"We were soft offensively": Here's why the Nuggets' offense is struggling

Offense isn’t what usually keeps Michael Malone up at night. Throughout the Nikola Jokic era, Malone has spent very little time worrying about how his team is going to put the ball in the basket.

But three games into the regular season, it’s Malone’s top concern. The Nuggets have held all three opponents that they’ve faced under 100 points so far this season, but find their offensive attack near the bottom of the league. Through three games, Denver’s averaging just 99 points per 100 possessions, the fourth-worst mark in the league. Most of that low number stems from the 102 points the Nuggets scored vs. San Antonio and the 87 the Nuggets mustered against the Cavs in their first loss last night.

One aspect of Denver’s offensive mindset on Monday bugged Malone the most.

“We were soft offensively,” he said postgame. “We were coming down and shooting pull-up 3’s. I know they had great size out there and length with (Lauri) Markkanen and (Evan) Mobley and (Jarrett) Allen. But we just never thought attack. We though settle all night long.”

“We didn’t put any pressure on them.”

I combed through Denver’s 38 3-point attempts last night and it wasn’t hard to pick out which 3-pointers irked Malone the most.

This transition 3 from Gordon, was an interesting choice, especially considering it came immediately after the Nuggets missed 15 of their first 18 3-point attempts. In a Nuggets uniform, Gordon has shot just 28-94 (29.8%) from 3.

As was this rise-and-fire from Michael Porter Jr., right out of halftime, on the move, off balance and over a seven-footer.

This Monte Morris transition 3 with over six minutes left in regulation and Denver trailing only by 12 was interesting too. There was no need to rush this.

There were more, and the quick-trigger, low-quality 3s underscored one of the Nuggets’ top offensive issues over the first week of the regular season: Denver has gone ice cold from beyond the arc.

The Nuggets made 44% of their triples on opening night in Phoenix, but in two games at Ball Arena are shooting a combined 18-68 (26.5%) from distance. Denver shot 9-30 from 3-point range vs. San Antonio and 9-38 from beyond the arc against Cleveland. Remove Will Barton, who’s shooting 7-16 from 3-point range to open the season, from the equation and the Nuggets have converted only 28 of their 91 3-point attempts on the year.

There will surely be a course correction. I don’t think the Nuggets are a bad shooting team by any means. Porter is a much better shooter than he’s shown, although his overall start to the season has been a disappointment. Jokic, Morris and Jeff and JaMychal Green should all eventually find their rhythms too.

Also, after a preseason where the Nuggets stressed that they want to shoot more 3s, Denver is only attempting 1.5 more triples per game than they did last season (35.7 attempts/game this year to 34.2 attempts/game in 2020-21). The Nuggets attempted 45.2 3-pointers per game in the preseason.

“If you’re open, probably you need to shoot it,” Jokic said postgame Monday. “But if you’re not making it then we need to attack the paint, get to the free-throw line or whatever. Just get to the easy points.”

Jokic brought up one of the other glaring holes in Denver’s current offensive profile: free-throw shooting. The Nuggets only attempted 12 free-throws against the Cavs. That was actually a season-high. Denver’s currently averaging just 9.7 free-throws per game. It’s by far the worst mark in the NBA and a historically low free-throw rate to start the season.

The Nuggets’ 29 free throw attempts through their first 3 games ranks as the fewest attempts by a team through 3 games since 1963-64.

They shattered the record for the previous low, the 2017-18 Kings who had 36 attempts through 3 games.

— Jake Coyne (Stat Squatch) (@BroncoSquatch) October 26, 2021

Sure, not having Jamal Murray hurts, but that’s not the story here. Murray only averaged 3.2 free-throw attempts per game last season. The Nuggets’ alarming low amount of free-throw attempts simply represents how passive they’ve been on the offensive end of the floor to start the year. Without their starting point guard, the Nuggets have also been turning the ball over like crazy — a league-high 20.7 times per game.

That should not be happening to a team that’s returning the same starting five that it ended last season with.

“Our execution I think has been really bad,” Malone said in a response to a question I asked him about why the starters struggled on offense against Cleveland. “The amount of plays that we did not execute out of a timeout, guys in the wrong spot, not doing their respective job. Kind of shows me that guys are not really locked in and focused.”

So what’s the fix? Some of the shooting problems will be naturally corrected. I’d also expect Denver to clean up its shot selection and start attacking the rim more beginning tonight…on a back-to-back against the Jazz and three-time defensive player of the year Rudy Gobert. Barton stressed after the Cavs loss that he has to take on more responsibility as a lead ball handler too and move into more of a playmaking point guard role while Murray’s out to get Denver more organized. In the Nuggets’ two wins, Barton tallied six and five assists. In last night’s loss, he had only one helper.

Bones Hyland could also enter the rotation Tuesday after an impressive first-half stint with Denver’s bench lineup. Malone laid the groundwork for that to happen last night. The Nuggets’ default five-man second unit got played off the floor again vs. Cleveland and has been outscored 66-39 (-27) in only 25 minutes this season. You can’t get much worse than that.

The good news is that Denver’s 2-1 and it’s still early, like really, really early. It’s three games into an 82-game regular season early. The MVP is also playing at an MVP level but he’ll need some help.

“Hopefully, it’s not just that we lost, but how we lost,” Malone said. “Hopefully that stings our guys.”