After the crazy minutes logged by the Nuggets’ key players in game one of their playoff series with the Clippers, it seemed logical that things would change. Surely, the minutes would be scaled back as this figures to be a long series with only one day off between games one and two.
The team can’t possibly hold up with Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Nikola Jokic playing minutes in the high 40s every night. Even if the Nuggets could somehow squeak by the Clippers on that regimen, it’s not in any way sustainable for a four-round playoff run against the league’s best teams.
In game one, David Adelman played all of Jokic, Murray, Gordon, and Christian Braun 45+ minutes, with 34 for Russell Westbrook, 26 for Michael Porter Jr., 14 for Peyton Watson, and 4 for Jalen Pickett. A 6.25-man rotation in the first round of the playoffs is lunacy, and game two adjustments were badly needed.
And yet, Adelman didn’t change a whole lot, again playing only six players for more than 13 minutes. It seems crazy, and it will almost certainly catch up with the team at some point, but for now, the coach obviously feels like he doesn’t have any other options.
DeAndre Jordan cannot play in this series
Part of the reason Adelman is running his guys into the ground is that he simply doesn’t trust anyone else. In game two, he tried to steal some rest for Jokic by putting in a genuine backup center (in game one, they moved AG to the 5 in the brief non-Jokic minutes) by putting veteran DeAndre Jordan in the game in the second quarter.
If you had told me before the season that DAJ would be getting playoff minutes, I would have assumed something had gone terribly wrong, and in a way, I would have been right. The 4 minutes that Jordan played were disastrous.
Denver quickly gave away their 8-point lead as soon as DJ checked in for Jokic, and Denver looked incompetent on both ends of the court. Jordan has had a great career, but he is clearly washed up at this point and has no business being on the court for moments of this magnitude.
Adelman came to the same realization as he pulled the plug on Jordan and played Jokic the entire remainder of the game, including all 24 minutes of the second half. On the one hand, I get it because the Nuggets don’t have a reliable backup center, but on the other hand, Jokic needs rest.
Adelman has to figure out the non-Jokic minutes
His final statline was fine, but this was far from a Jokic classic. He was sloppy with the ball, committing an uncharacteristic 7 turnovers. He also shot just 4/8 from 2-point range and 6/10 from the free throw line. I’m willing to guess some of those misses and sloppiness were a result of fatigue, as taxing your MVP big man with 89 minutes through two games is just not a feasible strategy.
Whether it’s more of Gordon at center or Zeke Nnaji gets a chance, the Nuggets have to try something. But it can’t be more DeAndre Jordan minutes, and it can’t be Jokic never coming out of the game. Adelman and his staff have an extra day to figure it out, but things need to look different on Thursday night.