New Nuggets head coach David Adelman joined the NBATV broadcast of the team’s first summer league game on Thursday night and made some alarming statements about Jonas Valanciunas. He said he sees JV as a “point center” and explained that the team may not need a true point guard running the second unit.
Adelman went on to say that Denver hasn’t had a backup center with a skill set like that of Nikola Jokic since DeMarcus Cousins. He clearly wants the team to stick to the same script whether Jokic is on the floor or not, and that means Valanciunas taking on a major playmaking role.
Valanciunas a far cry from Jokic as a passer
The only problem with this plan is that Valanciunas has never been heralded as some great passer or playmaker, and it has been a long time since any team tried to have him trigger the offense.
Sure, he has nice touch and solid ball skills, but creating offense for others has never been a trait associated with the big Lithuanian. For his career, he’s averaging 1.4 assists per game; he has never averaged more than 2.6 per game in a season, and he has only eclipsed 7 assists in a game once over the course of his 937 games played in the NBA.
While it’s a nice idea to diversify the offense a bit in the second unit after it was largely monopolized by Russell Westbrook last season, this seems like a major risk. Allowing Valanciunas to run some offense is fine, but that should be in addition to a legitimate backup point guard.
Nuggets need a backup point guard
It doesn’t have to be a ball-dominant guy like Westbrook, but a solid veteran ballhandler would be a huge addition for a team that currently only has Jalen Pickett on the bench behind Jamal Murray. Pickett showed flashes, but he hasn’t proven that he’s a full-time NBA rotation player at this point.
For a team with championship aspirations, like the Nuggets, that’s just not good enough. They can certainly get some creation from the other new additions as well, like Bruce Brown, Cam Johnson, and Tim Hardaway Jr., but none of those players are truly point guards and would be overtasked in that capacity.
There aren’t a lot of great options left on the free agency market, but even if they could bring in a veteran like Chris Paul, Malcolm Brogdon, or Ben Simmons, it would go a long way to rounding out an extremely deep bench, a luxury that the Nuggets haven’t had in a long time.