3 Takeaways from the Denver Nuggets four-game road trip

The Nuggets emerged from a four-game road trip fairly successful, going 3-1. But before their loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Nuggets were the hottest team in the NBA.

The Nuggets have added to their offensive arsenal since the All-Star break, giving us looks at Paul Millsap producing in the post, shooting more threes and bigger production coming off the bench.

With just three weeks remaining in the NBA regular season and teams still fighting for playoff seeding every game matters for the Nuggets as they wrestle with the Warriors and try to hold off an incredibly hot Houston Rockets team who are three games back from Denver with an important matchup Thursday in Houston.

Bench scoring winning games

In the Nuggets win against the Boston Celtics the Nuggets proved they have one of the deepest benches in the NBA outscoring the Boston bench 34-24 to push the Nuggets over the hump and get the win.

The Nuggets duo of Monte Morris and Torrey Craig had 11 points on 5 of 9 shooting and 13 points on 5 of 7 shooting, respectively to lead all bench players. The leading scorer off the bench for Boston was Terry Rozier with 7 points on 3 of 9 shooting.

The Nuggets bench is deep, playing a full rotation of nine players getting over 20.4 minutes per game when many teams in the NBA are playing eight man rotations.

Denver Sharing the ball

During this four-game road trip the Nuggets have been sharing the ball and putting up points in bunches by doing so. In their three wins against Boston, Washington and New York, the Nuggets have had eight, seven and six players with more than 10 points.

With all this balanced offensive production the Nuggets passing has continued to be impressive especially from All-Star Nikola Jokic, who lead the team in both games against the Celtics and Wizards with seven and 11 assists respectively.

The Nuggets ball movement is easily among the best in the league averaging 27.7 assists per game, good for second in the NBA behind the Warriors — who average 29.2. In the Nuggets win over Boston they had 30 assists and all that ball movement created great looks at the bucket and the nuggets shot 48 percent from the field against the fifth ranked defensive rating team in the league.

Nuggets suffocating the 3-point line

In each of their wins against the Celtics, Wizards and Knicks the Nuggets held each team to below 31 percent from behind the three-point line.

Boston is one of the league leaders in both threes made a game and three-point percentage with 12 makes on 36% shooting from behind the arc but in their game against the Nuggets Boston was just 12 of 39 from behind the arc good for 30.8 percent.

If the Nuggets can keep a lid on teams scoring from behind the arc that will be a major boost for the playoffs in a Western Conference armed to the teeth with deadly 3-point shooters like Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and James Harden.

The Denver Nuggets face another difficult week this week with important road games in Houston and Oklahoma City this week with an increasingly important game at Oracle Arena against the Warriors in two weeks as the Nuggets close out the remaining 10 games of the regular season and get ready to make a push for the playoffs.