Why the Nuggets get BETTER in big moments

Why are the Nuggets so good in the clutch? Why do they consistently outperform their point differential? This detailed film breakdown & scouting report explores Nikola Jokic’s crunch time dominance, Jamal Murray’s 2-man game, the synergy with Aaron Gordon, and how the Nuggets defense is built for playoff basketball.

Definition of “high leverage” moments in 4th quarters: https://darrylblackport.com/posts/2020-12-22-pbpstats-leverage/

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/12kpkAvUj6LGxzViDIH0qH
Support at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thinkingbasketball

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Basketball-Ben-Taylor/dp/1532968175
Website: https://www.thinkingbasketball.net
Twitter: @elgee35

Find additional Thinking Basketball content on the NBA App, the More Thinking Basketball channel and the Thinking Basketball podcast.

Stats courtesy:
http://www.pbpstats.com @bballport
https://www.basketball-reference.com
https://stats.nba.com
—–
Footage in this video is owned by the NBA and its partners. It is intended for critique and education.

Music by Nemesis

#ThinkingBasketball

Yic has it clock ticks got to put one up yic for the win oh it’s good yic got it off in time the Denver Nuggets are the best clutch team of the last decade as Denver has emerged these past few years I’ve come to the realization that they play their best basketball

Against the best teams and they Thrive when games are bogged down and opponents play their best hand in other words the essence of what makes the Nugget successful translates perfectly to clutch playoff style basketball against Elite competition that Essence starts with nicoa yic but it’s also about his

Pairing with Jamal Murray in the Twan game which is packaged with Aaron Gordon as a release valve around the rim which is all surrounded by Elite shooting and cutting take something simple like a hot cut for nicoa yic this has given the league problems for a while and even

Really good defenses struggle with it because there’s no easy way to stop this the Celtics have Jason Tatum Linger on the cut to slow down Joker but that just frees up kavus cwell Pope and it’s a show and go and a jumper Boston’s full of defensive answers so they switch the

Cut the next time with Drew holiday but jic reads it and just stop stops in open space Jaylen Brown tries to help in the driving lane and that’s shooting fish in a barrel when they come back to it again Tatum successfully jams up jokic’s route so porzingis can work to deny an entry

Pass which pushes yok’s catch way out high and KP does a nice job defending the back down here and using his length to bother the shot so later in the game yic adds a wrinkle he acts like he’s setting a screen for Mur but he’s really cutting off that pick again and that

Fake means the screen Defender is no longer worried about jumping in front of his path jic has space to cut into and that gets him on the move with really deep position to attack porzingis these plays are against the best defenders in basketball and a simple action like this is such a

Challenge because jic is so hard to guard oneon-one in space like this but then they force you to send a double team and he’s surrounded by smart Cutters and Elite Shooters so Denver is like a perfectly balanced organism understanding vulnerabilities in the system and collectively attacking those openings

And these are all versions of the same play where different reads produce totally different results and because the whole team functions collectively you get harmonies like this jic tells Michael Porter Jr to clear the side and Anthony Davis is obsessed with taking away yach’s cut so he just screens for

The ball handler instead and now Jamal Murray’s wide open all teams communicate on defense but the Nuggets talk a lot on offense Joker tells a teammate to bring Austin Reeves into the screening action Murray is just waiting for the pieces to set up and Reeves desperately wants to

Avoid switching onto Jamal that means ad has to help on Murray but he wants to recover to yic and Jamal knows exactly how to exploit that the Celtics tried to stick Horford on jic well switching everything so Joker gets another idea throw it to Reggie Jackson jog to the

Point where holiday is going to switch with Tatum then cut right to the basket to counter that switch this time it’s Joker telling Aaron Gordon to roam the Baseline for a pass but the Lakers play single coverage so Gordon tells Murray he’s an isol ation here so he can play accordingly

Setting up this move where the help is way too late and Gordon’s there for any offensive rebound so he can catch lobs in that spot or as the Lakers found out last year clean up any ambiguous shot pass attempts when defense is B toward Murray and yic Gordon is a perfect Outlet valve

The Celtics didn’t want to leave Joker in pick and roll situations and at times that left too much runway for the ball Handler so jokic’s gravity as a rle man meant Boston needed to bring a third Defender to help which lets Gordon sneak in from the Baseline for the Murray lob

Jamal occasionally hits AG when he’s tiptoeing around the basket looking for little openings but there’s an extra sensory connection between yic and Gordon when he’s near the paint where Aaron is always thinking about cutting and jokic is ready to pass from every angle 40% of jokic’s layup assists this season

Have gone to Gordon and on one hand this mind meld is about Aaron finding little cracks in the defense and jokic’s Sublime passing but it’s also about Gordon’s size and aerial gifts where he funnels yic passes right into the basket and nothing exemplifies these aerial gifts better than the lob he caught off

The backboard in the fourth quarter against Boston which is some crazy dunk contest coordination in a game compare that to a more typical lob Target and it’s easy to see why Gordon’s such a perfect fit now think about guarding this in late game situations jic is nearly impossible to stop in isolation

So when he gets a deep catch like this in the post the Warriors slide a second Defender over Steph Curry’s hug way down to take away Gordon but yic still slips it in and Aaron’s strong enough to draw a foul this time Gordon’s in the opposite corner they go to the bread and

Butter Murray yic pick and roll the weak side Defender flies over to take away Gordon and that leaves a flamethrower wide open and then Gordon tips it in because of a brilliant little reposition while the shot was in the air with a minute to go they run the pick and roll

Again they put two on Murray who finds joic and that Springs Aaron even when defenses stop the primary action the Nuggets can always fall back on jic Murray sets a pick with 5 seconds left Joker fakes it to him to open a drive as the weak side Defender comes to help

Gordon Cuts in behind him this Defender needs to slide down to that cut but he doesn’t because it looks like a scoop shot only it’s another lob and this shot pass to Gordon at the front of the rim is almost more potent in late game situations when defenses are freaking

Out about joic scoring over a mismatch he went to it in the inseason tourney against Dallas when the Lakers switched the pick and roll he punctuated that game with the hook pass and then in the same week against the Celtics they isolate so he can attack porzingis in

Space and it’s a double spinning hook lob it’s natural to help off Gordon here and Tatum thinks he’s got Aaron covered but he needs to body him so he can’t Elevate on the far side of the rim and the reason he doesn’t want to overcommit there is because it would leave the

Corner shooter wide open and the Lakers were often aware of Gordon lurking on that Baseline but that just means help never comes on Joker who takes about four steps into some nonsense what’s important here is that the nuggets have Elite Shooters as out let valves anytime defenses collapse on

Joic Murray or even Gordon kcp has made 44% of his wide openen threes in the last three years and Michael Porter Jr has made an Unholy 51% of his wideopen threes during his career the result of this perfectly tuned offensive instrument is one of the most efficient crunchtime attacks of the

Last decade the wonderful site play-by-play stats looks at the time and score to determine the highest leverage moments in games and using that definition the nuggets have a 128 offensive rating in the clutch over the last two years 12 points better than average and they do it with the third

Most assist of any clutch team in the last decade some offenses resort to isolation in big moments but the Nuggets just run their pet plays for joic and Murray and those plays are littered with counters that amplify the entire system we’ve discussed this Unstoppable Twan game before in detail and Denver just ramps

It up when they need to during normal parts of the game Murray averages 23 points per 75 possessions with an offensive load of 46 meaning he directly contributes on an estimated 46% of possessions jic averages 27 points per 75 normally and contributes 53 % of the time but in those High leverage moments

Murray’s scoring goes up while his load jumps to 51 and jokic’s scoring goes through the roof averaging 38 points per 75 with a load of 66 basically everything just runs through this Duo only they’re better than they normally are and yic in particular becomes a Super Saiyan

Scorer and in that sense Denver thrives on the psychology of these big moments that’s that mental side that’s that uh that Kung Fu that um that fighting Spirit you know so so do you feel like you play better when it feels like there’s more pressure yes and this shows

Up on the defensive end too there’s an intelligence to the Nuggets defense that’s built for playoff style basketball against the best teams the Thunder attack yic in pick and roll here and watch kcp sit on the pass to the popping big then jump back to pick up

The cutter and Jaylen Williams did well not to turn it over there against the Warriors Gordon calls out Klay Thompson’s cut over to the wing jic temporarily steps out until mpj can recover then Joker stays in front of the ball so AG slides over to help and

Instead of recovering back to his man yic wisely stays to to help Murray and that bogs down the play and when Gordon’s man breaks free they just switch it perfectly to nullify the advantage Aaron’s quick enough to stay with a small guard and that is just a defensive Clinic the nuggets are the

Best team in basketball at rotating working as a unit to recover as efficiently as possible and minimize any advantage from a 4 on3 and then there are also just big physical Defenders who can’t be bullied we detailed this last season too and it makes it hard to Target joic in

Pick and roll situations because they recover to the next pass so quickly and they’re actually hard to matchup hunt in general yic ends up on a guard in transition kcp is ready to help and that leaves someone else on the 72 porzingis but the 610 Porter junior is big enough

To handle that Murray is usually their smallest player and he’s a good 6’4 so teams haven’t had success trying to attack him with bigger wings like this their size allows them to switch and shift around a ton as a unit because their system inoculates them against mismatch hunting and it also lets them

Get really creative defensively just to throw teams off balance Steph Curry puts Joker in pick and roll and it looks like a switch but it’s a late trap from kcp the close out is there to run clay off the line and joic is already back in position to force the

Mid-ranger they’ll even stick Joker on a point guard like Drew holiday daring him to be more aggressive and then they can spring a trap and get into their rotations and look at how perfect this is Gordon’s double becomes a switch as jic peels off casy p is all over holiday

And tells yic to get him and at that point the possessions cooked this Gambit doesn’t always work after all jic isn’t super quick and NBA offenses score about half the time they have the ball but it might induce teams to break their normal offensive patterns at the end of their comeback against the

Warriors they put jic on Chris Paul and he sort of just sagged off him daring him to shoot a pull-up three because he’s making just 30% of those over the last three seasons then on the final possession The Warrior had Paul screen for curry to attack jic and Denver can

Switch this because that late trap is coming Curry’s stuck and now Murray zoning up two players reads the pass perfectly and snags it out of the air wow in the last two years the nuggets have the 12th best clutch defense of the decade and combined with that incredible offense they’ve outscored opponents by

28 points per 100 in high leverage moments that’s the best 2-year Mark of any team this decade the only other squads in the top 20 in crunchtime offense and defense were the Lakers in their first two years with LeBron and AD the Warriors during Curry’s MVP seasons and the Kevin Durant

Years and look great teams are so good in close games because they’re well great and right now no one has discovered an answer for Denver’s offense and even their defense continues to chip away at opponents when the stakes are raised so only time will tell if someone figures them out because as

Of right now the defending Champion nuggets look difficult to eliminate because in the biggest moments against the best teams they play their absolute best basketball if you want to work in basketball I have the place for you it’s Sports business classrooms immersive program inside summer league in Las

Vegas past instructors in this program have included Commissioner Adam Silver Mike Danton and tons of other industry leaders in the NBA and in media sign up using the code great day for $600 off for a limited time there’s more information in the description box below if you are interested for additional

Content and to directly support this channel check out patreon.com slinking basketball thanks for watching this one all the way through and as always I hope you are having a great day