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DENVER — Over the course of this regular season, which will reach it’s halfway point later this week, the Nuggets have never been more connected or more tightly bonded as a team, than they currently are at this present moment.
Spending nearly a week together in a different country, 20+ hours of air travel and getting an important 140-112 win over the Indiana Pacers in London last week to end a five-game losing streak certainly helps, but the feel around the team seems to have changed as Denver gets ready for their second-half push.
“It was kind of like when we were in Omaha,” Michael Malone said at practice Sunday of the London trip. “When you’re together as much as you are, granted most people had guests, but I think there was a lot of interaction with the guys and making sure we’re enjoying the trip, having fun but also getting our work done, and keeping our eyes on the prize regarding the game on Thursday night.”
“On the plane, we didn’t have wifi so you gotta talk to the guy next to you, you can’t be on your phone,” Wilson Chandler said. “That was big for us as a team.”
The Nuggets have one of the most diverse rosters throughout the entire league. Obviously, Denver has players from Serbia, Bosnia, Italy, Spain and elsewhere constantly assimilating into a culture and organization, but the Nuggets also house three rookies, a 20-year-old starting point guard, a 21-year-old starting center, along with veterans like Danilo Gallinari, Jameer Nelson, Mike Miller, Darrell Arthur and Wilson Chandler who have all been around the block once or twice.
It’s a healthy balance but one that has taken work to iron out during the season.
“We’ve got a lot of characters on this team,” Emmanuel Mudiay said. “Just us being together, we laugh and stuff like that, it’s definitely a bonding thing that we did over there.”
The Nuggets sit at 15-23, a mark that would typically label them as “sellers” at the trade deadline and possibly looking towards next year. But Denver finds themselves just one game out of the eighth seed in the West nearing the halfway point of the season, something they’re looking to take full advantage of.
“Even with the five-game losing streak, in years past you lose five games in a situation where we’re that far down in the rankings, you’re definitely out of the playoffs,” Chandler told BSN Denver. “We’re still right there. We’re still staying positive. What that game in London showed was that we can be a good team if we just play together and play hard.”
Denver looks to keep the winning ways going as they welcome in the Orlando Magic on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday. It’s a winnable game against a struggling Magic squad, who like the Nuggets, are making an all-out push for the eighth seed, but in the Eastern Conference.
“The biggest issue is just coming to a common ground, not pointing fingers, not pointing fingers at the coaches, the coaches not pointing fingers at the players, the players not pointing finger at individuals on the team,” Chandler said. “I think we just need to come together, follow the game plan, try to do that to the best of our abilities and if that doesn’t work, then we got to find something else.”
