The Nuggets have had one clear objective for a while now: get deeper. Since winning the title in 2023, depth has been the team’s undoing, as they’ve worn out in game seven of their second-round series in back-to-back years. By the end of the most recent series loss to the Thunder, Denver was beaten and battered, and even if they had advanced, they were playing with just a handful of reliable, healthy, NBA-caliber players.
It was a bad scene, and we knew it was coming. We hoped that maybe Nikola Jokic could carry the team on his back, but alas, the task proved to large for even the Joker. It was no mystery to anyone what the problem was, and a Nuggets front office executive expressed that exact sentiment to Keith Smith of Spotrac recently.
“We had to get deeper. That was clear to us as far back as the trade deadline. We’ll have DaRon (Holmes II) this year, which is going to be huge. But adding Cam (Johnson), Jonas (Valanciunas), Tim (Hardaway Jr.) and bringing Bruce (Brown) home, are huge for us. And we still like our younger guys too. The pressure is just off them a bit to have to be great every night.”
Nuggets have known the problem for a long time
But obviously, as this executive pointed out, despite the team’s knowledge of their lack of depth, there was nothing they could do about it. At least, that was the company line. But Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace have come in and completely rewritten that narrative in a handful of weeks.
Michael Malone ground his starters into dust last season, partly by choice, and partly by necessity. No matter how you slice it, those guys played too many minutes, and the bench minutes were often disastrous. There was no middle ground and no margin for error.
Now, that’s all different. If anything, there will be competition for minutes because, on paper, the Nuggets have 12 rotation players. Last season, it was Russell Westbrook and the kids, but this season, those same kids are much deeper down the bench.
THJ, Valanciunas, and Brown will all see steady minutes off the bench. Adding in Holmes, that’s already nine guys. That means the young guys who basically played by default, Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, and Jalen Pickett, will now come into camp as the 10th, 11th, and 12th men. Most teams don’t play 12 men, so at least one or two players are almost certainly going to be on the outside looking in come opening night.
All things considered, that’s a great problem to have, and the Nuggets are in an infinitely better position than they were this time last season. Let’s hope this depth holds up and David Adelman is able to manage this team all the way.