Heading into the NBA’s restart on June 30, the DNVR Nuggets crew is looking back on the Denver Nuggets’ season, where each player left off, a target stat that every player should shoot for, and one half-court heave or bold prediction for everyone on the Nuggets’ roster.
Where Mason Plumlee left off
It’s almost jarring to look at how consistent Mason Plumlee’s per 36 minute statistics are since arriving in Denver four seasons ago. Points, rebounds, assists, FG% all fall within the same margins from each season into the next. The same can be said for his performance on a night to night basis. The only variable in his production seems to be his minutes, which fell from 21 minutes per game last season to just 17 minutes per game this season.
| Season | Age | Tm | G | MP | FG | FGA | FG% | FT | FTA | FT% | ORB | DRB | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | 26 | DEN | 27 | 632 | 5.6 | 10.3 | .547 | 2.7 | 4.3 | .618 | 2.8 | 7.0 | 9.9 | 4.0 | 1.1 | 1.7 | 2.6 | 4.4 | 14.0 |
| 2017-18 | 27 | DEN | 74 | 1439 | 5.5 | 9.2 | .601 | 2.1 | 4.5 | .458 | 3.3 | 6.7 | 10.0 | 3.6 | 1.2 | 2.0 | 2.6 | 4.6 | 13.1 |
| 2018-19 | 28 | DEN | 82 | 1731 | 5.4 | 9.2 | .593 | 2.3 | 4.1 | .561 | 3.4 | 7.5 | 10.9 | 5.1 | 1.4 | 1.6 | 2.6 | 5.2 | 13.2 |
| 2019-20 | 29 | DEN | 53 | 900 | 6.1 | 9.9 | .617 | 3.0 | 5.5 | .536 | 3.6 | 7.7 | 11.3 | 5.0 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 2.9 | 5.0 | 15.2 |
The unconventional but effective Nikola Jokic-Plumlee duo was also cut out of the regular rotation as Jerami Grant filled in as the secondary front court running mate for Jokic. As a result, Plumlee was almost solely used as a backup center this season and one used more sparingly than any season prior.
Target Stat
33% of available offensive rebounds when on the court with Jerami Grant.
If there is one skill that Plumlee has been forced to augment in his reduced role with the Nuggets, it’s offensive rebounding. This is especially true when sharing the court with Jokic or Paul Millsap, two combinations that have led to the Nuggets grabbing 40% of available rebounds whenever either of those pairs share the court together. Unfortunately, that number dips to just 29% when Plumlee shares the court with Grant.
For most of the season, Denver’s second unit weighed the team down, often coughing up early first quarter leads and halting the momentum that the starting unit had generated. The combination of Torrey Craig, Jerami Grant, and Mason Plumlee can be a clunky one. The Nuggets were outscored by 8.6 points per 100 possessions this season when those three were on the court. In the playoffs, Plumlee can help salvage some of that by owning the offensive glass.
Half Court Heave
The Jokic-Plumlee duo will get a lot of run in the seeding rounds. And will perform very well.
I don’t have a lot of confidence that the Nuggets will go to this lineup given how little they played together in the regular season but there is reason to believe that Michael Malone’s rotations might be unique early on. Half of the roster only arrived in Orlando within the last week and two of the late-arriving front court players, Michael Porter Jr. and Keita Bates-Diop, are new additions to the rotation and/or wild cards.
Plumlee is the opposite of a wild card. He is a floor raiser, but he also lowers the team’s ceiling. Perfect for helping to steady a ship in rough waters but anchoring that same ship from storming full speed ahead. The Nuggets will enter the seeding round in rough waters, trying to bring their roster up to speed without the benefit of a real training camp and preseason. By the playoffs, the team will need to unleash their more high risk, high reward lineups. Those lineup probably won’t include Plumlee.
Nonetheless, I could see Denver’s twin tower lineup getting some run early on and performing well in those minutes.
