There was a time when health was the Nuggets' Achilles heel. Everybody seemed to be dropping out of the lineup with an injury. Nikola Jokic missed 16 games with an injury, and even those who inherited starting spots, like Peyton Watson, went down.
But now that Watson's returned, the Nuggets have a new look on the second unit, and the entire roster is put back together. They started the season on fire, and healthy again, the league's top offense has been cooking. Is health now the gift the Nuggets needed as the playoffs approach?
It certainly may be. Aaron Gordon returned 11 games ago, and the Nuggets just looked out of synch, playing their first game together as a starting unit since Nov. 12th and getting blown out at home by the Knicks. But over the past 10 games, the Nuggets have been leading the league in scoring, and they're scoring a lot.
They're averaging 127.4 points per game, which is better than the 125.1 they had in 14 games in November, when the team was healthy for a couple of weeks.
Coach Adelman has found new rotations thanks to health
Having the entire roster back is really going to open up the options for head coach David Adelman, and he's already been fast at work. The small-ball unit is the perfect example of what the health allowed for. Adelman was able to experiment, and he found a combination that works. A combination that wasn't available until Watson returned.
The small-ball unit is playing great on both ends of the floor, and Adelman has been deploying it at the start of the second and fourth quarters, the non-Jokic minutes. Watson has led the way offensively, scoring 14 and 21 in his first two games back. And the Nuggets are 4-0 since the lineup began playing together.
Healthy Nuggets are looking really good
Tim MacMahon made sure to point out on the "Brian Windhorst and the Hoop Collective" podcast that the Nuggets were healthy last year, "and it went to seven" against the Thunder.
Health has been the giant "if" for the Nuggets for weeks. Well, if is now here, and they're answering the question of how they'll look pretty well. First four-game win streak since the middle of January, and the 127.4 points per game are a fantastic start.
They're 7-3 over those last 10, and two of the losses have come on last-second shots, one against the Lakers and Luka that the Nuggets actually had grief with, and the other to those pesky Thunder.
They're a bounce here or a bounce there from 9-1, and the one loss being a clunker on the road in Memphis because they got on the wrong side of the NBA schedule maker.
It certainly looks like health is the biggest gift the Nuggets could have received at this stage in the season. Time to unwrap it and make it work when it counts in the playoffs.