Any Way You Want It

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

– Julius Caesar

Strangely, the Roman Empire didn’t start out as an empire. Initially, they were simply another fighting force amongst so many in the Europe/Mediterranean region. But what they lacked in size and knowledge, they made up for in the talent and strategy of their leadership and forces, and in their ability to flex to the needs of a situation. Many times over, when the Roman armies appeared to be defeated, they rescued victory from defeat due to any number of characteristics, like patience, surprise, tenacity, guts, and even a little sheer dumb luck. Their ability to adapt to most any situation gave Rome an advantage they would seize and end up ruling a huge chunk of the planet for hundreds of years. Not a bad outcome for the transformable Romans. If you’re adaptable, you always have a chance in a fight.

When the NBA finally restarts its season/playoff push after a longer layoff than most offseasons (thanks for that stat, Harrison Wind), they’ll come back to a landscape utterly different than the one they stepped away from at the beginning of March. Teams will have players back in the fold unexpectedly from injury, others may lose players along the way if they test positive of COVID-19. Home court advantages may theoretically disappear with a lack of crowds and a single-site approach. The teams that have the best chance of negotiating those unique waters are the ones who are the most adaptable.

Even semi-admitting my heavy bias, here’s an argument for why the Denver Nuggets are the most adaptable and flexible team in the NBA.

GO BIG

Should the Nuggets find themselves in a situation where they need to literally go big or go home, they’re pretty well stacked to make it happen. Here’s the Big Lineup Denver could throw against anyone wanting to play that game:

• Center: Nikola Jokic (7’0″)
• Power Forward: Mason Plumlee (6’11”)
• Small Forward: Jerami Grant (6’8″)
• Shooting Guard: Michael Porter, Jr. (6’10”)
• Point Guard: PJ Dozier (6’6″)

Wait, that doesn’t seem like such a HUGE lineup, does it? A part of the advantage in this actually-MASSIVE lineup is that each of the guys in it play much bigger than their height might suggest. Jokic is a tree in front of almost every other center in the league, partially because of his gifts with placement and footwork. Plumlee plays sturdily against guys taller than him nightly. Porter is unmanageable just about anywhere on the floor, but would enjoy a scoring feast and size advantage against most every other 2 in the league. Only Grant and Dozier seem average-to-small for the BIG lineup, but make up for it with their unexpectedly expansive wingspans, with Dozier’s reach at 6’11” and Grant’s a ridiculous 7’3″, the same as Jokic. Additionally, only Plumlee needs to stay close to the hoop to score, so this group of giants can do all of this and STILL stretch the floor. If they need reserves to stay big, the can still bring decent height with Paul Millsap, Noah Vonleh, and Will Barton. You wanna play big? The Nuggets have your number.

GO SMALL

With that forest of trees in the last lineup, surely Denver is weak at small-ball, right? Not so fast…

• Center: Jerami Grant (6’8″)
• Power Forward: Paul Millsap (6’7″)
• Small Forward: Will Barton (6’5″)
• Shooting Guard: Gary Harris (6’4″)
• Point Guard: Jamal Murray (6’4″)

While that’s not the SMALLEST small-ball lineup in the league, the principle has less to do with actual height anyway, right? What small ball comes down to is a set of ever-rotating wings that can somewhat interchange with one another on the floor, exposes mismatches against the other guy. How successful could this one be against opponents? Well, you may notice it’s the current starting five, minus Jokic, who can play “small” himself, even at seven feet. And talk about stretching the floor… Every guy in that lineup can be lethal from beyond the arc, even with Harris rounding that aspect back into shape. Add in backup support from reserves like Monte Morris, Torrey Craig, and PJ Dozier, and suddenly the small-ball Nuggets are just as much nightmare fuel for the opposition as their BIG lineup is.

GO FAST

Though they’ve slowed their pace a bit the last season-and-a-half as Jokic and Murray have settled into their two-man game, the Nuggets are not terribly far removed from the team that had the fastest pace in the league, a look they still flash on occasion when teams leave them the opportunity. You want to run up and down the floor? Good luck keeping up with the high-altitude racehorses the Nuggets bring to the race. If you don’t sacrifice your own “fast” game and get back on these guys, they’ll burn you over and over again as Jokic sits back and cherry picks long bombs to the sprinters leaking down the floor. Even though they aren’t out to the races every game, almost every guy on the squad is a racehorse when needed.

GO SLOW

One of the things that cost the younger Nuggets squads of a couple seasons past was that their rocket-fueled pace could only last so long when playoff rules hit, hence the development of one of the best two-man games in the league, as described above. But it’s not as if the other three guys on Denver’s squad just sit around and wait for 2020’s version of Malone-and-Stockton to just do their thing. Denver saw a need to mature into a new phase of play, and their half-court game has become lethal a a result. If you buckle down and trap anything Murray and Jokic are throwing together, one of three other cutters will take a death-defying angle to the basket, to have Jokic the magician drop a pass in from a some unexpected and obtuse angle. If you’re worried the team relies too heavily on it’s MVO to make the magic happen, the second team has a two man game of it’s own going between Morris and Plumlee. If you want to play grind-it-out playoff basketball, most of these gents showed their mettle in two game sevens and a load of overtimes in the playoff indoctrination last year.

TENACIOUS D

No, not the Jack Black/Kyle Gass version, but simply a lockdown-style team against anything you’re bringing to the floor. You want to try and score? Try it against these guys.

• Center: Mason Plumlee
• Power Forward: Paul Millsap
• Small Forward: Torrey Craig
• Shooting Guard: Gary Harris
• Point Guard: P.J. Dozier

While neither Jokic nor Murray is an embarrassment on the defensive end of the floor, these five only suffer from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Big D. Millsap has long been the quarterback of Denver’s defensive renaissance, and Plumlee is an exceptional blockade at the 5. Craig, Harris, and Dozier are all rock stars on that end of the ball, and Mike Malone has Grant to slot in anywhere across the front if the other team’s 3 or 4 is too tall for the others to handle. You might score on these Nuggets, but you’ll earn every point.

HEAD ON

Finally, if you simply want to bring your best game against the Nuggets, their starting five has one of the finest overall group ratings in the league, with a deep and impressive set of backups coming in from the bench. You may be stacked enough to compete with Jokic, Millsap, Barton, Harris, and Murray on most nights, but are you also deep enough to hang around with 4-5 others who would be starting on many other squads? If so, do you think you can hang for seven games?

It’s anybody’s ring to win this offseason, Nuggets Nation, and your Nuggets come in loaded for bear. After notching one of their best road records this season to date, they’re even ready to bring it to you outside of altitude. Sleep on this squad’s potential at your own peril, competition. No matter what the you’re bringing at us, we look to have a counter. Any way you want it, these Nuggets are ready.