Nuggets' coach Michael Malone thinks some of his players aren't competing

The Denver Nuggets suffered a demoralizing 122-114 loss to the Charlotte Hornets in a must-win game Friday night that the Nuggets should have won.

Denver led 94-86 at the end of the third quarter but Charlotte went on a 12-0 run to start the fourth against a Nuggets’ bench unit which the Hornets outscored 50-19, as Charlotte built up a sizeable lead and was able to hold off Denver down the stretch.

After the game, Nuggets’ coach Michael Malone was adamant that the team needed more from their bench unit in the loss, specifically Wilson Chandler and Mason Plumlee.

“For whatever reason, our bench didn’t give us anything tonight,” Malone said. “We need more from Wilson (Chandler), Jamal (Murray), Mason (Plumlee), Juancho (Hernangomez), two of those guys are rookies, you know what I mean? So that’s where you need guys like Wilson and Mason to step up but again, for them to outscore us 50-19 off the bench, that’s a dominating bench performance obviously and hopefully, as we move forward, we can get a more balanced effort and attack from our bench.”

The Nuggets’ season and playoff run is nearing its breaking point with Denver two games back of Portland for the eighth seed in the Western Conference, but three if you factor in tiebreakers with just seven regular season games remaining.

Denver isn’t being given much of a chance for the eighth seed by the oddsmakers. FiveThirtyEight.com has the Nuggets with just a two percent chance to make the playoffs, but what that projection isn’t taking into account is that Trail Blazers’ starting center Jusuf Nurkic will miss the rest of the regular season with a non-displaced fibular fracture in his right leg. Nurkic could come back for the playoffs, according to The Vertical, but Portland’s defense will take an immediate dive without Nurkic’s presence.

Malone isn’t worried about the playoffs, though. Denver’s head coach just wants his team to compete, something he thinks select individuals weren’t doing in the Nuggets’ loss to Charlotte.

Here’s Malone’s response to what his message is to his players and what the team’s focus is over the last two weeks of the regular season:

Compete. Find a group of guys that’s going to go out there and compete. These games matter. Anything can happen. But I’m not worried about playoffs right now. I’m worried about us kind of finishing the right way and if we do finish the right way maybe other things happen and we give ourselves a chance. But I think we have some guys on this team that are starting to feel a little sorry for themselves and maybe not willing to go out there and compete. Because Houston gets beat by Portland last night and the odds of us getting to a playoff spot are slim and none. I’m not worried about that. I want to find guys that when everything else looks bleak, who’s going to go out there and play anyways. We had a bunch of guys do that tonight and I think we had a couple guys who weren’t ready to do that and that’s disappointing. And going forward I’ll find a group of five guys, vets and young guys, whoever it may be, to go out there and play and play as hard as possible.

Malone switched up his starting lineup against Charlotte and inserted Kenneth Faried at power forward, a spot he’s occupied for 29 games this season. It was a move, described by Malone, in part, to balance the scoring of his starting unit and bench. That clearly didn’t work against Charlotte.

But Faried and Nikola Jokic have shown a healthy chemistry together this season, outscoring their opponent by 111 points in the 420 minutes they’ve shared the floor this year. Jokic and Faried are the most efficient frontcourt combination the Nuggets have on their roster and it sounds like they’ll stick together in the starting lineup for now. Malone cited that duo’s ability to “play off each other,” and that Jokic and Faried have a “great way of complimenting each other,” but that switch didn’t translate into a more balanced rotation Friday.

The stakes are high with just two weeks remaining in Denver’s season and the Nuggets can’t afford many more losses. With Jameer Nelson‘s status up in the air for Sunday versus Miami, after the point guard suffered a right calf strain in the third quarter of Denver’s loss in Charlotte and did not return, the Nuggets could roll out their league-leading 30th starting lineup this season.

Malone’s been searching for a group of players and a rotation that will give him consistent basketball for 48 minutes all year long.

With seven games remaining in the regular season, he’s still looking.