Nuggets Weekend Mailbag: Summer goals and predicting next year's starting 5

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The Denver Nuggets are officially in offseason mode. To get you through the summer months without Nuggets’ basketball, I’ll be posting a weekend mailbag, hopefully, every weekend of the offseason. As always, submit your questions during the week on Twitter @NBAWind, @BSNNugets, or drop me an email.

What comes first: The city getting fully behind the Nuggets (selling out games) or a strong playoff appearance? – @Kroekdogg

It’s the classic chicken or the egg question, right? What Nate’s getting at here, and what a lot of Nuggets fans are probably wondering, is when will the fans start flocking to Pepsi Center again? The simple answer is that it won’t be easy. Looking at Denver’s attendance history, it spiked from 25th to 12th in Carmelo Anthony‘s rookie year and stayed pretty steady until it fell off a cliff when George Karl was fired and Brian Shaw was hired in 2014, and hasn’t recovered since.

So what will it take for the Nuggets to attract a top-10 or even a top-15 attendance again? Most likely a playoff appearance. The Nuggets don’t have a great chance of landing a prospect in the upcoming draft (Lonzo Ball) that could inject and Anthony-level amount of excitement into the city, and on their current trajectory, they likely won’t in this era. Plus, the high draft picks Denver has recently brought in, in Jamal Murray and Emmanuel Mudiay haven’t produced an uptick in attendance.

This season, the Nuggets still finished last in attendance despite a playoff race that went down to the last couple games of the regular season, the top offense in the league since Dec. 15 (back when weekend’s in Denver still revolved around the NFL and before most noticed basketball season had started), and one of the most exciting players in the league, in Nikola Jokic. A playoff appearance and two or three consistent seasons of winning might be the only thing to bring the casual fan back to Pespi Center.

What was your favorite home nuggets win this year? – @djSamples

Wow, this is a tough one. This Nuggets’ season was truly one to remember and one of the most fascinating I’ve watched. The Dec. 15 home win over Portland, where Michael Malone inserted Jokic and Wilson Chandler into the starting lineup and Gary Harris returned from injury stands as a franchise-changing game. The win in London over the Pacers, a game that some members of the coaching staff and players credit as a trip and game that really turned their season around earns an honorable mention. As does the March 23 home win over the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers, where Denver frustrated LeBron James and held him to 18 points and a game-worst -30 plus-minus.

However, one night stands alone and truly sums up the Nuggets’ season like no other game possibly can. Feb. 13, Nuggets vs Warriors. Denver tied the NBA mark for most three made in a regular season game with 24, a record that would stand for less than a month, and cruised by Golden State 132-110.

It was far from a typical Nuggets’ win. Denver, who was without Chandler, Mudiay Danilo Gallinari, Kenneth Faried, and Darrell Arthur, got 27 points and six threes from Juancho Hernangomez, 23 points and five threes from Jameer Nelson, 24 points and four threes from Will Barton, and a big-time triple-double from Jokic, who poured in 17 points, 21 rebounds, and 12 assists.

The Nuggets hung 132 points on the league’s second-best defense, quieted a Warriors-leaning crowd at Pepsi Center, and danced past Golden State in a game where every made three seemed less and less believable as the game progressed.

Denver’s four-man bench that night? Murray, Malik Beasley, Johnny O’Bryant and Mike Miller.

What type of players should the Nuggets target in free agency and the draft? – @ctommoli24

Last summer, Malone and general manager Tim Connelly were in agreement that the biggest need that they needed to address in the offseason was shooting. Denver drafted Murray and Hernangomez, who shot 33.4 and 40.7 percent from three respectively, both solid numbers for rookies, saw a huge spike in three-point shooting from Harris, who’s conversion rate from distance rose from 35.4 to 42.0 percent and got consistent numbers across the board from the rest of the roster. In one season, the Nuggets went from No. 26 in three-point percentage to No. 11.

This offseason, expect the identifiable area of improvement to be defense. Whether it’s through the draft or free agency, the Nuggets will likely look to acquire players who can improve their play on that end of the floor which was ranked 29th in the league this season.

Denver seems to be pretty set in their backcourt with Murray, Nelson, Harris, Barton, Mudiay and Beasley. On the wing and at the four, especially with the potential departure of Gallinari this summer, is where the Nuggets need the most help. That’s where I’d expect them to look in free agency. In the draft, it’s tough to get a prospect, likely at No. 13 overall, that you can count on to contribute in year one.

Here’s my quick (and realistic) free agent wishlist:

• Andre Roberson (Restricted) Forward – Oklahoma City Thunder
• Joe Ingles (Restricted) Forward – Utah Jazz
• P.J. Tucker (Unrestricted) Forward – Toronto Raptors
• Taj Gibson (Unrestricted) Power Forward/Center – Oklahoma City Thunder
• Patrick Patterson (Unrestricted) Power Forward – Toronto Raptors

Give us your starting five for opening night – @Jeffbar09

Obviously, this is hard to predict given Gallinari’s impending free agency, if Chandler and the Nuggets can work out their differences and go into next season with a clean slate, and what shakes out at point guard. But here’s what I’ve got:

PG: Murray

SG: Harris

SF: Chandler

PF: Faried

C: Jokic