The Nuggets got a double-whammy of bad luck with the NBA’s schedule release on Thursday as not only do they play as many back-to-backs as any team in the league, they also play the fewest opponents on back-to-backs of all teams. Denver will play on consecutive nights 16 times, which ties them with the 76ers, Wizards, Hornets, and Suns for the most of any team in the 2025-26 season.
To make matters worse, they will only face 12 opponents who are on back-to-backs. The minus four differential for the Nuggets is alone for worst in the league while the Bucks and Mavericks have the most favorable differentials with plus four each.
NBA released the 2025-26 schedule which means we can look at how often teams are playing back-to-backs vs. how often they're *facing* an opponent that's on a b2b
— Owen Phillips (@owenlhjphillips) August 14, 2025
opponent b2bs are ~equally important, but are not distributed as evenly as team b2bs pic.twitter.com/NxVzsfAh2t
It’s a tough break for the Nuggets, but it just hammers home the importance of all the depth they added this offseason. The last couple of seasons, if the Nuggets had any starters missing, they were in big trouble and would be forced to get uncomfortable with their rotations.
Nuggets can go 12-deep any given night
But this season, things should be vastly different as the Nuggets have basically gone from six or seven solid options a night to as many as 12. Conceivably, they could be able to give three players a night off during a tough stretch of schedule, and still trot out a very respectable and competitive nine-man rotation.
That’s massive, especially for a team that is getting a bit long in the tooth and has its eyes on a long run, deep into June. The past two seasons, the team has worn down in the second round of the playoffs and looked like they were breaking down.
Now, they’ll have no problem giving nights off to guys like Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and even Nikola Jokic. Nothing is more important than keeping those guys fresh and making sure their tanks have plenty left once the playoffs start.
Michael Malone and his staff were in a nearly impossible position last season. If they rested players, they risked fielding lineups that weren’t competitive, but they needed to eke out as many regular season wins as possible. The coaches were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and ultimately they toed the line until it cost them.
They got enough wins to earn homecourt advantage in round one as the four seed, but they didn’t get their guys enough rest along the way, and they were battered and bruised by the time round two came along. One of the biggest challenges for David Adelman this season will be making sure he doesn’t fall into the same traps, and that by the time the playoffs begin, this team is fresh, healthy, and firing on all cylinders.