeMarcus Cousins and P.J. Dozier rounding out the bulk of the remainder. While Dozier was traded early after a season-ending injury, and Campazzo fell out of the rotation midway through, that’s still six full-on rotation players whose time will be replaced.

In fact, according to Cleaning the Glass, the Nuggets played literally only two possessions of any lineup which did not include any of the players who have now departed from the team, meaning that essentially every lineup head coach Michael Malone puts on the floor this time around will be one that never played last season. And while the playing time vacuum left behind will be filled by a mix of new and returning players, the combinations will nearly all be new.

Year-Long Teammates Who Have Never (Or Almost Never) Played Together

Jamal Murray has never played an NBA game with Bones Hyland, which kind of boggles the mind considering how quickly Hyland became such an integral part of the Nuggets in his rookie season both in basketball terms on the court, and in embodying the heart and soul of the team’s character, and putting his distinct, lovable imprint upon it. Murray has also never taken the court alongside Jeff Green or Davon Reed, both of whom were also new to Denver last season. And considering that Michael Porter Jr. played just 265 minutes in nine games last season before back surgery sidelined him the rest of the way, the same can effectively be said for him.

The fact that Murray and Porter are starters, and the other three players come off the bench to some degree mitigates this being a major concern, But as Hyland’s role and importance continues growing, Malone will presumably want to give him some meaningful minutes next to Murray and Nikola Jokic in the starting lineup, perhaps even in game-closing situations, so he and Murray in particular will have a learning curve in figuring out how to share the court together in a productive, efficient manner.

New Faces Join the Mix

The Nuggets made two critical veteran acquisitions this offseason. They got their new “three-and-D” upgrade at starting shooting guard, landing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope from the Washington Wizards in a trade of Barton and Morris, and subsequently extending him on a two-year, $30 million contract. To back up the same position and further bolster their wing defense, they also added Bruce Brown, signing him in free agency to a two-year, $13.3 million deal. Both of these players appear set to figure prominently in Denver’s regular rotation, especially considering potential minutes limits and rest games for Murray and Porter which should open up more playing time.

On paper, both players look like seamless fits. Both have experience as effective role players alongside big stars like LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and Kevin Durant and James Harden, respectively. But the proof will be in the pudding, and anticipating some adjustment time with a few bumps in the road here and there is probably more realistic, especially considering that Murray and MPJ will be not only adjusting to their new teammates, but at the same time, following their injuries and rehabilitation, ramping back up and getting reacclimated to playing NBA basketball.

Perhaps more on the fringe of the rotation, if they crack it at all, will also be new players rookie Christian Braun, who the Nuggets selected with the 21st overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft, and DeAndre Jordan, Denver’s first free agent signing out of the gate, and a former Brooklyn Nets teammate of both Brown and Green.

There will be more new blood on the bench than in the starting five, which bodes well for the Nuggets’ main lineup in terms of the stability that comes with continuity, but as the lessons of last season illustrated all too painfully, they will need their bench to congeal more quickly, and perform more reliably and consistently from start to finish, in order to relieve some of the pressure off the starters to put in an unfavorably high minutes load.

A Happy Reunion Of Denver’s High Upside Core Four

In the brief window of time in March and April of 2021 from when the Nuggets traded for Aaron Gordon until Murray went down with his ACL tear, they looked unstoppable, and on track to become not just a title contender, but perhaps the favorite to win the championship. (ESPN’s Zach Lowe, for example, often mentions on his podcast that had Murray not gotten injured, Denver would have been his pick to win it all.)

The numbers the starting lineup of Murray, Barton, Porter, Gordon and Jokic put up in those nine games have become the stuff of the legend of what might have been. Per Cleaning the Glass, when the four who will be returning together this season (minus Barton) shared the court together, The Nuggets had a scorching net rating of +17.1, the rough equivalent of, on average, beating their opponents by about 17 points per game. For context, rolling in reverse through the past few seasons, the top net ratings in the league have been put up by Phoenix (+8.5), Utah (+11.6), Milwaukee twice (+9.9, +9.1) and Houston (+9.0).

Granted, Denver’s “core four” only played 232 possessions together, and in a larger sample size that +17.1 would certainly come down to earth a bit. But as the numbers (from NBA.com) in the tweet above show, when the range is narrowed to only Jokic and Murray in a far bigger, and therefore more trustworthy sample size of nearly 15,000 possessions, that net rating drops only to a very respectable +7.0, which would have been good for third-best in the league last season behind the Suns and Celtics, and which also includes the earlier, more formative years of the Murray and Jokic pairing. When Porter is added to the mix, the number of possessions drops to around 1,850, a fairly meaningful amount, and the net rating jumps to +13.1, which is championship caliber.

How well this core can recoup this magic after they reunite remains to be seen, and is dependent on a slew of factors, first and foremost the health of Murray and Porter, and additionally the ability of all these new teammates and combinations to find the same level of chemistry they previously achieved.

Since it’s the names at the top of the depth chart – Jokic, Murray, Porter, Gordon, and now Hyland should be included there as well – that also represent the Nuggets’ most familiar faces, the many ways in which this team can and will actually be quite different have been somewhat obscured. But that fact also provides good reason to believe that Denver should be able to weather these changes quite well.

With a more than rock-solid back-to-back MVP as their anchor to steady the ship if the waters get a little choppy along the way, and a more capable (especially on the defensive end) support cast than last season to fall back on, this new incarnation of the Nuggets may be “same same, but different,” but they also stand a very real chance of convalescing into the best team in franchise history.