Kenneth Faried has found his basketball soulmate
Many have wondered how Faried would fair coming off the bench, and so far, it’s gone about as well as anyone could have imagined. But it might have a lot more to do with whom he’s playing with than when he’s coming into the game.
In the last iteration of the Nuggets’ starting lineup, Faried was paired next to Nurkic to start both halves, and to say that it didn’t work might be an understatement.
While on the court together, Faried’s net rating was -14.5, which is really bad. It means that for every 100 possessions that the two play together, the Nuggets are getting blown out by 14.5 points.
That’s not a winning formula, and it’s why Malone had to make a change.
That change didn’t just involve pushing Nurkic and Faried to the bench, though; it involved finding more minutes for a Jokic-Faried combo that has proven to be explosive.
It’s an, admittedly, small sample size (130.2 minutes this season), but when Jokic and Faried have shared the floor, they’ve had a net rating of 17.
I’ll repeat, when Jokic and Faried are on the court together, they’re outscoring opponents by 17 points per 100 possessions. That’s absurd!
Again, it’s a small sample size, but Jokic is beginning to look like the perfect complement to Faried’s game — Faried is 30.8 points better per 100 possessions when he’s playing with Jokic than when he’s not.
If this holds up, Faried’s long-term future with the Denver Nuggets suddenly becomes a lot more interesting.
