Nuggets Roundtable: Ranking Denver's best individual defenders

The Nuggets have been one of the Nuggets’ best clutch defenses in the NBA all season, but how much do you trust Denver’s defense late in fourth quarters? Do the Nuggets have a championship defense? Who are Denver’s best individual defenders? DNVR Nuggets discusses.

Do the Nuggets have a “championship defense”?

Adam Mares: I don’t think it is fair to say that they do. They’ve shown flashes of it, including in key moments, key games, and perhaps most important of all, at home where they have the 4th best defense.. But it is unlikely that they’ll finish with a top 10 overall defense. Traditionally, championship defense has meant finishing in the top 10.

Harrison Wind: They don’t have what I think of as a “championship defense” but they’re good enough defensively. The biggest indicator you can look to is what the Nuggets have done in the clutch. I was skeptical of the clutch defense earlier this season — when Denver’s overall team defense was bottom-10 — but I think it represented the bigger takeaway about what the Nuggets’ defense is this season. This is a defense that can lock in and stop anyone when it wants to. And that’s been the case all year long.

The clutch defense rankings have also normalized (Houston is the only outlier) and the top-10 clutch defenses right now are all about who you’d think they should be. Do the Nuggets have the best matchups in the NBA for Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Ja Morant, Kawhi Leonard and Luka Doncic? No, but they have enough weapons to throw at those guys. This is a defense that’s good enough to win a ring.

Brendan Vogt: With how the regular season looks, I’m curious how statistical benchmarks or hallmarks of a championship win profile hold up. So many teams are resting key players or have seen guys in health and safety protocols. The prevalence of the three-point shot and its penchant for variance, combined with how the defense has essentially been written out of the game, might eventually render the traditional litmus tests ineffective.

In any case, rather than holding their defense up against championship-level defenses of the past, I consider their ability to defend when paired with their essentially unguardable offense. They’ll never inspire fear on defense. But very few teams in the postseason picture can genuinely expect to match their firepower. If they can defend well for 1-2 quarters at a time, they’ll have a chance to beat anyone. Like many others, I hang my hat on what they do in crunch time. They have the ability to lock in.

Rank Denver’s best five defenders

Mares: Denver only has two elite defenders: KCP and Aaron Gordon. Jokic and Murray coast defensively for most of the regular season but they both have a gear they can reach when it matters most.

1. KCP
2. Gordon
3. Jokic
4. Cancar
5. Murray

Wind:

1. Caldwell-Pope
2. Braun
3. Gordon
4. Brown
5. Cancar

Honorable mention (Jokic and Murray)

Did you know Nikola Jokic leads all NBA centers in steals this season? Did you know that he has the eighth-most deflections in the entire NBA? Or that the Nuggets have a 110.6 Defensive Rating with Jokic on the floor? That means the Nuggets play like the fourth-best defense in the NBA when Jokic is on the court. The 76ers have a 109.9 Defensive Rating with Joel Embiid on the floor. There’s not that much of a gap there. The reality is that Jokic is a very good defender in most areas when he wants to be. He’s just bad when you get him out on a switch off a pick-and-roll. I’m so ready for him to rewrite his own entire defensive narrative in the playoffs.

Jamal Murray had a couple of elite possessions against the Grizzlies the other night. He’s great on that end when he wants to be and is probably underrated as a defender at this point in his career. He’s stronger than he gets credit for and no one that Murray’s guarding can take him into the post. He’s not a mismatch.

Vogt:

1. KCP
2. Christian Braun
3. Vlatko Čančar
4. Aaron Gordon
5. Bruce Brown

Brown’s defense is somewhat disappointing. His lack of size matters more than his reputation for playing big suggests. He wreaks havoc with his insatiable approach, but guys can and have gone right past him in the half-court. When Denver’s added more to his plate on offense, he’s had less to provide on the other end. Still, it’s a step up from the likes of Monte Morris and Will Barton. And he’s number five on the list.

KCP is a remarkable defender. He doesn’t delude himself with the notion of locking a star down in the NBA’s new regular season. He’s just always there, step-for-step, waiting for a mistake and an opportunity to make a play. Few match his ability to swipe the ball free without drawing a foul, and he’s an artist in drawing and selling contact when fighting through screens.

Who’s the toughest matchup for the Nuggets in the West?

Mares: The Lakers. The scariest way for the Nuggets to struggle in the post season is if Jokic gets in foul trouble. Fully healthy, I think the Nuggets are the best team out west and will outscore offensive juggernauts like the Suns and Clippers. But Jokic has only had 3 or more fouls in the first half twice in his playoff career. Both times came against the Lakers. Anthony Davis is looking like his best self recently and part of what makes him scary is his ability to draw fouls. LeBron James is still scary in a playoff series, especially if this injury only doubles as a month-long rest before entering the playoffs.

Wind: It’s the Suns, and I think that’s pretty clear. No one in the West would really scare me that much if I were the Nuggets. The Grizzlies’ depth took a big hit when they lost Brandon Clarke for the year, and I wasn’t too worried about them before that. Dallas is frightening with its Doncic-Irving pairing, but they don’t stand a chance to even limit Jokic. He’s going to do whatever he wants to them in a playoff series. The Warriors are the x-factor here. You want to believe that they can be a problem, but they haven’t shown consistently all season that they can be one. The Clippers…OK next. The Nuggets have proven time and time again that they shouldn’t be of concern.

Vogt: The Suns were a tough matchup before they added Kevin Durant. Now, they have Kevin Durant. Anything can happen in a seven-game series, and Denver still has plenty to prove in that environment. Still, Phoenix is the only team with a proper case for superiority. Otherwise, Denver’s just better and will have home court in any Western Conference series. They shouldn’t fear anyone, and neither should we.