If the setting for the “are they better” question is the playoffs, I think the Nuggets have absolutely improved.

Jokic, Murray, and Gordon are all in their primes. MPJ is just entering his. KCP is possibly at the tail end of his peak, but has shown no signs of losing a step. So no declines athletically, and MPJ seems leaps and bounds more physically able to impact a game than he was last season.

As Adam mentioned, the starters are more in sync than ever. Specifically the Jokic+Gordon and Jokic+MPJ playbooks have been more robust than in previous seasons. They’ve also all been there and done that, now. It’s hard to quantify, but it seems inarguable that the playoff experience accrued last season will benefit them this year.

Those five guys played over 75% of all the competitive minutes in the post season last year. Bruce’s departure left a hole, no question, but he only accounted for ~11% of all man minutes across the playoffs. Easy to imagine CB’s 5% last year becomes more like Bruce’s 11%. You may argue that there’s a dropoff in quality of play between the two, but given the small window I find it unlikely that it manifests in much of a quantitative loss. Swapping Jeff for Reggie seems similarly neutral to me. The question then, is can Watson fill the minutes that CB played last post season? I believe he can, and he’s shown the ability to bring some of the less quantifiable stuff that Bruce supplied last year. The energy infusion the team gets from a loud defensive play, the speed in transition, the ability to get to the rim or hit a midrange shot to keep the bench’s offense from stalling (sometimes.)

Nothing is guaranteed, and an injury or two could derail their bid for a repeat performance at Civic Center Park, but the Nuggets’ growth as a team has outpaced the losses of Bruce and Jeff.

All good points. I agree that the starting five being this much better erases the smaller loss and the less reliable bench this season. To answer your question, I do think Watson will be pretty much in the CB role this playoffs. And I think he can fill it. Denver will probably need him to have 1 or 2 big games throughout the postseason too. I think he might be even more capable of doing that than CB was last year.