Key matchups, top concerns and familiar faces: How the Nuggets can limit Damian Lillard and advance to the Western Conference Finals

The Nuggets are about to hop in their DeLorean and time travel back to 2019.

If the offensive execution at times in the Nuggets’ first-round matchup against the Spurs set basketball back, as Gregg Popovich stated after his team’s Game 7 loss last week, Denver’s second-round matchup versus the Portland Trail Blazers will look much more like basketball is played in the present day. The Spurs knew the only chance they had to beat the more-talented Nuggets was to slow the game down and eliminate possessions, relying on their mid-range focused offense to score just enough points and hoping that Denver’s inexperienced jump-shooters would misfire on enough of their 3s to keep them in games.

That won’t be the case against first-round MVP Damian Lillard and the third-seeded Trail Blazers. Portland averaged 100.9 possessions per 48 minutes in its series against Oklahoma City while the Nuggets averaged a first-round low 93.14, and the two team’s second-round matchup will have the on-court aesthetic that two top-tier modern regular season offenses should.

Questions that will decide the series

How do the Nuggets stop Lillard?

Here’s a little of what Lillard did in the first round against the Thunder –

• Averaged 33.0 points per game, the second-highest scoring average in the first round (Kevin Durant).
• Hit the game and series-winner in Game 5 against Oklahoma City, a 37-foot dagger which will go down as one of the top shots in NBA playoff history.
• Portland named April 23 “Damian Lillard Day” for his Game 5 game-winner.

OK, Lillard doesn’t have a day named for his latest logo triple…yet, but the Trail Blazers’ point guard is front and center and highlighted in yellow, green and pink marker on every one of Denver’s guard’s personnel booklets that each player walked out of the Nuggets’ locker room with following their Game 7 win over the Spurs.

How will the Nuggets guard Lillard? Mostly with Gary Harris and Torrey Craig. In four matchups this season, Lillard only averaged 21.3 points per game against the Nuggets, the third-fewest amount of points he averaged against a Western Conference opponent this year, and both of Denver’s top perimeter defenders were big reasons why. Harris should get the first crack on Lillard and Craig will either shadow C.J. McCollum through a never-ending series of screens that Portland will run its two-guard through or Moe Harkless, and while Harris won’t be able to stop Lillard — no one can — he can make his life difficult. Slotting Harris on McCollum to begin games would keep Denver’s two-guard out of foul trouble but with how Harris defended Derrick White last series you figure he’d open on McCollum.

The Nuggets shouldn’t fret if Lillard goes on scoring binges that leave Denver’s defense looking silly, because he will. Portland will send ball screen after ball screen towards Lillard too, and the Nuggets will need to defend him at all three levels successfully. The familiarity that the Nuggets have with Trail Blazers (Denver went 3-1 against Portland in the regular season) should help Harris and Craig too.

How does Portland guard Jokic?

The biggest mismatch in this series is Nikola Jokic against Portland’s front court. The Trail Blazers’ bigs — Enes Kanter, Zach Collins and Meyers Leonard — don’t have the physicality of San Antonio’s front court players and Jokic should be able to feast in 1-on-1 matchups all series if he gets them.

“He’s one of those players that you don’t know what to take away because whatever you take away he’s got something else,” Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts said. “I think the key for us just to make things difficult for him and not let him have open looks and not let him get easy baskets.”

Portland will have to double Jokic, or else Denver’s All-Star center could average 30-plus points in the series, and Kanter’s banged up too. He separated his shoulder in Round 1 and although it looks like he’s going to play Monday night against the Nuggets, who knows how his injury will hold up against Jokic’s physicality and Denver’s center should test Kanter early on. The Nuggets should get Kanter on move whenever they can and bring him high up the floor in an effort to tire him out early on with an array of pick-and-rolls that force him to switch out onto Nuggets’ guards. When Portland doubles, Denver’s shooters will have to hit shots. The Nuggets shot a collective 36% from 3 in the first round and their conversion rate was only that low because Denver shot below 20% from distance in three of its seven first-round games. In the other four, the Nuggets shot above 40% from beyond the arc.

Doubling Jokic and relying on Denver’s shooters to misfire from 3 is the only way that you can imagine Portland’s 16th-ranked regular season defense, who’s without arguably its most important defender in Jusuf Nurkic. In the playoffs, the Trail Blazers sported the first-round’s sixth-best defense, but Portland’s going against a real playoff offense in Denver, not the ISO-based Oklahoma City Thunder.

“They have a lot more plays that they run than OKC did. We just watched film on them,” Zach Collins said as Portland began practice on Monday. “So it’s going to be tough to get all those down. In the OKC series, there weren’t a lot of plays and it was kind of easy to lock in on the few we had.”

Where else do the mismatches lie?

Here’s where Denver and Portland’s matchup gets interesting. If the Nuggets slot Harris and Craig on Lillard and McCollum, Jamal Murray will have to guard Harkless, which could be tough on the Nuggets’ point guard. Harkless isn’t a threat from 3-point range (he shot 27.5% from 3 in the regular season) and 32 of his 45 field goal attempts in the first round came from the restricted area, meaning Murray would be a bit out of his element guarding a taller player who gets a lot of his offense on secondary cuts to the rim and on the offensive glass. Harkless averaged 2.0 offensive rebounds per game against the Thunder and Denver may want to to see if it can steal some minutes with Murray guarding McCollum.

Both Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu are better matchups on Paul Millsap than Rudy Gay was last series, so life will be more difficult for the Nuggets’ big man in Round 2. Still, he should be able to get to the line and lure both of Portland’s opposing forwards into his rope-a-dope act on the block.

Can Portland’s bench exploit a Nuggets’ second unit that struggled at times against San Antonio?

Denver’s bench was one of the better second units in the league all season but sputtered a bit in the first round against San Antonio in a series where Monte Morris, Malik Beasley, Will Barton and Mason Plumlee should have shined. The Trail Blazers’ bench is better than the Spurs’, but it’s still not a second unit that’s really going to scare you

Portland’s bench boasts one 40-plus percent 3-point shooter (Seth Curry) and three other high-minute second unit players (Rodney Hood, Zach Collins, Meyers Leonard) who have all been up and down at times this season and are all players who you’re OK with getting loose from beyond the arc. Leonard shot 45% from 3 during the regular season but wasn’t good from distance in Portland’s first-round series. Neither were Collins, a 33% shooter from 3-point range this year, or Hood, who converted on just 34.5% of his 3s with Portland.

The Nuggets’ bench should play better against the Trail Blazers than it did versus the Spurs last series. Don’t be surprised if Morris, Beasley, Barton, and Plumlee have strong showings against Portland.

Other items to watch

The Murray factor

Like he was in the regular season, Murray is Denver’s top swing player. When he plays well, the Nuggets can beat anyone in the league. When he struggles, Denver is just a good team. Murray scored at least 23 points in all four of the Nuggets’ wins against San Antonio. In Denver’s three losses he didn’t eclipse 17 points.

Jokic’s wind

The Nuggets only played Jokic 31.3 minutes per game in the regular season so they could play him heavy minutes in the playoffs, and they did just that in the first round, trotting Jokic out for an average of 37.3 minutes against the Spurs. Denver will have to be conscious of Jokic’s wind against Portland, a team that’s going to engage him in a much higher volume of pick-and-rolls than San Antonio did. He’ll be logging more miles per game against the Trail Blazers than the Spurs.

Portland’s 3-point shooting

The Trail Blazers were the top 3-point shooting team in the first-round and hit 40.5% of their 3s against the Thunder. That means Denver can’t afford to go through as many of its poor 3-point shooting stretches against Portland that it did in Round 1. Portland also shot around a league average amount of 3s per game in the regular season, much more than the 30th-ranked Spurs in 3-point volume did. The Nuggets were the top team in the league in defending the 3-point line in the regular season and their 3-point defense will be tested this round.

Familiarity

Barton was drafted in the second round (40th overall) by Portland in 2012 and played three seasons for the Trail Blazers before he was traded to the Nuggets in 2015. Plumlee played two seasons with Portland and was traded to Denver in 2017 for Jusuf Nurkic.

Where’s Nurk?

Nurkic, the Portland center who was acquired by the Trail Blazers from the Nuggets in 2017, was ruled out for the season after breaking his leg against Brooklyn in March but still made his presence felt in his team’s first-round series against the Thunder. Nurkic was watching Portland’s Game 5 at his home but drove to the arena during the third quarter and showed up in a ‘Got Bricks?’ t-shirt, roasting Russell Westbrook who he also called “Westbrick” on Twitter after a regular season matchup this year.