After almost two months of straight dominance, the Nuggets have been dethroned as the number one seed in the Western Conference.
After last Tuesday, the Golden State Warriors reclaimed the number one seed atop the Western Conference. The Warriors came into the Pepsi Center and handed the Denver Nuggets their most lopsided lost in recent memory.
The score ended with the Warriors winning 142-111 and the game was never close.
The Nuggets yielded 51 points in the first quarter and gave up 10 made threes within the first 12 minutes.
They could not stop Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry… hell they could not cover Alfonzo Mckinnie to save their life.
It was simply the case of the big brother finally having enough and giving the little brother the business.
After the lopsided loss, it appeared the entire NBA abandoned the “Nuggets’ Ship” and claimed they were fraud. Even some of my favorite NBA guys like @HPbasketball who appear to have a Nuggets’ bias are thinking Denver should not be considered a contender.
I’m fine with believing Denver can’t ever really compete with Golden State, I agree, but don’t use this game as evidence, because you would have said the same no matter the outcome and a Nuggets win wouldn’t have changed it for you.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) January 16, 2019
Everyone seems to just accept that the Warriors are too good and the Nuggets have apparently shown their true colors.
Everyone claims Denver cannot beat the Warriors, so they label them as fake.
Well, I do not partake in this ever so hot take; frankly, I think this humiliating loss might have been the best thing that could have happened for the young squad, and here’s why.
This loss helps teach them that they must return to the fundamentals
For everyone who thought Golden State’s victory was just a “typical” night has to step back and re-evaluate. I know they have three of the best shooters of all-time in their starting line-up.
Denver Nuggets
We all know that DeMarcus Cousins is back with the team giving them the first all-star starting five in the past 40+ years. I understand that they have the capabilities of just turning on the jets when they feel like it.
Basically, they are closest metaphor to Marvel’s Avengers when that superhero force is compared to a sports team.
But here me out, the Denver Nuggets have defeated the Golden State Warriors before this year. They have the best winning percentage against playoff caliber teams and teams above .500.
Before last Tuesday, they had only been blown out of one game and that was at Staples Center against the Clippers without three starters and having Nikola Jokic tossed in the third quarter. The argument can be made that the Nuggets have not experienced many tough losses this year and they may have been starting to get passive.
Before everyone starts ragging on me about “how could you say the Nuggets played passively against the back to back NBA champions?”, let me explain what I mean.
The Nuggets are not being passive when it comes to effort; instead, they are playing passive when it comes to the fundamentals and Michael Malone’s philosophy from earlier in the year.
The Nuggets began the season as one of the best defensive units in the NBA. They were playing with that extra gear to ensure proper closeouts and gang rebounding occurred on every possession.
Thus, their defense began to lead them to more wins and more notoriety among their NBA peers. However, after some big wins and some big scoring outputs, the team began to fall away from that defensive intensity because they were winning so why did they need to bust their butts if it was not going to matter?
Well, the team saw it first hand on Tuesday as the Warriors absolutely demolished them in all facets of the game.
While this might have been a tough lesson to swallow, it might have been necessary for Denver to succeed.
The Nuggets are a young team that still has much to learn and is not anywhere close to their full potential. However, everyone knew that the Nuggets were not going to just walk into the playoffs and the Western Conference just pave the way to the NBA Finals.
This was a lesson of what the Nuggets need to aspire to become.
They may not reach that goal yet, but they sure know what they must do if they want to take that next step into becoming a true contender.