Before the Denver Nuggets tipped off against the Detroit Pistons in the Mile High City on Tuesday night, Nuggets head coach Michael Malone used his pregame press conference to outline what he wanted to personally see from his team in their upcoming battle with the Pistons.
“I want to have a good game in all areas. I want to get back to playing consistent basketball,” Malone said. “Even in our wins, as of late, we are playing well enough to win games, but I think we can be better.
“We have to be ready to play every night regardless of who we are going up against and coming off of a 36-point loss, my hope is that our guys come out and play a spirited brand of basketball that is more reflective of who we want to be and who we need to be moving into the postseason.”
Well, Malone’s prayers were not answered, but that in itself is promising. The Nuggets extremely young roster has not played consistent — a word that Malone uttered in some form 10 different times in a total of 11+ minutes of media availability before and after Tuesday’s win — basketball since the All-Star break ended.
But, despite Denver’s wildly inconsistent ways, they have won seven of their last eight games and are tied with the Golden State Warriors for the first seed in the Western Conference at the time of this writing with a record of 50-23.
Simply stated, the Nuggets have taken yet another step forward as a team. Now, they know almost exactly how much effort is required to walk away with a win against an inferior opponent; a skill that nearly every elite team possesses.
That is a realization that Will Barton openly admitted in front of his locker after Denver survived at home against Detroit.
“We do feel like we are going to win anyway,” Barton explained after nearly losing a 27-point lead at home to the Pistons. “Now, the next step is trying to not even get ourselves into that situation of having big leads like that and then having to close out games that way. Good teams do not do that.”
Yes, playing with less than maximum effort is unquestionably a slippery slope, but so far the Nuggets are riding that slope like professional snowboarders as opposed to uncontrollably sliding down the standings in the brutal Western Conference.
“The best part about it is that we are still 7-1 in our last eight games and I do not even think we are playing that great,” Malone explained after Denver narrowly escaped with a 95-92 win over the Pistons. “In flashes and periods, we are playing really well, but we are not sustaining it enough.”
This is not to say that the Nuggets usually fail to locked in mentally as they gear up for a game. Actually, the opposite is true when looking at Denver’s win profile.
The Nuggets have beaten the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, and so many other elite-level teams around the NBA in addition to being 30-14 against Western Conference opponents, 9-2 in the Northwest Division — which is arguably the toughest division in the league — while sporting a 19-17 on the road which is tied for the second-fewest road losses in the Western Conference. The fact that the Nuggets have taken care of business more often than not this season cannot be argued.
But when Denver faces off against teams that they are just simply better than, they tend to take their collective foot off of the accelerator quite often because they feel like they will find a way to win regardless of how much effort they give.
But here is the interesting part of that mental approach — they are right.
Yes, I know; this argument sounds blasphemous, but stick with me for a second here. The Nuggets are 28-7 against teams below .500 this season and their seven losses are the third-least losses to sub-.500 teams in the league. Denver is also 13-3 in games decided by three points or less and 21-8 in games decided by 10 points or less meaning the Nuggets have found ways to win in tightly contested games all year. Lastly, and most importantly, Denver is an incredible 41-1 when the lead after three quarters this season.
While there are issues with Denver not attacking each team with everything they have on a night-to-night basis, the facts speak for themselves; the Nuggets do not need to play their best basketball to get wins over the majority of the league.
That specifically speaks to Denver’s ability — no matter how badly they are playing — to find ways to win. Mason Plumlee called it a “killer instinct” in his postgame interview in front of his locker after narrowly defeating the Pistons.
“My message coming into the locker room was that we have the killer instinct,” Plumlee said after the game in the Nuggets locker room. “You don’t finish the game with those plays, those shots, Joker getting the dunk, Jamal hitting the floaters; that is the instinct, but you can have that when you are up 20 (points). You can have that in the third quarter. You don’t have to wait until they make it interesting. That will switch for us.”
Still, despite the near collapse, Plumlee was more proud than concerned.
“I am proud of us for how we closed it out and we will be more consistent going forward,” Plumlee vowed.
Still, the Nuggets are walking a very thin line. While being good enough to coast to wins against inferior opponents is nice, that cannot become a habit that shows itself in the postseason. For the Nuggets, who have very little playoff experience in their rotation, they need to be firing on all cylinders heading into the playoffs. That fact is why Malone gave a warning to his youthful Nuggets team through the media after narrowly escaping defeat at home to Detroit.
“Don’t get bored with success,” Malone explained. “That happens to most people. You get a big lead and you forget how you got that lead and you start trying to reinvent yourself and do something new. Just stay with it. Dont get bored with success. Stay with what got you there and more of it; more of the same.”
Thankfully, the Nuggets will be challenged over the course of the final nine games of the regular season. Of those nine games, seven of them are against playoff teams, eight of them are against Western Conference opponents, and five of them are against division rivals. In nearly every game from now until the end of the regular season, the Nuggets will have to play their best basketball to come away with a win.
Surprisingly enough, Denver’s brutal end to the regular season may actually be a blessing in disguise because it will force the Nuggets to get into a rhythm heading into the playoffs; something Malone has been imploring his team to do for the better part of a month.
“We have to be better than that with nine games to go,” Malone stated with an obvious amount of frustration in his voice. “If we want to be a real serious team and a dangerous team in the playoffs, we cannot piss away 27-point leads and almost lose it in that second half.
“Hopefully we learn from it.”
