There won’t be any easing into the new campaign for the 2026-27 Denver Nuggets.

Their first of many battles will take place in The Sooner State, Oklahoma, a unique place in North America with a long, winding, and bizarre history — one that includes the Thunder’s meteoric rise and an NBA championship.

No team has made it back to the Finals after winning an NBA title since the 2019 Golden State Warriors. But the Thunder came as close as anyone last year, dropping a tight series to the San Antonio Spurs while navigating notable injury misfortune.

The Thunder have already enacted a small measure of revenge, having dispatched the Western Conference champion Spurs in their home opener. They’re primed for another superb season, as they look to make an even stronger case that they’ve become the class of the league.

The Nuggets are in a different place, having essentially slid further away from the mountaintop with each passing day since 2023.

They will have to earn their seat back at the table of Western Conference contenders, and it all starts with a road game in one of the toughest environments in professional basketball.

We’ll get a good look at meaningful data, whether they win or lose. Not data worth overreacting to, but worth logging, as the first of many entries throughout a marathon of a regular season.

So what should we be watching for? What data should we be collecting?

Let’s run through it together.

10-Man Rotation?

We know that David Adelman wants to run a 10-man rotation. We know, for certain, who nine of those players will be. And we know he wants to experiment with five-man bench lineups.

But there’s a difference between what you put in your game plan and what unfolds after the opening tip.

As Adelman has pointed out, sometimes it’s 10 guys to start the game. But by the fourth quarter, things have changed — whether that manifests as looking for a spark off the bench, a new substitution pattern for game-plan adjustments, or, goodness forbid, navigating an injury.

Barring the injuries we are all half-braced for, Adelman should get a chance to tinker with these things throughout the season.

If he sticks to Plan A, brace yourselves for no stagger, and expect to see the following guys play:

Jamal Murray | Christian Braun | Cameron Johnson | Aaron Gordon| Nikola Jokić

Tyus Jones | DeMar DeRozan | Alpha Diallo | Spencer Jones | Marvin Bagley

Delegating the Ball-Handling

Jamal Murray wants the ball in his hands. The Nuggets like when that’s the case. But David Adelman is acutely aware of the mutable trends in pro hoops.

The teams with the most depth are trying to delegate ball-handling responsibilities. That’s in direct response to another trend — the newfound prevalence of full-court pressure — and the importance of having multiple guys on your roster who can grind primary ball-handlers into the ground. Or at least slow the initiation of half-court offense.

The Nuggets haven’t enjoyed the necessary depth on either side of that coin. With injuries to Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson, they didn’t even have enough ball handlers to withstand the pressure last season, let alone enough dogged defenders to apply it on the other end.

So far, the Nuggets have experimented with having other players bring the ball up the floor and initiate the offense — guys like Christian Braun, Aaron Gordon, Cameron Johnson, DeMar DeRozan, Tyus Jones, and Ryan Nembhard.

But it’s one thing to simulate those dynamics in practice, or in preseason games with the Chicago Bulls. And it’s another thing altogether to do it in Oklahoma City.

Keep your eye on how much Denver tries this, and how successful they are in that endeavor. Murray’s willingness to adapt is also worth tracking.

He understands why they’re doing this. But he also wants the ball in his hands—his default setting—as he admitted after Wednesday’s practice.

Crash and Tag

We heard a lot about this principle in training camp. We saw less of it than we hoped during the preseason.

The Nuggets hemorrhaged points in transition last season, struggling to get back after both makes and misses.

They’re trying something new: asking select players to crash the offensive glass, and if they don’t get the board, “tag” the opposing player who did by getting physical, which should buy everyone some time to get back.

It’s worth a shot, given the woeful results of the prior approach. But it’s easier said than done, and the kind of thing you hear a lot about during the preliminary stage of the season only to taper off without ever catching on.

The transition battle should be particularly important against OKC.

The Collective Attitude

When we last saw the Nuggets play meaningful basketball, they looked shockingly supine, almost comfortable in a first-round defeat.

Roster construction matters. Strategy matters. And yes, offense matters.

But there were far more troubling concerns bubbling beneath a surface littered with technical jargon, analytic cop-outs, and the kinds of things that are easier to incorporate into seemingly substantive analysis than the unscientific evaluations of heart and character.

The truth is, the Nuggets all but waved the white flag at their voracious opposition.

It’s a new day, and a new season, one for which the early returns suggest that Denver is reinvigorated and eager to get back after it.

We’d all love to see that on the floor again.

How the Thunder Guard Jokić

The Thunder have deployed numerous troublesome schemes against the best player in the world. They’ve succeeded in making his life difficult, perhaps more than any other team over the years. Although the Timberwolves would like a word here too.

The most infamous scheme involves guarding Jokić with smaller players, guys who can get away with more physicality when fronting and denying, while leaving their bigs free to play help defense.

They’ve sold out on denial, even if it means leaving the best decision-maker in basketball with a playmaking advantage once he catches the ball.

They are comfortable making other Nuggets beat them.

If they try it again right out of the gate, we’ll be paying attention to how the Nuggets handle it as a unit, and, more specifically, whether Jokić focuses on overcoming it or making a point to the officials.

How the Nuggets Guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

The Thunder are one of those teams with the requisite depth to play both sides of the NBA’s voguesh strategy. They can pressure you. And this preseason, they, too, experimented with putting their best on-ball scorer off the ball more often.

It will be interesting to see whether this impacts the Nuggets’ approach — namely, if they’re looking to double-team or trap him.

The Nuggets will task Christian Braun with the primary responsibilities in that assignment. And if Diallo does play, perhaps he is a better option for slowing the back-to-back MVP. Of course, that’s if his minutes overlap at all coming off the bench.