More playing time for Kenneth Faried could help cure Denver's diseased offense

Kenneth Faried’s start to the 2017-18 NBA season, going all the way back on September 25th which was the date for the Denver Nuggets’ media day, could be described in many different ways: awkward, unsettled, chaotic, confusing, or just outright uncomfortable.

Think about it this way; on the very first day of media availability for the new Nuggets season, this is what Faried had to say:

“If this team doesn’t want, or respect me enough, to play me the minutes that I think I deserve to play, then I understand that. Hey, there’s 29 others. Maybe I’ll go somewhere else and do what I need to do there,” Faried exclaimed on media day. “But at the same token, I’m here in Denver, and I want to play Manimal basketball, no matter what, every time I step on that court.”

After media day came training camp, and throughout training camp, there were loads of compliments for newly acquired Trey Lyles. All the way through preseason it continued to seem more and more like it was Lyles that was leading the race for the backup power forward role, not Faried, who was at risk of falling out of the Nuggets’ rotation entirely after being a face of the franchise since he was drafted seven years prior.

Surprisingly, once the regular season came around, it was Faried that was seeing playing time while Lyles ended up being the one who spent most of the game cheering on his teammates from the bench. As Faried continued to accumulate playing time, an interesting statistical phenomenon started to take shape.

Faried, who was looked at as a talented player that did not fit into Malone’s rotation during the preseason, emerged as the best statistical frontcourt partner for the Nuggets two best players: Paul Millsap and Nikola Jokic.

Millsap, the Nuggets newly-minted 30-million-dollar-man after signing as a free agent over the summer, has been struggling to fit into the Nuggets offense and has looked out of place more often than not. A deeper dive into Millsap’s statistical impact on the Nuggets did not yield positive results.

Millsap’s individual offensive rating is 92.7, which is the lowest on the Nuggets roster. Millsap’s personal net rating of -13.4 is also the worst on the team by a wide margin. To say Millsap is not comfortable with the Nuggets just yet would be an incredible understatement.

When looking at all of the two-man lineups that include Millsap nearly all of them have a negative net rating and an offensive rating below 100 except for his pairing with one particular teammate.

Yes, it is a small sample size of just 12 minutes, but Millsap’s +15.5 net rating when playing alongside Faried is the only pairing that is positive. Considering that every other pairing has a net rating either -9.4 or worse that is noteworthy regardless of how small the sample size is.

Even more interesting is Denver’s net rating when Millsap is on the floor with Faried compared to when he is on the floor without Faried. The difference in net rating is an astonishing 31.3 points.

Again, this is a very small sample size but there is a precedent that Millsap’s skill set could, and should, work well alongside Faried.

When looking at the Nuggets’ numbers when Faried is on the floor with Jokic, who plays a similar brand of basketball as Millsap, the numbers have always been, and continue to be, positive. Last season, in nearly 500 minutes together, Jokic and Faried had a net rating of +10.9 with an offensive rating of 121 and a defensive rating of 110.1, which was good for best two-man pairing on the Nuggets roster with at least 200 minutes played together.

When looking at the Nuggets stats with Jokic on the floor with and without Faried this year, the same trend continues.

That is an 8.9 point swing for the Nuggets with Jokic on the floor with Faried compared to without Faried and a ridiculous 13 point jump in offensive rating.

Suddenly, as the Nuggets sit at 2-3 after their first five games and are averaging just 98.9 points per contest, it seems Faried, thanks to his infectious energy he injects into the game every second he is on the court, is needed now more than ever.

So why is it that Faried makes both Jokic and Millsap so much better? Well, quite a few reasons.

First of all, Faried understands who he is as a player and his role within the offense. He is not a player that needs offensive plays drawn up for him. Instead, Faried is able to play off of everyone else thanks to his elite ability as an offensive rebounder and as an off-ball cutter. Faried is the ideal low usage player that will allow Jokic and Millsap to play their own style offensively which they struggle to do when playing together.

Millsap and Jokic also each excel at hitting cutters and finding open big men around the rim for layups or dunks. Those are exactly the skills that Faried is terrific at. Faried’s offensive repertoire of actively cutting, collecting offensive rebounds, and setting strong screens is a seemingly perfect complement in the frontcourt for either Millsap or Jokic offensively.

Another strange development is that the Nuggets are playing at the fifth slowest pace in the league through five games. Faried’s presence alone speeds up the flow of the game. Faried is one of the leagues best big men at running the floor and producing in transition.

An interesting addition to Faried’s skill set is his ability to pass ahead in transition to speed up the game and get the Nuggets running. The Nuggets have so many players that can handle the ball and finish athletically in transition that Faried’s ability to collect the defensive rebound and push the ball up the court is very underrated.

The most important reason that Faried improves the Nuggets as a whole and fits well with both Jokic and Millsap is that he knows how to keep the floor properly spaced even without a dependable jump shot. The spacing with Jokic and Millsap on the floor is a problem that the Nuggets have been unable to solve so far but Faried already has experience playing with other bigs even though he is paint-bound himself offensively.

Faried essentially plays a rover position offensively and will either use the short corner to attack the offensive glass or put himself in position to catch dump passes off of dribble penetration or cut off-ball to re-space the floor. Combining how efficient Faried is scoring around the rim, his timing in the short corner, and his extreme vertical athletic ability makes Faried lethal off-ball even if he struggles to score outside of the paint.

The Nuggets have legitimate offensive issues in their frontcourt right now; issues that could be solved by playing Faried more than his current 11.1 minutes per night.

“We’re not scoring over 100 points like we were last year,” Malone said after the loss in Charlotte. “We have to find ways to play with more pace, more energy, and get out and run more.”

Malone made it clear what needs to happen for this Nuggets offense to improve and its hard to make an argument that Faried is not the remedy to what ails the Nuggets offensively.