Five game plan principles the Nuggets must stick to in order to win Game 1

We’re drawing closer and closer to a crucial Game 1 of the Nuggets’ first-round series against the Spurs.

Of the 15 series played in the 2018 postseason, Game 1 winners ultimately won their best-of-seven series 12 times. In last year’s first round, six of the eight teams who won Game 1 went on to win their series.

Here are five game plan principles the Nuggets need to follow in order to win Game 1 and avoid an 0-1 hole with a visit to San Antonio, where Denver has lost 13-straight games, looming next week.

1. Get Jokic comfortable early

Nikola Jokic is the best player in this first-round series, and he’s got to play like it for Denver to advance. There’s reason to believe he will. Jokic has put San Antonio’s bigs in his back pocket in each of the Nuggets and Spurs’ last three matchups and averaged 21 points on 76% shooting across those games. But in the two teams’ first meeting this season he struggled to score, finishing with four points on 1-5 shooting.

The Spurs sent two and sometimes three defenders Jokic’s direction back on Dec. 26 in a 111-103 San Antonio win. Gregg Popovich took away Jokic’s individual offense and made Denver’s shooters beat him from beyond the arc. The Nuggets didn’t hit enough 3s.

Those help-side defenders still came at Jokic in the Nuggets and Spurs next three meetings, but Jokic countered San Antonio’s wave of double-teams with swift and decisive moves on the block. If Popovich sends multiple big men at Jokic throughout the series, which he may do right away or later on if the All-Star dominates Game 1, Jokic’s ability to work quickly on the block will be key.

The first play that the Nuggets run on their opening possession of Saturday’s Game 1 should be a post up for Jokic. Start the big man on the right side of the court and let him feel his way over to the left block where he can execute his go-to right-handed sweeping hook shot across the lane. Entering the ball to Jokic early and often in the first quarter and seeing how the defense reacts, just as a quarterback may send his receiver in motion to get a read on an opponent’s defensive scheme, will give Denver a good idea of how the Spurs plan to defend him.

Don’t overthink Pop

Popovich is an intimidating presence to play against and his array of basketball accolades including five NBA Championships gives him carte blanche over the Spurs and really the entire league. Popovich’s schemes are rarely questioned. His philosophies, well they’ve helped shape the Nuggets into one of the league’s offensive powerhouses over the last few seasons.

Behind their future Hall-of-Fame coach, the Spurs will deploy tactics that most teams throughout the league wouldn’t dare, like their 2-3 matchup zone which had shades of Virginia’s pack-line defense incorporated into it that San Antonio came out in the fourth quarter of the Nuggets and Spurs’ last meeting a week and a half ago. Denver’s had four half-court possessions against San Antonio’s zone during this early fourth-quarter stretch. The Nuggets scored once, missed two 3s and committed one turnover.

Their possessions against the zone looked largely like this during those couple of minutes:

The Nuggets weren’t able to consistently get the ball to the nail (the middle of the foul line) or into the paint, and San Antonio was willing to let Denver shoot 3s. The Nuggets obliged. Denver looked confused and for a few minutes abandoned its offensive identity. Luckily for the Nuggets, they had already built a near 20 point advantage.

Popovich will throw these types of quirks at Denver throughout the series and possibly as early as Game 1 especially if the Nuggets, who have quietly been a very average 3-point shooting team this season and since the All-Star break rank 23rd in 3-point percentage, start cold from beyond the arc. Denver has to be ready for Popovich’s curveballs like this zone.

If the Spurs go zone, plant Jokic, who may be the best 2-3 zone buster in the league, at the nail and let him dissect San Antonio’s defense from there. Don’t stand and watch and keep the steady motion that’s a staple of the Nuggets’ read-and-react offense going. The Nuggets can’t let Pop twist their brain into a knot.

Let the Blue Arrow loose

If giving Jokic early touches and establishing his presence in the paint is the Nuggets’ No. 1 priority Saturday, getting Jamal Murray into a rhythm should be 1-A. Denver needs a good series from Murray to topple San Antonio and a productive Game 1 would set the Nuggets’ 21-year-old up in a comfortable rhythm that he can carry with him over the next few weeks.

Murray is Denver’s ultimate X-factor and the Nuggets’ biggest swing player. When he’s great, Denver is nearly unbeatable. But when Murray struggles, the Nuggets go from elite to just good. When Murray has scored 30 points in a game this season, the Nuggets are 7-0 and when he’s scored 25, Denver is 11-1. Based on the offensive rhythm he found at the end of the regular season, there’s a strong chance that Murray gets off to a hot start in the playoffs.

While the Nuggets struggled over the last few weeks of the season, losing five of their last nine games, Murray shined. He averaged 20.6 points on 49.6% shooting from the field and 36.7% from three to go with 4.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists during that stretch. His turnovers are down too. Murray stayed turnover-free in three of his last nine games to end the year, and had two giveaways or less in all but one.

Denver would be smart to get Murray a few quality looks within the realms of its offense early on in Game 1. A strong start to the series from Murray means a cocky and confident Blue Arrow. That bodes well for the Nuggets.

Don’t leave San Antonio’s shooters

The Spurs don’t shoot many 3s. In fact, San Antonio shot the fewest amount of 3s per game in the league this season. But when they do let it fly from beyond the arc it more often than not it goes in. The Spurs led the league in 3-point shooting this year, knocking in 39.2% of their triples.

Denver can’t give any airspace to these San Antonio shooters:

• Bryn Forbes: Shooting 42.6% from 3 on 5.0 3-point attempts per game.
• Davis Bertans: Shooting 42.9% from 3 on 4.4 3-point attempts per game.
• Marco Belinelli: Shooting 37.2% from 3 on 5.0 3-point attempts per game.
• Patty Mills: Shooting 39.4% from 3 on 4.9 3-point attempts per game.
• Rudy Gay: Shooting 40.2% from 3 on 2.7 attempts per game.
• Dante Cunningham: Shooting 46.2% from 3 on 1.0 attempts per game.

Take out Cunningham, who only garners regular minutes on occasion, and five of the top-9 players in the Spurs’ rotation shoot at least 37% from 3. For comparison, the Nuggets only have two players (Monte Morris and Malik Beasley) in the top-9 of their rotation who are shooting better than 37% from distance. Jamal Murray, who’s shooting 36.7% from 3, just missed the cut.

Bertan missed this triple in the fourth quarter of the Nuggets and Spurs’ last meeting, but Denver can’t afford these types of defensive breakdowns in Game 1 or later on in the series. Michael Malone knows that, which is why he burned a timeout after Denver left the Latvian sharpshooter wide open from the right wing just 48 seconds into the fourth quarter.

Trust what got you here

The Nuggets won 54 games this season — tied for the second-most in their NBA franchise history — and took home the second seed in the Western Conference by playing their brand of basketball. They’ve maintained a top-10 defense all year long, and although the Nuggets have enjoyed their fair share of lulls on that end of the floor, the league-leading fourth-quarter defense shows that Denver can lock in when it needs (or wants) to. They finished with the seventh-best offense as well.

The Nuggets can’t forget what got them to this point. Denver is at its best when it shares the ball and when the Nuggets put their point-five mentality on display as the ball skips from one side of the floor to the other with a flurry of dribble-handoffs with subsequent off-ball screens and cuts mixed in.

If the Spurs break off an early 10-0 run, Denver can’t panic. Sure this iteration of the Nuggets are first-time playoff participants in a field of seasoned postseason performers and are going against a playoff-test franchise in the Spurs. But Denver hasn’t been one of the premier teams in the league for most of the season by accident.

They’ve got to remember that.