Nuggets Film Room: Denver gains continuity on their bench with Mason Plumlee

By sending third-year center Jusuf Nurkic, who had grown increasingly frustrated with his role over the past few months, to Portland in exchange for Mason Plumlee, the Nuggets upgraded at the center position.

Nurkic was giving the Nuggets nothing as of late. Once Nikola Jokic supplanted him in the starting lineup on Dec. 15, Nurkic went from Denver’s backup center to out of the rotation, then showed some signs of life against San Antonio in early February when he scored nine points and grabbed eight rebounds in 24 minutes, to recording DNP-CD’s in two of the Nuggets’ past three games. After Nurkic’s comments at practice on Dec. 29 where he initially expressed frustration around how his minutes have fluctuated since he moved to the bench, it was clear the Bosnian wasn’t in Denver’s long-term plans.

With Nurkic in the rearview mirror, the Nuggets continue their playoff pursuit.

Helping them along that path will be Mason Plumlee, who was reportedly acquired from Portland along with a 2018 second-round pick in exchange for Nurkic and Memphis’ 2017 first-round pick which Denver owned, in a trade that will likely be made official sometime Monday morning.

If you want a high-level analysis of the trade and draft picks exchanged, you can find it here. But this is how Plumlee fits with the Nuggets moving forward.

Bench Continuity

At times this season, the Nuggets, unintentionally, have looked like two different teams on the offensive end of the floor.

Denver’s offense starts with Jokic, the main catalyst behind the Nuggets’ No. 2 ranked offense since Dec. 15. The Nuggets are a +137 with Jokic on the floor this season and a -212 with him on the bench and without the Serbian, Denver’s offense looks drastically different.

Without Jokic, gone are the backdoor cuts and dribble-handoffs that have a made the Nuggets’ offense so potent as of late.

Denver’s peak offense goes from this:

To this –

And this –

Denver, for the most part, looks lost on offense without Jokic. Their offense goes from scoring 114.8 points per 100 possessions with Jokic on the floor, to 103.0 with him on the bench. Simply put, the Nuggets lose their swagger when Jokic sits but what’s troublesome is how Denver’s offense shifts away from the free-flowing read and react approach they execute so flawlessly with their starting big man.

The bigs the Nuggets bring off the bench, like Kenneth Faried and Darrell Arthur, are both having outstanding seasons, but can’t come close to replicating Jokic’s playmaking with Denver’s second unit. The result is a lot of standing and watching, isolation basketball, over-dribbling, and bad offense.

Plumlee can’t replicate the magic Jokic brings to the halfcourt on a possession-by-possessions basis, but he can do a lot of the same things Jokic does for the Nuggets on the offensive end of the floor. While Jokic is the best passing big man in the league, Plumlee’s IQ and vision puts him just a tier or two down.

On the season, the 26-year-old is averaging 4.0 assists per game, that’s fifth among all centers. Per 36 minutes, Plumlee is third in assists behind just Jokic and Al Horford.

Here’s a regular Nuggets set where Jokic gets the ball on a roll to the basket. He gets cut off by a collapsing Milwaukee defense and is able to kick out to a wide-open Will Barton who nails the corner three.

Here’s Plumlee in a different set, this one starts with him on the post, but he’s able to make that same pass once the defense collapses on him out to Al-Farouq Aminu.

Plumlee had the fifth-highest assist percentage with Portland out of all centers for a reason. The Trailblazers recognized Plumlee’s IQ and passing ability and played through him on the post, elbow or from the three-point line. Sound familiar? That’s exactly how the Nuggets prefer to play through Jokic.

As the Nuggets continue to build their roster around Jokic at center, it’s becoming more apparent that the style they’re able to play with Jokic on the floor is how they want to play at all times, even when he’s on the bench. Passing and cutting, frequent backdoor actions and high-efficiency shots are all results you can get by running things through Plumlee, something Denver’s bench unit couldn’t do before.

Plumlee won’t be able to create offense for himself like Jokic can, but he’ll be able to keep Denver’s read and react flow above water.

Now, replace Plumlee’s recipients with Barton, Jamal Murray, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Juancho Hernangomez and you can start to see the direction Denver wants to go on offense with their bench unit.

Plumlee is also known as one of the league’s better screeners, an area where the Nuggets have struggled this season. He’s perfect at toeing the line between setting an “aggressive screen” and an illegal one.

Defensive Role

Out of the draft and during his rookie season, Nurkic was showing signs of becoming an elite rim protector. The Nuggets only gave up 101.8 points per possessions with Nurkic on the floor during his rookie year compared to 107.0 with him on the bench. According to NylonCalculus.com, Nurkic held opponents to 48.4 percent shooting at the rim that season, a mark that put him alongside DeAndre Jordan and Steven Adams in rim protection and saved 9.2 points per 36 minutes, the 14th best mark in the league.

A lot has changed since Nurkic’s rookie season where he garnered second-team All-Rookie honors. After a lost sophomore season to injury, Nurkic slimmed down and got off to a promising start this preseason. Long story short, which I detailed more in-depth here, Jokic’s emergence jettisoned Nurkic to the bench and frustration with his role ensued.

Nurkic has never been able to get back to the level he played at during his rookie year. The Nuggets were still slightly better defensively with Nurkic on the floor this season, but with his sporadic minutes and endless combinations of players he’s spent time on the court with this season, it’s hard to put much stock in those numbers.

Nurkic hasn’t been an elite, or even an average rim protector this season. He’s looked disinterested at times when he’s been on the floor, and as of late, looks to have gained some of the weight back he shed this past summer.

Plumlee won’t make the Nuggets better on the defensive end of the floor, and Denver knows that.

He’s not regarded as a rim protector, isn’t a big that can switch out and defend guard in pick-and-rolls and Portland, the fourth-worst defense in the league this season, was nearly five points better per 100 possessions without him on the court.

Plumlee will give the Nuggets’ frontline a little more girth for when they do face teams with bruising backup centers and he’ll also step in for Jokic if the starter succumbs to foul trouble meaning Denver won’t have to play a severely undersized frontline with Arthur or Faried at the five.

Final Verdict

Offensively, it’s hard to look around the league and pinpoint a potential backup center that fits Denver’s offensive scheme better than Plumlee. Passing, IQ, vision, think of Plumlee as Jokic-lite and someone the Nuggets can start to run the offense through with their second unit. It will take time and reps to integrate Plumlee, but on paper, the fit is there.

Defensively, Plumlee won’t make Denver a better defensive team. They’ll still likely give up 120-point nights on the regular and have some putrid defensive sequences that make you wonder how this is a potential playoff team. Unless the Nuggets continue to change up their defensive scheme, which they have done sporadically as of late, they won’t get better on that end of the floor.

This is who the Nuggets are; an offensive juggernaut built around a unicorn at center who lack any sort of identity on the defensive end of the floor. This year, a season where the eighth seed in the West will likely come in at or below .500, that’s good enough for a playoff berth.