Why changes could be coming to the Nuggets' struggling small-ball second unit

After most of his teammates had already showered, dressed and departed into the Denver night following the Nuggets’ 111-104 loss to the Utah Jazz, Isaiah Thomas walked slowly into the Nuggets locker room through the set of double doors that connects it to Pepsi Center’s ground level hallway and the arena’s main court dripping in sweat.

Thomas had just gone through an impromptu postgame shooting session in front of a few hundred straggling fans, who were idling in the arena’s lower bowl following Denver’s seven-point defeat, surely trying to flush a poor individual performance and an overall ugly night from the Nuggets’ offense out of his system. Thomas struggled Thursday, finishing with just four points on 2-6 shooting, and so did many of his teammates.

Nikola Jokic, who was coming off a 36-point, 13-rebound, seven-assist performance against the Oklahoma City Thunder, was swallowed up by Rudy Gobert. Jokic finished with 16 points on just 5-15 shooting and tallied five turnovers. Gobert blocked Jokic’s shot four times and dominated the All-Star center like few have over the last couple of seasons. Starting shooting guard Malik Beasley was quiet too, scoring just six points in 24 minutes of action. The most jarring offensive shortcomings, however, came from Denver’s second unit, which was outscored 10-2 over the first five minutes of the second quarter, a run that for the Nuggets proved nearly fatal. Denver shot just 1-12 from the field during that stretch and turned the ball over three times. The Nuggets were outscored 33-15 in the second period, their lowest-scoring quarter of the season.

“That was one of our worst quarters of the year. Just a lot of standing around on offense, overdribbling. That group was really bad. Obviously, we’ve got to be better when we come off the bench and understand we play a certain style of basketball,” Michael Malone said referring to bench lineup of Thomas, Monte Morris, Gary Harris, Paul Millsap and Mason Plumlee. “It’s not 1-on-1, it’s not standing around, and it’s not pick-and-roll every possession. I thought in the second half we did a better job with that unit but you get outscored 33-15 and that deflated us. It deflated the arena with how bad we played. And the poor offense carried over to the poor defense.”

The Nuggets were forced to play catch-up throughout the rest of the game and could never recover. When on the floor, Denver’s bench unit couldn’t produce organic offense and high-quality shots. It was unrecognizable offensive execution compared to the Nuggets’ typical free-flowing offense that’s predicated on ball and player movement.

After Tuesday’s struggles, Malone didn’t rule out making changes to that lineup going forward.

“We was just stagnant,” said Morris, who finished with two points on 1-6 shooting and one assist in the loss. “We weren’t moving the ball, we played a lot of 1-on-1 basketball. We just gotta be better.”

For Morris and Thomas, learning to play in Denver’s backcourt together is proving to be a work in progress. Morris has captained the Nuggets’ second unit for the entire season and now is sharing lead ball-handling duties with Thomas, who returned to Denver’s lineup in the last game before the All-Star break. The former MVP candidate, who spent much of the first five months of the season rehabbing from hip surgery, is still trying to find his form after so much time off.

“I’m just trying to make plays,” Thomas said of Thursday’s second quarter.

Thomas insists that he feels great but acknowledges that he’s limited under a current minutes restriction. Against Utah, he played just 11 minutes, the fewest he’s played so far in a Nuggets uniform. In Thomas’ first four games, the 29-year-old logged 13, 16, 24 and 15 minutes.

“It’s very hard when you play 10 minutes,” Thomas said of the difficulties learning how to play with different lineups. “But you’ve just got to continue to get better whenever your name is called continue to play hard and figure things out, and that’s all I can do.”

For Thomas, the key to fitting with Denver’s second unit going forward will be to try and find a way to combine his high-usage style of play with the equal opportunity brand of basketball that the Nuggets have used to climb the Western Conference standings this season.

At time, it hasn’t been an easy balance for him to achieve.

“He’s trying to find his rhythm and get comfortable with the ball in his hands and making plays,” said Malone. “The other hand of that is he’s got to understand how we play, move the ball and get guys involved.”

The Nuggets were outscored by 10 points in Thomas’ 10 minutes against the Jazz and by five points in the 10 minutes that Thomas, Morris and Harris shared the floor. In the Nuggets’ last two games, Denver has been outscored by 10 points in the 24 minutes that the trio has played together.

Morris said after Denver’s loss that he’s not worried about his current backcourt partner and knows it will take time for Thomas, who was away from basketball for the last 11 months, to find his form and chemistry with the second unit. But if the Nuggets’ bench unit, which carried Denver for much of the season continues to struggle, Malone could pull the plug on his current lineup combinations before that has a chance of happening.

“We’ve got to get it clicking,” said Morris. “That’s on myself, Gary, Isaiah. We’re the three guards in the second unit. We all gotta be better. We can’t depend on the starters to pull us through every night. We’ve got to bring something off the bench, and I put that on my shoulders. I know they do the same.”