Nuggets visit Hornets with no room for error

Eight games. 13 days.

That’s what’s left of the Denver Nuggets’ regular season.

Trailing Portland by essentially two-and-a-half games with eight remaining, the Nuggets can’t afford many more losses and they’ll have to put Tuesday’s emotional defeat at the hands of the Trail Blazers behind them in a hurry, as Denver currently finds themselves in the midst of a five-game road trip that finishes up in Houston on April 5.

Regular season game No. 75 | Denver Nuggets (35-39) at Charlotte Hornets (34-41)

Spectrum Center, Charlotte, North Carolina | 5:00 PM MST | TV: Altitude

Better Than Their Record

It’s been a disappointing season for Charlotte, who find themselves three games out of the eighth spot in the East. Yet the statistics across the board for the Hornets paint a different picture of who this team is.

Charlotte is 12th in Net Rating, outscoring opponents by an average of 0.9 points per 100 possessions. That’s on par with the Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks and ahead of the Thunder, Trail Blazers, and Pacers, all presumptive playoff teams at this point in the season.

Denver did an okay job of making life hard for Hornets’ point guard Kemba Walker in their first matchup of the year, allowing Walker to scored 27 points, but on just 8-21 shooting. Where Walker did hurt the Nuggets back on March 4 in Denver’s 112-102 home loss to the Hornets was from three, as the first-time All-Star went 5-9 from distance.

Keeping Walker at bay, which is a responsibility that will fall to both Jameer Nelson and Gary Harris will be a major key to Friday night’s matchup.

Where’s The Defense?

If Denver ultimately loses out to Portland for the eighth seed in the West, it’s the Nuggets’ defense that will shoulder much of the blame.

Denver’s the 29th-ranked defense in the league this year and allowing their opponent to shoot on average 48.0 percent from the field and 37.9 percent from three, both percentages which also clock in as the second-worst marks league-wide. The Nuggets’ lack of rim protection and cohesion on the defensive end of the floor was also evident in their loss in Portland, where Jusuf Nurkic scored a career-high 33 points on an astounding 12-15 shooting. C.J. McCollum also lit Denver up for 39 points and hit 15 of his 24 shots from the field.

When the Nuggets acquired Mason Plumlee from Portland right before February’s trade deadline, their defense saw an immediate uptick. Denver was playing more aggressive when guarding pick-and-rolls, playing more “up the floor,” as coach Michael Malone has put it time and time again, and even got up to the 19th-most efficient defense in the league from the All-Star break through March 16.

But that small sample size of just 12 games, where Denver went 8-4 and limited their opponent to just 106.0 points per game, 4.8 points below their season average, proved to be a mirage.

Since March 16, the Nuggets are back to the 29th-ranked defense and don’t have a shot at making the playoffs if they can’t turn that around.

Footnotes

Mason Plumlee‘s older brother, Miles, who was traded to Charlotte from Milwaukee in early February, is coming off a five-point performance in 15 minutes in the Hornets’ win over Toronto on Wednesday. It was Plumlee’s first action for Charlotte since Feb 4.

FiveThirtyEight.com gives Denver just a seven percent chance at finishing as the eighth seed in the West. ESPN’s BPI (Basketball Power Index), likes the Nuggets’ odds a bit more, giving Denver a 14.5 percent chance at the conference’s last playoff spot.

Nuggets’ rookie Malik Beasley, on his sixth D-League assignment of the year with the Sioux Falls Skyforce, recorded 32 points, 19 rebounds and 7 assists Thursday in the Skyforce’s 128-113 loss at the Oklahoma City Blue.