It was hardly shocking, or even disappointing, for the Nuggets to lose their season opener on the road in Oklahoma City. The Thunder are an elite team, they are fully healthy, have a great home-court advantage, and they appear to be highly motivated coming into this season off a devastating Western Conference Finals loss to the Spurs.
There’s no shame in losing that game. However, there’s definitely some cause for concern after seeing the way the Nuggets played and just how they lost that game. It would have been one thing to battle for 48 minutes, give up a lot of points, and ultimately fall short. But that wasn’t the case.
In fact, it was Denver’s offense that let them down for a change, and they did so in an eye-opening way. If anything, the defense actually kept them in this game and made it seem closer than it was, as they held the Thunder to just 96 points, an impressive feat.
The problem, of course, was that the Nuggets tallied just 84 points of their own. They scored a respectable 27 points in the first quarter, then added just 57 points total over the next three frames, an absolutely dreadful number.
Nuggets' offense was a complete disaster in OKC
It was jarring to watch the Nuggets look completely inept on the offensive end, struggling to generate any good looks and failing to hit the few that were created. They shot a measly 31-for-82 (38%) on the night and 8-for-30 (27%) from three-point land. Even when they were uncontested, they weren’t falling as they made just 14-22 (64%) free throws on the night.
As a team, they had just 17 assists for the game, a number we see Nikola Jokic surpass on his own fairly regularly. And that low assist figure was made even worse by their whopping 22 turnovers. Oh, and it’s not like they were getting out and finding easy baskets on the other end, as they finished with just 2 fast-break points. Simply put, nothing was working, and no shots were falling. It was ugly.
If there was a bright spot, it was that the team pulled down 19 offensive rebounds and turned them into 28 second-chance points. That’s a great stat; it should have made an elite offense even more deadly, but unfortunately, it was about the only source of efficient scoring all night.
Again, let’s pump the brakes on the overreaction theater. It’s game one, and it was against an excellent opponent. But what we saw on the court was far from what we need to see going forward. If this team is going to have any chance at competing this season, it’s going to be on the back of an elite offense. And what we saw on Thursday night was anything but that.
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