Paul Millsap called it “the toughest thing I’ve ever been through in my basketball career.” On the morning of Feb. 27, a couple hours before Millsap would make his return from a wrist injury that cost him 44 games, the 12-year NBA veteran admitted that tears welled in his eyes on the drive to Pepsi Center.
Dealing with an injury as severe as this one, which required surgery to repair a ligament in his left wrist, was unfamiliar to him. In his first 11 seasons, Millsap played in 73 games or more in all but two of them, the exceptions being a lockout-shortened 2011-12 and 2016-17, when he appeared in 69 games.
Durability was part of what drove the Nuggets to sign Millsap to a deal worth $60 million in guaranteed money in July. So it was a cruel twist when the player who always avoids serious injury couldn’t.
“Frustrating to say the least,” Millsap said. “It’s tough. I came into this season with high hopes to help this team get to the playoffs and help them overcome some things they couldn’t overcome. To have an injury like this and miss 44 games and not be able to help this team in the way I wanted to and expected to, it kind of hurt.”
Millsap hurt his wrist Nov. 19 against the Los Angeles Lakers. The timing of the injury made it difficult for him to ever get into a rhythm. Denver looked awkward and unsure of itself on the offensive end in the early part of the season. So many possessions seemed to end with contested mid-range shots.
The Nuggets’ offense didn’t resemble the 2016-17 version of itself until late January when coach Michael Malone decided to call fewer plays. Loosening his grip on the reigns caused a surge. The Nuggets regained their rhythm. When Millsap returned at the end of the month, they’d have to rediscover it all over again.
Denver closed the season by going 7-1 against teams with winning records. It played its best basketball at the end of the year. It came up one game short, yes, because it couldn’t pull out a win in the regular-season finale in Minnesota, but also because there were too many losses like the one March 6 against the lowly Dallas Mavericks. Nikola Jokic scored four points on nine shots in that game. He watched most of the fourth quarter from the bench.
“He’s such a humble guy that sometimes he looks for me to do things,” Millsap said about his Serbian frontcourt partner three days later. “And it’s him. He’s our team. He makes a lot of things go for us. He’s got to continue to stay aggressive, and I’m here to help him and back him in any way possible.”
Coincidence or not, Jokic closed the season on a month-long tear after a pecking order was established.
The Jokic-Millsap pairing outscored opponents by eight points per 100 possessions in 868 minutes together. The Nuggets bludgeoned opponents with their best two big men on the court even though they spent most of the year learning each other’s games. If both players are able to stay healthy next season, Denver has an excellent chance to break its five-season playoff drought and a decent shot at hosting a first-round series.
The Nuggets looked like a complete team at the end of the season. In April, they beat the Pacers, Timberwolves and Trail Blazers in April on nights when their offense was sputtering. They showed they could win other ways besides shootouts at the O.K. Corral.
Denver defended at league-average level with Millsap on the floor this season. When he sat, it reverted to its old ways.
“I was hoping to be the guy to change that and help change that, but I was out for 44 games,” Millsap said about the team’s defensive mentality. “We’ve seen glimpses of that before I went out that we were on our way to being a pretty good defensive team. To be a playoff team and a good team, you’ve got to have that balance. We want to have that balance offensively and defensively. We want to be good on both ends. We showed some flashes of that this year. With the talented guys we have, we still feel like we can do that.”
A fluky injury cost Millsap the majority of his first season in Denver. If he, Jokic, Jamal Murray and Gary Harris are able to stay relatively healthy in 2018-19, it’s exciting to think about what the Nuggets can be.
