Nuggets Look-Backs: Why Jerami Grant can be Denver's missing playoff piece

Heading into the NBA’s restart on June 30, the DNVR Nuggets crew is looking back on the Denver Nuggets’ season, where each player left off, a target stat that every player should shoot for, and one half-court heave or bold prediction for everyone on the Nuggets’ roster.

Where Jerami Grant left off

Utter the name Rodney Hood around the Nuggets and some still cringe.

Hood of course played a key role in the Nuggets’ Western Conference semifinals loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2019 playoffs. To recap — and Nuggets fans, this could be painful — Hood averaged a paltry 3.2 points per game in the Trail Blazers’ first round series win over the Thunder but exploded to pour in 14.7 points per contest in the second round against Denver. Hood’s most gutting performance against the Nuggets? With Denver holding a 3-2 series lead, Hood tallied 25 points in Game 6 to help Portland force a deciding seventh game.

The Nuggets just didn’t have a matchup to stop Hood. Jamal Murray was too small. Gary Harris had already been doing yeoman’s work limiting Damian Lillard and at times C.J. McCollum, and Will Barton and Torrey Craig proved ineffective.

Enter Grant. Denver’s front office scoured the market last summer for potential additions like Grant, who checks in at 6-foot-9 with a 7-foot-3 wingspan, and the 26-year-old brings a size and level of agility and skill to the table that the Nuggets didn’t have a year ago. Throughout the season, Grant has shown that he can guard anyone from Luka Doncic to Kawhi Leonard with some success, and skilled scorers from LeBron James to Paul George, James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Chris Paul and Danilo Gallinari may also dot Denver’s path to the Western Conference Finals. Because of his defensive versatility, Grant could guard all of them.

“We know there are two teams ahead of us right now that have tremendous size, length and strength on the wings,” Michael Malone said. “And Jerami is a guy that you can use as as Swiss Army knife. He can guard multiple types of players. We’ve used Torrey Craig to guard 1’s 2’s and 3’s. I really feel that Jerami Grant is a guy that we can use in the same manner. He can guard a point guard, a scoring one, a scoring two, a big, physical three, as well as his natural position that he can guard every night which is the power forward position.”

Grant does a lot more than just defend. He shot a career-high 40% from 3-point range on 3.4 attempts per game and was steady throughout the season from behind the arc. Grant shot 39.7% pre and 41.7% post-All-Star break. Teams don’t seem to guard Grant like an elite shooter from beyond the arc, but he’s one of only seven players 6-foot-8 or taller to shoot 39% or higher from three in each of the last two seasons, per Basketball Reference.

He figures to feature heavily in Malone’s playoff rotation.

Target Stat

40% from 3-point range

For a team that’s been, I’ll call it inconsistent, shooting the ball from three this year, the Nuggets will need Grant’s shooting to translate from the regular season to the Disney World bubble. Last playoffs, Denver had three players shoot around 40% from beyond the arc — Torrey Craig (47.2%), Malik Beasley (40.4%) and Nikola Jokic (39.3%) — and will need at least that many to approach that threshold this season. If Grant is in that group that’s good news for the Nuggets.

Half Court Heave

Grant plays more total playoff minutes than Millsap

Paul Millsap is a more well-rounded defender than Grant. He’s not nearly as dynamic on the ball, but off it Millsap is regarded as one of the better team and weakside defenders in the league. Few if any are better than cleaning up teammates’s mistakes on the backside of a defense than Millsap.

But as we saw last season, matchups can determine the outcome of playoff series, and Grant can guard a wider variety of matchups — from some point guards through power forwards and a few centers — than Denver’s starting four man. Millsap doesn’t that same range on his potential defensive assignments. It’s not hard to imagine that in a playoff series against the Clippers or a team that boasts multiple playmaking guards and wings that Grant could garner 30-plus minutes per night with some of those minutes coming at small forward.