Basketball Voltron

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

– Aristotle, sort of

As a kid, I grew up watching a ton of cartoons, especially on Saturday mornings during my second or third giant bowl of Fruity Pebbles (don’t judge me). The capstone of my Saturday funfest was Voltron, a Japanese series that was rewritten and revoiced for American audiences. It was action-oriented and bright and loud and dramatic and serial-driven. All while I was cereal-driven. Plus it had frickin’ giant mechanical death lions, so…

The part of the series that spoke to me most broadly as a kid was a concept I’d later come to understand in adulthood as emergence. The idea that the whole of something can actually be greater than the sum of its parts due to how the parts interactions make it a better, stronger, or more cohesive thing, even if Aristotle never actually did say so. The concept has continued to fascinate me as an adult, even if I have switched out my Saturday morning cartoons for daily sports. I still haven’t given up the Fruity Pebbles. Don’t. Judge. Me.

Team sports of any stripe are often some of the best petri dishes for this sort of dynamism. Watching the combination of several blended groups of unique skill sets competing against one another to see who is the best often forces shifts in personnel to try and gain that upper hand in whose overall sum is actually the greatest combination of its parts. Happily, your Denver Nuggets might well be sitting on this season’s winning combination. With the addition of Aaron Gordon to their starting lineup, the Nuggets have one of the strongest starting fives in a league that has its fair share of superteams to vanquish. Look at how the strengths and weaknesses of this particular group make them so difficult to handle.

Will Barton

Strengths: Chaos. Will the Thrill came by his nickname honestly. Barton’s game is predicated on forcing the defender into positions they don’t want to be in, and leveraging that to his advantage. To do so, Will tends to force the issue on the other team until they bend or break. When he’s locked in on the defensive end of the floor, he’s also an underrated defensive presence with his length and speed. Will can be dominant on offense, with a career-best 37-point game on his resume.

Weaknesses: Chaos, dangit. When he’s pushed himself past his capabilities, or when a defense is not buckling to his pressure tactics, Barton can occasionally bite off more than he can chew, putting himself and his team in a precarious position. Learning to channel just enough of “The Thrill” has been his greatest career challenge, and he’s very much come into his own by learning game-over-game just how much he can step on the gas. 

At his best and worst, Barton is often the gasoline poured on top of a fire. The good or bad news is often simply who is getting burned. Happily, Will has become exceptional at recognizing when he is contributing, and when he needs to rein it in.

Aaron Gordon

Strengths: Athleticism, defense. Gordon is an athletic wunderkind with a pride in his defense that makes coach Mike Malone’s heart sing. When locked into his game, the offense flows naturally for Gordon, who was often utilized as the first scoring option for his previous team. Gordon’s career high in scoring is a 41-point game, with a 40- and several 30-plus point outings dotting the resume as well. But defense is where Aaron makes himself especially valuable, often being utilized as the defender to lock down the opponent’s best scoring option. In his scant few games with the Nuggets, the players facing Gordon have had woefully underwhelming performances. 

Weaknesses: Alpha improvisation. Gordon was often asked to do and be everything at his last stop, and his game sometimes suffered. While Gordon can create his own shot, it’s not a pure strength from him, and he’s at his best in the open court. While his talents are estimable, he’s so much more dangerous as a focused weapon.

AG is so new to the Nuggets ecosystem, it’s been more than a little heartening to see his easy fit in the early going. When he fully realizes his potential with the team, he’ll be a powerhouse.

Michael Porter, Jr.

Strengths: Scoring and rebounds. Plain and simple, MPJ is the purest scorer in Denver’s starry universe. A 6’10” oppositional nightmare who is too fast for bigs to guard, and too big for most wings, with a shooting stroke that is one of the purest in the league. With his physical gifts, he’s also one of the Nuggets most talented rebounders, and his once-porous defense is very quickly filling in. With just over a hundred pro games under his belt, Mike already has a 37-point outburst on his resume, and a 20+ point-per-game average over the last several contests. 

Weaknesses: Inexperience. There really is no substitute for game-play, and as mentioned above, Porter is barely into the triple digits in his experience. Because of that, he will occasionally find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on the floor, or taking an ill-advised shot. 

Happily, Mike seems to iron out the wrinkles in his game every time he takes the floor. His impact only grows every time he’s given the opportunity.

Jamal Murray

Strengths: Passion, thermonuclear hot streaks. Jamal is the heart of these Denver Nuggets, and his passion for the game fuels the team on many occasions. While his scoring can be a bit streakier than you’d wish for from a max-contract sort of a guy, when he’s hot, he’s literally incendiary. Murray has an incredibly efficient 50-point regular season outing this season to add to a pair of them in last year’s playoffs, and the only reason his heart isn’t literally pinned to his sleeve is because he isn’t wearing any. Murray is half of one of the league’s most devastating pick-and-roll combos, and can be a torrid defender when focused on the task.

Weaknesses: Passion, thermonuclear hot streaks, dangit. When things aren’t fully in synch for Murray as a scorer, he can sometimes try to step beyond his capabilities in influencing the game in other ways, trying ill-advised passes or steals. Murray’s flurries are a huge part of what keeps this team in the mix for a Championship, but he needs a steadying hand to keep him at his mean when things go south.

Thank goodness there’s one of those still left to talk about in our rundown.

Nikola Jokic

Strengths: Passing, Scoring, Rebounding, IQ, Leadership, All-Around-Good-Guy-ing. The Joker is the now nationally-regarded MVP candidate that steers not only the team’s devastating offensive style, but also their overall complexion. The team is built around his once-in-a-lifetime set of capabilities, and he has influenced not only their output, but also their dedication and selflessness. When your true alpha is setting that pace, the rest of the crew has little choice but to follow. You need scoring? Nikola has a 50-point game on his resume as well. But he’ll happily have a zero-point game in pursuit of a win, while joyously filling up the stats in assists, rebounds, steals, and more. There is simply one objective for Denver’s best player. Win. 

Weaknesses: Defense. While Jokic has made huge strides in his defensive game, and is no longer the liability he once was, he’ll still never have the physical gifts to be either a rim protector or floor deterrent. He makes up for some of those liabilities with his floor IQ and steals, but needs the talents of some of the gents listed above to temper his needs on that end of the court.

The pieces are in place, if you look to see them. Leadership, scoring, defense, rebounding, steals, cohesion, camaraderie, a lack of pride/jealousy, a genuine dedication to one another, and simply finding a way to win the damned game. Will these Nuggets win every contest now that they’ve locked these five lions into something larger? Absolutely not. Gordon’s first few contests as a part of the mix have come against opponents who were either injured or simply outmatched. And while other teams in the league may have a bigger pair or trio of names on the marquee out front, not a one of them has five guys who are this ready to roar.