Where were you? A retrospective of Emmanuel Mudiay's opening night

I have one expectation for this Denver Nuggets team this season: to get better. It’s a goal that would be difficult not to obtain after the hilarity that consumed this organization the last two years. The turmoil has been written about, highly debated and even denied by some around the team, but one thing that’s for sure, this organization has officially flipped the page on what it recently was.

That page-turning process started last season, when general manager Tim Connelly jettisoned Nate Robinson to Boston, and dealt JaVale McGee to Philadelphia, two deals which took two personalities not fit for a rebuild, or what Connelly and team president Josh Kroenke wanted this organization to become.

The undertaking continued this summer, when the Nuggets selected Emmanuel Mudiay No. 7 overall, and sent disgruntled and disinterested guard Ty Lawson to Houston. The process took another step when the Denver re-signed Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler, two starting-quality wings who have a few things in common: their love for the city of Denver and the Nuggets organization, and the example they set both on and off the court.

Next, Jameer Nelson, Will Barton and Darrell Arthur were re-signed for the same aforementioned reasons and later on Mike Miller was brought in during training camp, as another veteran presence to tutor this rag-tag bunch of 20-somethings. Finally, Michael Malone, an old-school guy with a new-school outlook on today’s NBA was charged with meshing the pieces together.

Since he was drafted, I always knew I wanted to write a retrospective like this to reflect on Mudiay’s first game as a part of the Denver Nuggets organization. It’s something I’ll be able to look back on it in three, five, or even ten years and remember where it all began.

“Here we are,” said head coach Michael Malone to Altitude’s Scott Hastings in a pregame interview before the Nuggets began their 2015-16 journey.

It was a simple three words, but a significant sentence none the less. It represented a culmination of an entire summer’s worth of hard work and countless hours of time spent both in the gym and in the office, getting ready for this moment. Denver was finally ready to show their cards.

The tone of opening night was set by the Nuggets on their first defensive possession of the game. One defiant Kenneth Faried block where he coincidently had to navigate across the paint from a help side position, one that he’s been less than eager to vacate from during his career. What followed was no Manimalistic roar that we’ve come to expect of Faried, but a calm, stoic response of a veteran who acted as if he had been here and done that regularly.

Denver’s first points of the Mudiay era came on a streamlined drive to the basket where the rookie kept his dribble alive until he was under the hoop, something he looks to do often, pauses, and hit a diving Nugget for a layup. This time is was Gary Harris on the receiving end, a bucket that got the second-year guard engaged early on in a game where he played some of the best on-ball defense on James Harden I’ve seen in recent years.

It was the first of many glimpses we’ve seen from Denver’s potential backcourt of the future.

In fact Denver’s first three baskets came off of systematic and precise cuts to the hoop. The iso-heavy offense that plagued the Nuggets over the course of the last two years was suddenly absent and replaced by a motion heavy, constantly moving machine.

Once Denver took a 10-1 lead which forced head coach Kevin McHale to take a timeout, it was clear something was different. The image Malone had formulated this summer was in action.

However, throughout the rest of the half and into the third quarter the hundred or so Nuggets faithful I had the privilege of watching the opener with, at Jake’s Sports and Spirits, were waiting for the same thing. The script-like, unavoidable collapse that the Nuggets teams of the past seemed to always be teetering on the edge of. 

It never happened. 

Denver kept the pressure on. It was a reflection of their head coach, who put a premium this preseason on finishing games when situations like this arose. Malone was furious after Denver’s 18-point exhibition win over Chicago when the Bulls put together a big fourth quarter, slightly narrowing down an already insurmountable margin.

But it wasn’t just the mentality they closed the game with or the pressure they kept applying to a Rockets juggernaut. Everywhere you looked, Malone’s fingerprints were smudged across Denver’s opening night win.

The Nuggets moved with a purpose on offense. They were an organized unit who decisively cut to the corners and rim off Mudiay penetrations. On defense, they sprinted to double the post and bolted back to help-side once the ball was reversed. They guarded as if all five players were connected at the hip, moving as a unit, crashing the 3-point line, running Houston shooters off their long-range missiles and rotating to clog up the paint.

Their decisiveness and organized game plan were executed to perfection. It was a microcosm of Malone’s philosophies; his old school background, yet present-day and analytic appreciative outlook – and an example of just how quickly the culture change, which was implemented late last season, has progressed.

You could see the satisfaction on Malone’s face as he left the court, possibly on his way into the tunnel to have his Herb Brooks moment of sorts, jokingly chatting with 20-year-old Nikola Jokic who has no idea of the trials and tribulations that this season will bring.

In fact, no one really knows what will transpire over the course of this season in Denver, and if what we saw opening night will continue to evolve. There will be ups and downs, nights where you sit back and marvel at the direction this team is going, and ones where the bane of the Nuggets existence is not worth your time. 

In the next two, three, four and five years, when the roster changes and pieces come and go we might look back to this night and remember where it all started. Not necessarily winning games or blowing Western Conference contenders out on the road, but the first real hard evidence of the culture this front office set out to build. 

Mudiay, is most-likely the centerpiece, but besides that nothing is a given. There’s no telling if Gary Harris, Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried will be on this team for the next three years or even for the rest of this year.

Every great city, country, team or dynasty is built on a foundation. Its architects and watchers remember that one flashbulb moment when an idea, concept, or line of thinking finally dawns and comes to reality.

For the Denver Nuggets organization, this just might have been that light.