Nuggets' Balkan Buddy Ball didn't crack the Warriors' Death Lineup, but they put a chink in their the armor

[Elite_video_player id=”28″]

DENVER, Colo. — Over the past decade. the NBA continues to get small and smaller. It’s now full of position-less athletes and two-way players who can all do multiple things on the floor. Saturday night, against the Warriors, Denver’s twin towers lineup was up against its biggest test yet.

How would that lineup react and defend the Warriors starting lineup that features Draymond Green, the epitome of the modern-day NBA four-man, and the rest of Golden State’s “Death Lineup,” Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, and Kevin Durant.

“They went to their really small lineup end of the second quarter and we didn’t chase it. We stayed big and we actually wound up outscoring that small ball lineup,”Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said. “Your gut is telling you, we got to go small, we got to go small, but we gave Jokic and Nurkic a chance to play and we were effective. We hurt them on the glass and we did some good things.”

Defensively, the lineup of Mudiay, Will Barton, Gallinari, Jokic, Nurkic was supposed to struggle, but in a beautiful end to the second quarter against the Warriors, the doubters were silenced (at least for now). The super-sized Nuggets took on the Warriors “Death Lineup” with sheer size and proceeded to outscore them 13-9 in the last five minutes of the second quarter.

Both Nurkic and Jokic were switching onto the perimeter and holding their own while overwhelming the undersized Warriors on the glass. The Nuggets fought Golden State’s speed with size and won. The Warriors, minus Kevin Durant, won 73 games last year playing small and fast, it was stunning to see the Death Lineup with Durant get overwhelmed the way they did.

As head coach Michael Malone has said this preseason, the NBA tends to follow a herd mentality.

“A lot of times in the NBA there is a herd mentality and everybody wants to – Golden State’s doing it, San Antonio’s doing it, let’s do it,” Malone said at media day. “We don’t want to be a team that’s going to follow current trends. We look within, see what our strengths are and what allows us the best chance to have success.”

While the NBA continually chooses to zig the Nuggets like the Utah Jazz, and Oklahoma City Thunder are choosing to zag, play bigger lineups and crush their opponents inside and on the glass.

“A lot of people say you can’t play two bigs together,” Malone continued. “We disagree. We think we have two special bigs that can play together because you can space the floor with them and you can play through them in the post on the high post and even on the elbows.”

Being that Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic are not remotely close your average seven-footers the Nuggets situation is a unique one. While neither posses a real advantage when it comes to athleticism they do just about everything else at an extremely high level.

Both Jokic and Nurkic can shoot with range with Jokic stretching out past the 3-point line. That is not exactly earth-shattering news at this point but what is minimized is how both of them have started to understand the intricacies of floor spacing. Gravity pulls defenders to different places on the court in different situations. Nikola Jokic is now learning that spacing goes much farther than just shooting which is why he has slowly started sliding farther out of the paint.

“There’s definitely some Balkan buddy ball going on with those two guys,” said Malone in regards to the chemistry Jokic and Nurkic have shown while playing together. “They do look for each other which is great. They’re so skilled and the great thing about Nikola is he can space the floor to three, so it’s not like we have two guys that are stuck on the block which takes away driving lanes from our perimeter players. The floor is open.”

It is no coincidence that we have seen Emmanuel Mudiay, Danilo Gallinari, and Nurkic have their best preseason games the more that Jokic has played on the perimeter. This has allowed Mudiay much more space in the paint to penetrate and Nurkic more room to operate in the low post. The spacing also allows Gallinari to continue slashing to the rim and drawing fouls as only he does.

Jokic and Nurkic have also shown fantastic vision from every spot on the court. They can each hit cutters in stride from the perimeter and can kick the ball out to shooters from the post but the luxury of having both front court players able to pass the ball ahead in transition may be the most underrated addition when starting Jokic and Nurkic together. Malone has said that he wants the Nuggets to push the pace more this season and being able to pass the ball up the floor quickly and efficiently from all five spots will quicken the pace of the team substantially.

The chemistry is developing at an astounding rate and they already seem to be as in tune as any other two-man combination on the Nuggets. It is plays like the one below that have the Nuggets salivating at the potential.

The frontcourt of Nurkic and Jokic ended up +7 overall in approximately 17 minutes together to the tune of a combined 23 points, 17 rebounds, four assists and shot 10-20 from the floor combined. They dominated the front line of the Warriors and proved that they can be relied upon defensively in time. That type of production against a team like the Warriors is a big step in the right direction, especially considering both Jokic and Nurkic are only 21 and 22-years-old, respectively.

The Nuggets feel that Jokic and Nurkic are building blocks of the future and once the rest of the starting lineup learns to execute with both Jokic and Nurkic on the floor is when this team will begin winning. It will take time and lots of growing pains but it seems that the Nuggets have the personnel to create a special style of play that goes against the group-thing of today’s modern NBA.