Malone's Minutes: Nuggets coach on Emmanuel Mudiay, playing young guns, "Experience is the best teacher"

 

Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone started off his shoot around media scrum with a shoutout to, “B-More!” The reason? That’s where Coach attended college at Loyola University in Baltimore and where GM Tim Connelly and forward Will Barton hail from — and where an Oklahoma City Thunder reporter is also from that broke the ice at today’s media scrum.

We’re all looking for a connection and in the NBA there are endless connections around the league. The Nuggets have been connecting on their team goal of a 6-2 home stand with a 3-1 mark at the halfway point of this eight game marathon. This is the longest the Nuggets have been in Denver, since Hector was a pup! (shoutout Chris Marlowe)

Enough commentary from me, let’s get to Malone’s shoot around scrum that took place this morning at Pepsi Center.

Malone on Kevin Durant vs. Danilo Gallinari: 

Malone: Kevin Durant is one of the most talented players in the world, and is a guy that because of his size and length — he can shoot over people. Obviously, Gallinari has to make him work on the other end. Gallo did not play last game when we had a chance — we were up in the fourth quarter in OKC. Which is a credit to our team, we were without Emmanuel [Mudiay], without Gallinari and a couple of other guys.

It’s a battle. Gallo is going to stay in attack mode, try to make him work, get to the foul line. Defensively, you can’t give Kevin air space. You have to be up into him: chase him over all catch-and-shoot pick-and-rolls, and bigs have to be up providing help because he’s a guy that can score with great ease at any moment.

Malone on success of home stand for young guys like Mudiay and Nikola Jokic: 

Malone: Not only our young guys, I think for all of our guys for that matter. We had lost at Memphis and I asked the players after the game, ‘We have an eight game home stand, what is our goal?’ They said, ‘We want to go 6-2.’ To our credit, we’ve had some good wins halfway through the home stand and we have some very good teams coming in here; OKC, Memphis, Detroit, Atlanta — all playoff teams.

When you can win close games, games that go down to the wire, when you can come back from being down like the Indiana game, when you can beat a team like Golden State? That gives you confidence moving forward, especially when you play the right way. That means: defending, valuing the basketball and sharing the basketball; and when we do that, good things happen for us this year.

Malone disappointed no Jusuf Nurkic vs. Enes Kanter: 

Malone on Jameer Nelson & Nurkic: He’s probably questionable/doubtful right now with that wrist injury. Nurkic is also probably in that same boat. It’s too bad, I was hoping to see Nurkic and Kanter go at it — you know, anytime you get those two big physical guys…

Malone on Gallo’s play since returning to the floor: 

Malone: He’s getting to the foul line close to 12, 13 times a game recently. Which means that you’re not settling, you’re putting pressure on the defense, you’re getting to the rim and that allows us to get to the bonus, for all the other guys as well. I think last game against Indiana we were in the bonus with 10 minutes to go in the third quarter. So, I think that’s really important to us.

A couple of the conversations that Gallo and I had while he was out was: What he wants to be as a player. Where we want this team to go. And what he needs to do on the court / off the court to help us out. And to his credit, he’s done a really good job of being a lot more efficient since he’s come back.

Malone on Joffrey Lauvergne and patience: 

Malone: Obviously right now he’s not been getting a lot of minutes. We have such great depth in our frontcourt and as you mentioned, a lot of times we’ll go small. A couple of games, Golden State and Miami, we closed with [Darrell Arthur] at the five and Gallo at the four because that makes us so hard to guard on defense; because now you have five guys that can spread the floor and make plays.

But no, I love Joffrey. I had a great conversation with him the other day, letting him know that:  ‘Your time is not right now. Keep your head up, keep working like you have been, and know that we believe in you. We believe that you have a chance, whether it’s at the four or the five. You’re young. You’re skilled. You’re tough. You work very very hard.’ He fits the culture we’re trying to create. Joffrey is somebody that we really really value and think he has a big upside.

Malone on developing Mudiay, asked if Russell Westbrook is a comparison from developmental angle – Russ started 64 of 82 games as a rookie: 

Malone: Talks within our organization, Tim Connelly, our GM, and myself: ‘Well, the question is do you start him or do you bring him off the bench and help him develop? Well, if he’s really going to be our future, let’s throw him out there.’

There’s going to be nights where he looks like a 19 year-old rookie and he has. There is going to be nights where we’re going to say, ‘Wow. This kid’s got a chance to be a great player.’ So, it’s conversations like that where examples of: They gave the ball to Westbrook and said, ‘You’re going to be a big part of our future. Let’s speed up your development. Let’s accelerate the growth of you and our roster by letting you grow through your mistakes.’

Experience is the best teacher. So, I think all these experiences that Emmanuel is going to have this year are only going to help him out for next year. Like last year, Gary Harris never got a chance to really play — so this is Gary’s rookie year. Next year, Emmanuel and Nikola Jokic will have gone through it and now they are second year players who are no longer rookies. They know the NBA. They know the personnel. They know what to expect.

I stole my question from Chris Dempsey’s fantastic article yesterday. I had to bring the following stat to Malone’s attention: “Nuggets are 5-1 when Mudiay has six or more turnovers. Shhh…“

Malone: His ratio, assist to turnover, right now is probably less than 2:1, the great players are 4:1, really good point guards have a 3:1 ratio. I think what that shows me, if that fact is true by Dempsey, is that he’s being aggressive. When Emmanuel plays with aggression — like he has lately in the last couple of games — when he’s attacking the basket, when he’s looking to make plays? That means he may turn the ball over at times, but there’s also other good things happening because he’s playing downhill, he’s putting pressure on the defense and he’s making plays for his teammates. Obviously we want that number to get down, but when he’s aggressive good things happen.

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Indeed, Dempsey’s stat was accurate as Mudiay had 11 turnovers in the Rockets win opening night (1), six in a Lakers win on Nov. 3rd (2), nine in another Rockets win on Nov. 13th (3), seven in a win over the 76ers on Dec. 5th (4) and seven in a win against the Pacers on Jan. 17th (5). That makes five wins with the lone loss coming with six turnovers on Nov. 20th to the Suns.

I like Malone’s angle on Mudiay being aggressive in those games as he tallied 47 total assists in those six contests to his 46 turnovers. Not quite the ratio that Malone is looking for at 3:1 or 4:1 on assist to turnovers, but a sign of his aggressive play and willingness to get his teammates involved.

Credit to BSN’s An Nguyen for the video clips provided in this article.