Denver Nuggets: Where do they stand in award races?

In the midst of a season that is promising to be one of the best in franchise history, the Denver Nuggets have had several players(and one coach) stand out on the team and around the league.

The Denver Nuggets currently 2nd in the highly competitive Western Conference, just 0.5 games back of the 1st place Golden State Warriors.

They are 4 games ahead of the 3rd place OKC Thunder and their winning percentage of .689 is the 4th best in the entire NBA.

Nobody, myself included, expected the Nuggets to be this good.

They haven’t done this without some incredible contributions from their players, however. Almost every Nugget who has been on the roster for the past few years has improved their play in some way this season, even if it has been under the radar of basic statistics.

Those performances, while not touted on the national stage, have brought the Nuggets from the 6th worst points per game defense in the NBA to the 6th best.

That has been the main reason the team has soared from playoff wannabes to among the best in the league.

And they’ve managed to do that with several injuries to many key players and just 37 total games from players who have appeared in an All-Star game before(all courtesy of Paul Millsap, as Isaiah Thomas is still yet to feature this season).

To say the least, the Nuggets have had some incredible performances by everybody associated with the team this year.

However, have they been strong enough performances to warrant any speeches from the podium of the 2019 NBA Awards? Let’s take a look and see.

(Note: All stats via Basketball-Reference unless otherwise noted.)