The Denver Nuggets got their 2024-25 NBA regular season campaign off to a sputtering start on Thursday night, falling at home to the Oklahoma City Thunder, 102-87. The team came out of the gates strongly, jumping out to a 19-10 lead in the first quarter. But as soon as head coach Michael Malone went to his bench, things went south.
By the end of the first, the Nuggets were trailing 31-24 and they never recovered from there, falling behind by as many as 20 points. There were a lot of reasons for the big loss; the entire bench was atrocious, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. shot the ball very poorly, the defensive and rebounding weren’t good enough, Malone had some questionable rotations, and also the Thunder are really freaking good.
Nuggets 3-point shooting proves to be achilles heel
Yet, the biggest reason for the loss was the concern that has plagued the Nuggets the longest and their biggest overall weakness; lack of three-point shooting. The Nuggets were near the bottom of the league last season in three-point attempts and three-point makes.
At a certain point, it’s a simple math problem and the Nuggets were getting crushed, making their margin for error very thin. Unfortunately, in the offseason, the team’s shooting got even worse on paper. They lost Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Reggie Jackson, and Justin Holiday; three shooters. Their replacements in the rotation are virtual non-shooters in Russell Westbrook and Peyton Watson and low-volume guys in Christian Braun and Dario Saric.
There was optimism that the core players could up their shooting, Braun would shoot more as a starter, and Julian Strawther would be a high-volume marksman off the bench. But through one game, it looks like three-point shooting will be a glaring issue for this team.
Every Nugget shot poorly from deep
Denver shot just 7/39 from the three-point line, including a dismal 1/16 from the bench. Jokic hit 1/3, Murray hit 2/6, and MPJ “led” the way, making 3/10. Braun played well as a starter, but attempted just three triples and missed them all.
Strawther didn’t look like the preseason star we just saw at all, scoring just 6 points and going 0/2 from beyond the arc. Even worse, the main guys launching were the guys you least want shooting it; Westbrook and Watson who combined to go 1/10 from deep.
This was a gruesome display and it’s crushing to see the Nuggets’ biggest concern come to fruition immediately. In a way, the Nuggets were actually lucky as the Thunder, an excellent shooting team, shot just 8/36 from distance, themselves. If they shot closer to their average, this would have been an even bigger blowout.
A lot of these guys should shoot better going forward, but this also isn’t some random blip on the radar. This is not a good shooting team. Malone may have to go a little deeper in his bench and give guys like Zeke Nnaji and Vlatko Cancar a shot.
Cancar has proven he can shoot and Nnaji looked like a much-improved shooter in the preseason. But those aren’t likely feasible long-term solutions to this problem either. The Nuggets have a glaring weakness, and they need to find a way to fix it in short order.