The List: The Nuggets' biggest weakness

“The List” is a brand new series that serves as a companion piece for the “Notebook” episodes of the Locked on Nuggets podcast and the DNVR Nuggets podcast. In this edition, I share some notes on the loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday.

1. The Brooklyn Nets have the personnel and the style of play to exploit the biggest defensive weaknesses of the Denver Nuggets. An athletic, rim-rolling center in Jarrett Allen provides the perfect contrast to Nikola Jokic, playing a story or two above Jokic’s ground-bound frame. Elite shooters on the wing, including a stretch four in Taurean Prince to mitigate the back side rim protection of Paul Millsap. And most important of all, a speedy and crafty pick-and-roll (PnR) point guard in Spencer Dinwiddie who can get by all of Denver’s on ball defenders.

Combine all of that with an excellent coach and style of play and you get possession after possession of plays like the one below. An unsolvable equation that requires a defense to decipher the best wrong answer while playing at light speed.

2. Spencer Dinwiddie is such a crafty player. Just watch how he slices through a tight window around Jokic on this play.

The go-ahead bucket with 0:43 left in the game provided another great example of these sort of off-rhythm, stuttuer-step type moves that freeze a rim protector. Jokic is already less nimble than most centers so throwing downhill moves like this at him are almost unfair.

3. One way to counter such a tough PnR duo is by dropping into the paint and taking away the lane to the basket. The Nuggets deployed this style of coverage against Brooklyn’s second unit and found a lot of success with it against the group.

But even Mason Plumlee struggled in the limited possessions he played opposite Dinwiddie. Here, Dinwiddie beats him around the corner before darting to the basket for an easy two.

4. When the back side help rotates off of a shooter in the corner, Dinwiddie threw rifles passes to hit them on target for an open three. No matter which poison Denver picked in this game, the results were all the same.

5. Despite getting beat in the PnR over and over again, Denver was still within striking distance of stealing this game. Plays like the ones below became the margins and Denver just lost too many of these battles. Watch on the first clip how Paul Millsap gets blown by after Jokic stops the initial PnR action.

Or these two blow bys on Will Barton.

Or this one, featuring Juancho Hernangomez in way over his head.

6. Another way that teams try to counteract a good PnR is to “ice” the screen, or jump the screen and force a ball-handler to the baseline. This is the required defensive scheme for side PnRs with no help on the strong side, as is the case in the clip below. With no one in that left corner to help cover the rolling big man, Hernangomez ices the screen to force the ball handler toward the side where he can attack Jokic one on one. In these instances, Jokic must keep the guard away from the rim. This is rim protection 101, the easiest of all rim protection assignments.

7. For some levity, here is a hilarious flop attempt by Jerami Grant.

8. The Nuggets need to find a way to speed up their offense and the easiest and most obvious way to do that is to get the ball across half court quicker. This allows for more time to work the ball around in the half court. It can also help scramble the defense and create easy scoring possessions like the one below. More of this, please.

9. I’m not a fan of Gary Harris rejecting ball screens. It’s understandable if a player does it on occasion but for Gary, those occasions should come far and few between.

Same goes for these types of aggressive mid-range shots.

Someone has to be the 5th option in Denver’s egalitarian offense and Harris has by far the fewest tools in his toolbox. That doesn’t mean that he cannot be a productive, and at times, a high-volume member of the offense, but his shots should probably be limited to certain types of actions. Spot up threes, PnR drives to the rim, wide open pull-ups, and back cuts. Step back one-legged fallaways with 15 seconds on the clock in the final four minutes of a close game are probably not the best use of Denver’s offensive talents.