When it comes to NBA discourse, there’s an alarming amount of recency bias and people being prisoners of the moment. When the Nuggets won the title in 2023, it felt like the team had solved basketball, like the Jokic-Murray two-man game was completely unstoppable, and like they were set up to go on a dynastic run.
But the league figured them out and moved on, and the team that looked set up to run the league for years hasn’t made it out of the second round since, and now looks like they may be headed for major changes this offseason.
This phenomenon isn’t unique to Denver either. The same thing happened with the Bucks in 2021, and they haven’t even come close to sniffing another Finals, with the team now likely staring at a Giannis trade and a major rebuild.
The Celtics looked similarly unbeatable in 2024, but the league figured out their 3-point bombing style, a lot of the parts have been moved, and they’re considering massive changes this summer as well. And now, even the Thunder, who looked set up as well as any team we’ve seen in ages, failed to reach the Finals in their title defense. In less than a year, the league figured out how to contain SGA and overcome their swarming defensive schemes.
Nuggets need to be proactive instead of reactive
The point is that things change quickly in the NBA. The league is hyper competitive and built for parity and balance, as evidenced by the fact that whether it’s the Spurs or Knicks raising the trophy, we’ll see our eighth different champion in the last eight seasons. If something works, teams will copy it or learn how to stop it.
You can’t rely on what worked yesterday; you have to change and stay ahead of the curve, and that has been the problem for the Nuggets. Since winning, many fans, media members, and even some within the organization seemed resigned to the belief that as long as the team was healthy, they were still elite and the two-man game would come through when needed.
This season, it’s impossible to say that was the case. They were shut down in round one by a battered and bruised Timberwolves team that made Murray and Jokic work for every touch and dribble, turning them into inefficient scorers and taking away a lot of the patented table-setting we’ve grown accustomed to.
Denver can’t rely on old tricks and everything to finally fall back into place. The league has figured them out, and they need to come back with some new tools in their belt. This doesn’t mean they have to blow it up and completely overhaul everything, but they do need to move into the future and figure out how to be not only better, but also different.
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