As we get ready for the second-round playoff series between the Nuggets and Thunder, it may seem like the odds are stacked against Denver. The Thunder easily won the West this season, finishing the regular season 68-14, then sweeping the Grizzlies in four games in round one.
They have the MVP frontrunner in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, last season’s Coach of the Year in Mark Daigneault, the best defense in the league, the best depth in the league, and many other positive attributes working in their favor. There’s no other way to put it; Oklahoma City is a juggernaut. Throw in the extra rest and homecourt advantage, and it’s easy to see why they are such heavy favorites.
In the other corner, the Nuggets finished the season 18 games back of the Thunder in the standings. Several of their players are banged up, they really only go about 6-7 guys deep, and they’re coming off an exhausting 7-game series that just ended Saturday night.
On top of that, Denver cleaned house with less than a week left in the regular season, firing head coach Michael Malone and Calvin Booth. First-time NBA head coach and longtime assistant, David Adelman, was given the job with just three games left in the regular season and has now coached more than twice as many playoff games.
Throw in all of these factors, and it starts to look like a real mismatch. But don’t tell that to the Nuggets. They split four games with OKC this season, have the championship, veteran experience, and they’ve got the best player in Nikola Jokic. Furthermore, they may have found something that can make a major difference.
Nuggets were able to slow Thunder down with zone defense
In the regular season matchup, the Nuggets may have found something with zone defense. It may have been a bit of a happy accident, as the Nuggets have nobody who can match up with SGA defensively. He is too big, fast, shifty, and crafty for anyone on Denver to give him much trouble 1-on-1.
So, the Nuggets turned to a zone and found success. The Nuggets were basically having two point-of-attack defenders meet Shai at half court and trap him, forcing the ball out of his hands, and encouraging the Thunder to attack the back line of the defense with a 4-on-3 advantage while the Nuggets tried to scramble back.
As Kevin O’Connor pointed out on the most recent episode of his podcast for Yahoo! Sports, when Denver played man-to-man defense against OKC, their offensive rating was 122, which would have been the best in the NBA this season. But when the Nuggets played zone, the Thunder’s offensive rating fell to 93, which would have been worst in the NBA by far.
Obviously, this was a very small sample size. In a playoff series, with all kinds of adjustments and different schemes, things will be different, and Denver won’t be able to catch OKC off guard with a gimmicky defense.
At the same time, they have laid out a pretty clear blueprint. Get the ball out of SGA’s hands, and force OKC’s role players to hit shots. Will it work? Maybe. But what definitely won’t work is letting SGA carve them up for 48 minutes a night.
The Nuggets are going to have to get creative and muck this series up to erase some of their disadvantages. Leaning heavily into a zone defense seems like a great place to start.