Michael Malone gets defensive about Denver Nuggets

“You always want to measure yourself against the best.” said Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone after the team’s Sunday practice on Oct. 11th.

The Nuggets will get a chance to do just that when they face the reigning NBA champions, the Golden State Warriors, in Oakland on Oct. 13th. With the Nuggets focused on building, the upcoming preseason game will give Malone and his team another chance to keep working at the new system he’s installing.

“By no means do we have everything in,” Malone said. “I don’t want to have a million things in and be average at everything. I’d rather put less in at first, really get ahold of what we’re trying to do, keep it simple and then as we go along add to that. And that’s on both offense and defense. Right now we have a very good foundation in, nothing fancy, and as the season goes on — and the month goes on — we’ll look to add to it depending on where we are at that time.”

Basketball can be a simple game, but drilling foundational principles into a team that is lacking a bit in experience and chemistry can be tricky. Keeping things simple for his young players like: Emmanuel Mudiay, Joffrey Lauvergne, Nikola Jokic, Gary Harris and others will help them play catch-up as the grueling 82 game season looms. Keeping things simple on offense will allow Malone to give his players more freedom for now.

“If you want to be an effective running team,” Malone said, “call less plays. The more play calls you have, the less running you’re going to do. So, right now we’re really trying to stress how we run and how to be an effective running team, and that’s more about: spacing, angles of screens, drive-and-kick, bigs responsibilities.”

On the defensive end, it’s a bit of a different story. Will he allow his guys the freedom to jump passing lanes and try to create turnovers? Not so fast. Malone doesn’t want his team to create unnecessary chaos for themselves. NBA defenses often get into trouble when individual players make self-imposed errors.

“We’re not a team that’s going to get up and deny in the passing lanes,” said Malone. “We’re more of a shrink the floor team, protect that paint. If we want to protect the paint, well you can’t get up and deny everything because you’re going to open yourself up to backdoor plays. Our mindset is: let them catch the ball, keep them in front of us, contain the basketball, contest and rebound. Now, if you can get a steal within our defensive rules – I’m all for it. By no means are we saying we want to be a passive defensive team, but we want to be a smart defensive team and take away the paint first.

“We have some guys that have some pretty good anticipation,” Malone continued. “Jokic has great hands, great timing, gets a lot of deflections. Again, within our defense… great. If you’re gambling and you’re being undisciplined and you don’t get it? Now you’re leaving your teammates out five on four. So, if you’re going to go for it, you better get it because now you’re leaving your teammates in a tough spot.”

George Karl’s Nuggets teams were fun to watch because his high-risk/high-reward defenses created turnovers that led to so many fastbreaks. But those same Karl defenses were hard to watch when the team didn’t get the turnovers because the gambling led to exactly what Malone referenced in five on four play that resulted in open shots from all over the floor. And one thing that Karl’s teams and Brian Shaw’s teams had in common? Blown defensive rotations that led to easy buckets in the paint. Malone wants to fortify his interior defense, but recognizes the challenges of also protecting the 3-point line.

“The biggest thing is we want to protect the paint, first and foremost. If you’re getting beat in the paint, those high percentage shots around the rim could make for a long night. The 3-point shot that we really want to take away is the corner three. The highest percentage 3-point shot in the league is below the break, easiest shot in the game,” said Malone. “So, we try to make sure that everything we do defensively — in our rules, in our philosophy — [the players] understand that we don’t leave strong side shooters. If the ball is dribbled at you along the baseline, don’t get sucked in, start inching out to take that shot away.”

The corner three has become a powerful tool for NBA coaches on the offensive end, and a bugaboo on the other end. Consider the following from Tom Haberstroh, of ESPN, in 2013:

Not buying the gospel of the corner 3? Believe it or not, a team’s frequency of corner 3s is more closely linked to successful offenses than the frequency of shots in the restricted area, even though they boast similar payoffs (1.16 points per shot versus 1.19 points per shot, respectively). In fact, when we look at shot frequency from the five shot areas on the floor designated by NBA.com’s StatsCube — restricted-area, in the paint non-restricted-area, midrange, corner 3s and above-the-break 3s — the strongest correlation with offensive efficiency over the past 17 seasons is the corner 3-pointer.

Don’t expect to see the Nuggets contest every shot, but the game plan is sound. Malone knows what he wants from his team, and we will find out if his players can execute the plan. The scary part about the NBA is that even if you execute perfection on the defensive end, shot makers like Steph Curry, James Harden, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and countless others can still wreck havoc on a nightly basis – and that’s something that Malone also recognizes.

“You know with Steph [Curry] and Klay [Thompson], your pick up point has to be much higher,” said Malone. “As a big you can’t be down the floor in pick-and-rolls, you have to be up at the point so they see bodies. If you’re going to make them beat you, make them beat you with contested twos or contested shots at the rim – but it’s very easy to talk about that.”

The season is fast approaching and we’ll soon find out how these Nuggets will perform.