2 games in and the Nuggets' big offseason gamble looks like a disaster

The Nuggets lost again on Saturday night and this one was even more concerning than the opening night blowout. At least in game one, the Nuggets were facing a Thunder team that looked like the class of the Western Conference. That is decidedly not the case for a Clippers team that is missing Kawhi Leonard.

But still, an uninspiring Clippers roster came into Ball Arena and beat the Nuggets in Denver, 109-104. The Nuggets battled back to erase a big first-half deficit and had the lead late in the fourth quarter, but they were unable to close the deal down the stretch.

Nikola Jokic had an excellent scoring game, putting in 41 points on 14/26 shooting, including 7/12 from beyond the arc. And yet it was not enough as Jokic missed a huge free throw in the final seconds that would have tied the game.

But the team’s biggest issue for the second straight game was the play of the bench, especially when Jokic sat. Each Nuggets starter had a positive plus/minus, while the four players who came in off the bench were all in the negatives.

The Russell Westbrook minutes are getting untenable in a hurry

Worst of all, for the second straight game, was Russell Westbrook who was a team-worst -13 on the night. Russ finished with 2 points, 1 rebound, and 2 assists in 19 minutes and shot 0/8 from the field and 0/3 from three.

The Westbrook minutes were a nightmare to watch and he is clearly hurting the team when he’s on the floor. Russ has always had his warts as a player, but the 90% positive Russ made up for the 10% negative Russ.

Nowadays it seems like that 90/10 ratio is trending in the opposite direction and it’s hard to find a lot of things Russ is doing well to help the Nuggets. His minutes have been really bad and his play was a big reason for the loss on Saturday.

Michael Malone experimented with different rotations and tried to switch things up in this one, and it helped in some ways. But it seems like the bigger issue may just be that Westbrook is not a good NBA player at this point in his career.

The Nuggets don’t have many options but they need to figure this out in a hurry. It has been a very ugly 0-2 start and the bench is a big reason why. If Russ is going to keep hurting the team, they have to find a way to avoid playing him.