The Ringer NBA Show - What Can We Take Away From This Denver Nuggets Season? | Weekends With Wos

Episode Date: April 10, 2022

Wos is joined by DNVR Sports’ Adam Mares and they start by discussing how the Nuggets have performed this season despite missing Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. Then they discuss Nikola Jokic’s outstanding season and look ahead to what the Nuggets could look like in the future with their stars healthy. Host: Wosny Lambre Guest: Adam Mares Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listen now. This edition of Weekends with Woz on the Ringer NBA show podcast. We were off last week because I was out on assignment at Dreamville Fest. Go check that out on the Ringers YouTube. We did a nice little recap for full court fits. But today, I'm really happy and proud

to have my man from DNVR Sports, Adam Mares, on the show with us today. What's going on, Adam? Man, I'm living good wise. I'm excited to be here. Excited to talk some nugs with you. I love it. We haven't done a Denver focus show yet this year.

And, you know, we're going into the playoffs. I'm like, who in the playoff picture have we not talked about? I'm like, man, we haven't talked about the MVP, and we haven't talked about Denver season. And I can think of nobody better to talk to. Because to me, as far as the nuggets are concerned, you are the most plugged-in person, nuggets-wise, in our industry, in my humble opinion, as far as your work is concerned, on the, you know,

you get into the nitty gritty of the storytelling and all of that, but of course you're good and explaining stuff via the numbers. You cover every single base of that team. And so I'm really happy to have you on today, bro. I appreciate it. That's a hell of an introduction, man. You know, on the Nuggets, I kind of get it. Like this year, I just, one of the things I've been telling people is I'm not sure how interesting

they are this year. The thing that was interesting was, you know, are they going to get Porter and Murray back and then make this late run? And now it just looks like that's probably not going to happen. So it's kind of like they're just the sixth best team in the West and that's what it is. And so I get why people, I get why it kind of has slidding a little bit under the radar with this team a little bit this year. Adam, see, this is beautiful because you read my mind. That's exactly what I wanted to talk about first. Because, and I just want to explain a couple of things.

Like, people tend to think I have an antagonistic relationship with the same. Sixers and whatever, right? They're fans and all of that. Really, I just got annoyed years ago about the whole Hinky is a genius because he figured out you get more lottery balls when you lose. And the idea that he should be allowed to do that in perpetuity until he drafted a KD or LeBron.

Literally, that's the plan. And this made him some type of genius to our fellow media members. That annoyed me because, one, I think what that argument does is that it pooh-poo's the idea that they're value and there should be interest in a season like what Denver is doing this year. They're not going to win the championship this year. But I don't want to hear that what they're doing isn't interesting and worthwhile for the

people who love that team. Like they don't have two max players this year. Two of them are not playing this year. And guess what? They're top six in the West. They're not even doing the play in game. and they have, who to me is clearly the league's MVP, I want to get your sense of what you thought was going to happen this year

with the team not having those two guys and how the season has actually played out. Well, the thing is, I thought they were going to have one of those guys. I thought they were going to have Michael Porter. So when Rudy went down last year, you thought, you know, it's a bummer, but you start to look for the silver linings as the season starts, and you think Michael Porter gets to be the number two for a whole season. And this guy, 125 games or something like,

like that, like not that many games under his belt, but he's just so talented. You think, okay, 82 games, we're going to really get to learn a lot about this guy. And he's so talented that he might make a Murray-like leap by the end of the year where you feel good about him being the second best player, you know, or even first best player on some nights. But he got hurt. And people don't realize this. He got hurt in the preseason. So he actually played, I think, nine games with the nuggets, shot 20% from the field. He couldn't like touch his toes. You know, he tried to play through it and it wasn't working. So basically those whole year coming in, it. I thought it was going to be something different. And when he went down, I think part of what

has framed the perspective for Nuggets fans and really NBA fans, the whole season was, well, what do you do now? Like, you really talk yourself into a team, you know, having an interesting season when they're missing that much talent. You're like, I don't know what I'm trying to talk myself into, but to your point and to the Nuggets is credit, we've seen a lot of teams this year give up on the season at certain points of it because it's like, what are we doing here? The Nuggets just didn't give up this year. And I appreciate that about them. Like, they competed, they battled, and they're probably fighting a hopeless battle right now, but I'm just, it's at least exciting that they're at least just seeing how far they can go and how far they can push this. Okay, let's just run through the Nuggets, leaders and minutes

played per game outside of Aaron Gordon, who we know as an actual NBA commodity, and Will Barton, who I would say the same. Like, he's seen as this scoring guy and Slasher and Instant Offense, kind of guy, but he's a known NBA commodity. So outside of those three, Yokic, Aaron Gordon, and Will Barton, the leaders in minutes played this year. Monty Morris, Jeff Green,

Austin Rivers, Bones Highland, P.J. Dozier, compazo, who I like to call the Pizziolo, Brent Forbes, like, Zeke Najee, like, what are we doing? Michael, like, what are we

doing here? These guys, are not only firmly implanted in the playoffs, like they have been a really respectable team. Like outside of Yokic, who we're going to get into the Yokich of it all this year, what surprised you about the Nuggets in the ways that they're able to succeed this year? Well, I mean, honestly, I know we're going to get to him,

but this is one of the things about Yokish that I think people have to understand. His best talent, or one of his best talents, is how well he figures out what other guys are good at and tailors his game to those guys. So this team was not built to play the way they did this year. The team had to on the fly be like, okay, what ingredients do we have? What are we good at?

What are we weak at? All right, let's adjust sometimes game by game and sometimes possession by possession. Like, how do we adjust to figure out what this is? So you just ran through that list of guys. And like Monti Morris a really good backup point guard. Low mistake. But he's not like, he's not creating a bunch of shots for people, you know, or like, nobody's like, he's not like the front line of any scouting report.

But he does have some talent. So Yokes had to adjust the two-man game to now be a Monte Yokic two-man game. Jeff Green's good, but he's old. So he's got some good play. He could play well. But I think he's actually played the fifth most minutes of anybody on this roster at age 36. So I don't like the guys are good. I don't want to sit here and be like these guys aren't good.

It's just that they, it's not a roster you would have put together if you were building a roster. It's just a roster that was left standing after the first week of the season. Boogie Cousins has emerged as a key. hog in what they're doing on a night-to-night basis. Again, this guy was kind of out of the league and pretty much finished. Mike Malone's like, all, let's bring this dude in and figure these things out. And I think that's what sort of struck me this whole season. You know, you talk about Denver being under the radar because they're not seen as interesting

because two of the three best players have not been able to hit the floor. But it's hard for me not to compare and contrast them to a team that's gotten a lot of ink in a lot of airtime, the Los Angeles Lakers, who, like, talk about the injuries and all of that stuff. Like, that team was expected to compete and achieve some level of success this year and have done nothing. And to watch Yokic elevate this group

in the way that he has is just remarkable. Yeah. And it's funny, the Lakers, you bringing them up, though, because it's tough, man. Like, I've seen some people make some weird, you know, Yokic, LeBron comparisons. LeBron back in 2008, nine, a guy gets hurt or a team's

not great. He's pushing through. He's doing these incredible things. At this stage of his career, I think we all know he looked at the year and was like, yeah, this ain't it. He can't do that. He can't, he can't push Delante West and Boobie Gibson to the NBA final. Like, that's just not

happening. Those guys are playing 30-something minutes a game on an NBA finals team, okay? He's not 24 years old anymore. Right. He's old enough now to be like, I'm not doing this to myself. I'm going to save my ears or what have you. But yeah, that is what the, that is really what the nuggets have done this year and, and, you know, kind of been their mind frame. They started off so bad. You were mentioning guys that have played the most minutes. It's funny you said PJ Dozier. He only played 18 games this

year, yet he's one of the top minutes guys for the nuggets this year, which is just crazy. Like, so yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't know. This team, the best thing I could say about them is, again, they know they're not going to win the title. I mean, you, Yoke, basically all come out and said, like, I don't know how good we are. I don't know what we can do, but we're just going to see. We're going to see what the best thing that can happen this year. And, you know, to get, to hit their over, 47 and a half was their preseason over, which, you know, that included Murray coming back. That included Michael Porter being healthy. And yet neither of those things happen. And here we are is, you know, it's a nice little minor win. You know, it's a small one.

It's not a great one. I guess it's a moral victory of a season. So, look, and I do need to get, we do need to get to the yokech of it all, because I think there's a lot to unpack here. And I picked him as my MVP about two weeks ago. And I was just like, to me, we talk about LeBron. Like, yeah, this reminds me of a LeBron thing where it's like, I do everything. I do everything. I score in isolation.

I am your best playmaker as far as being the de facto point guard. I'm our team's best rebounder. I actually protect the paint on defense in a way that he's improved in a way that I just, you know, when the Yokic sort of media darling craze first started, I was like, let me tell you something, a senator who can't barely jump on defense and he's your last line of defense,

this shit ain't gonna fucking work in nobody's version of the NBA. I don't know why you guys are so excited. But to watch him make himself into a quality of defender, I think stamina was something that people used to criticize it for early on in his career. He's gotten himself into fantastic shape. And you could see it in the way

he's dunking more. Like, he's just everything you want this man to do, he is doing it for this team and the efficiency. And again, like, you can do the eye test with Embed and all of that. This is, because Embedd has been the focal point because they play the same position. Let's get something straight. Nicola Yokich has been at the best player,

at or near the top of best player in playoff series, basically since he started going to the playoffs. Just put the tape on. The Lakers, even when they beat the nuggets in the bubble, they could not single cover this dude. He was destroying them. But for the grace of God, of the Lakers being the best defensive team in the NBA,

Yokic was taking these guys apart in the postseason. You know, as much as I love Joelle and what he's done, he's never been at his regular season level in the postseason. Yokic has been an MVP level player in the playoffs. So stop with that. Right. And again, you can't discount what he's doing on the playmaking end. Like, you just can't, like, it's impossible to overstate how important it is. When you said it, Monty Morris and Austin Rivers are your lead guards on this team.

Like, this guy is, there's no secondary playmaking here. It's Yokic or death. So to me, like, his MVP case seems obvious. And then, you know, you look at all of the all-in-one efficiency stuff at him. Like, I'm looking at the guy's P-R-33. That's peak Michael Jordan P-E-Rs. Like, do people understand this? This is peak Michael Jordan, peak LeBron James, P-E-R.

You know, you pick any of these all-in-one metrics, like offensively. This guy is at another level. And I think when people, and I know I'm being long-winded, I just feel really passionately about the type of season he's having. And the thing about Joelle that folks, I don't understand when they say, oh, they're taking away, you know, they're giving him demerits for his free throw stuff. I'm like, yo, you don't, that free throw shit don't work in the playoffs. That foul seeking behavior shit that you want to do, there's like a few people who are able to translate it into playoff.

But most of the time, that's not a reliable way to score. And the thing about Yokic is you single cover him, he's going to demolish you. And he's the best passer in the game. So I'm like, I don't know what I'm missing here, Adam. That's the difference between him over the last two years versus prior was he was such a reluctant score. And he's just become this like aggressive. And in some cases, not all cases, not quite the level of a Janus, who I think every night is just trying to go at the guy against him. Like, that's the thing you say about Janus.

He has that killer. Like, I'm just trying to outplay this, you know, whoever's trying to check me. Yokes kind of developed that quite a bit over the last two years and it's going more and more where he's like, hey, man, I know tonight I just got to try to put 40 on this dude and in some ways try to embarrass him or what have you. So that's the difference. But here's the thing was, because you were mentioning all the advanced stats. Like, I'm just done mentioning advanced stats because I don't care. Like, honestly, like, there's something going on.

Yeah, because it just doesn't matter. Like, you don't need to talk about that. The thing that bugs me about the Yokic discourse is Yokic is so interesting. If you're a basketball fan, like if you like basketball, he's like, we see this in music where some new musician will come around with something completely different. But we're all judging them on the expectation of whatever was the status quo. And you'll be like, man, this doesn't quite fit what I was expecting.

So I got to, it's wrong because it doesn't fit my expectation. We've seen it work. As you were mentioned in the playoffs, Kauai Leonard, Paul George, you know, you go up against Utah. We've seen game seven, pressure on the line. He's faced elimination like eight times and his best games come in those moments. We've seen him do this on this big stage.

You've got to throw out the idea that you can anticipate what it is he is. And you almost have to just be open-minded to, we don't know how valuable or what this is, but you watch it. It's really awesome. And we know it works really, really well. So I feel like once people's minds shift that way, Steph Curry ran into this, right? Where there were some people that were holding out saying, yeah, it's cool and all. But just wait, it's not going to work.

He won championships. And now we all appreciate his greatness on a different level. I hope the same happens with Yoke, whether or not he gets a championship. of the next year or two or whatever, I hope we can look at it and go, he's teaching us something about the game and we never knew. And that's kind of cool.

I'm tickled by the conversation because, you know, I am somebody who I remember the Derek Rhodes MVP season. And, you know, full disclosure, I was in the tank for LeBron. I've been in the tank for LeBron since I was a high school Hooper. And I first watched him on ESPN.

And I was just like, I can't believe a kid in high school can be this fucking good at this sport. It's impossible. And so I remember the Derek Rose stuff where, and again, I want to be clear here because I think people are doing the media is mostly white. Yokic is white. Media guys tend to really love what Yokic does.

Therefore, he's the beneficiary of some media bias. I've seen the media bias work for black dudes. I watched it happen. I watched it work for Derek Rose for a completely different reason. this idea that he was humble and humility. And LeBron was this hubristic, crazy, egotistical guy who had the nerve to want to pick his own fucking employer in free agency. It was all his craziness.

And D. Rose was clearly not as good as LeBron that regular season. He was clearly not as good as Dwight Howard that regular season. And he won the award. And I've seen this narrative thing, Westbrook, I felt like, was a media thing. I've seen the narrative thing work for black players and white players alike. Like, I think the notion that Yolkich is getting this push because he's white is quite, it's just, it's stupid. I mean, there's probably, I always say there's probably some layers to all of that that,

that like go unspoken, although they're starting to be spoken a little bit more. But to your point, remember Kevin Durant, his MVP speech and how he was the anti-Lebron? And it was like, he would never do that. He's an OKC guy. He got about that. Like around town, he's the humble one. And the funny thing about KD, why I kind of love KD. And when I think we get enough distance from this era,

we're going to look back and almost laugh about Durant's experience was he went from the humble guy from the little market, OKC, he just wants to think his mom to the Warriors total like heel turn. And now all of a sudden he's this guy we don't like and he's got burner accounts. It's almost like he's come full circle and now he's back in Brooklyn. And he's like, you know what, I don't care about any of this. And everybody loves him for it. Like now he's clowning people on Twitter and people are like, yo, this is funny.

Like this guy gets it. So I think all of this stuff is almost cyclical. Yokic will probably get to a point before long. One thing I would say about Yoke is, as a Denver fan, as obviously somebody that's really enjoyed Yokic from the get-go, one of the things about him is I feel like we didn't get the full on, like everybody got to celebrate him portion. Usually your first four or five years like Derek Rose,

everybody's on board, then the heel turn. He was so polarizing from the get that we didn't always, It felt like we were fighting or people were fighting online about Yolkish. I got to admit, I was anti-Yokic. I was like, come on. Oh, my God. A guy hits a few cutters in a row

and the media has a collective circle jerk about it. And I was just like, come on, give me a fucking break with this guy. And I did the same thing, the doughy body, the lack of hops at center. I was just like, what are we doing? And then, you know, you get into the nitty-gritty of what he does. And I'm like, in crunch time,

the most important thing in crunch time is beating the guy in front of you, beating somebody one-on-one, forcing help and getting great shots for your team. And I watch him do it over and over and over and over again. You can't send the right angle for the double because he's going to find it. He's just dice it.

And then it's like, oh, you want me to pick and pop, I'll shoot you from three. You want me to take you to the rack and put it on the floor. I'll do that. I can hit it from flow to range. I'm just like, what are the stories, though, I'm talking about why I was like,

this is why he's interesting. Like this year, when everybody was out, and so they don't have any other creators, teams started the Lord about halfway through, and it was Tai Lu, by the way, who I think solved this one, and then everybody starts to copy it. Tai Lu's a genius. They start saying, like, hey, just don't let him post up.

If he goes to the post, put two guys on him, so they don't, not when he catches the ball, before he catches it, just put two guys on him so they can't throw him the ball and see if you guys have anybody that can dribble drive, you know, one-on-one, and Denver doesn't really have those guys. So what happened was Michael Malone and company had to adjust, and they stopped posting him up.

They started running him off double pin downs, and they started running him on Iverson cuts across the top of the key. And they're just like, you know what? We're going to use him like he's Chris Paul. Right. And so they started, so, no, this year, he's actually, especially the back half of the year, playing almost a completely different style than he had been playing previously, but he makes it work. And that's the story I wish people were telling about Yokic was it's not always pretty. He doesn't do it in the traditional way, but he kind of knows, no matter what kind of defense you throw at him, he kind of figures out what there is. And as long as you've got guys around that can kind of complete the play, it's going to work.

Yeah, I mean, for me, my favorite part about our league, honestly, is watching the best players problem solve, right? Yep. You know, LeBron is the proto-typical sort of reference we have for this because the failures were so fucking public. Like, we're so awful. Like, the Magic Series in 09 was so bad. You know, he, quote unquote, robbed us of the LeBron Kobe thing. Like, the Dallas meltdown was so horrible. Like, these failures were so public.

And so the payoff was getting to watch him figure out everything to the point where he became a postseason savant. Like, literally, he mastered the postseason, you know, after that. And I think you could say the same thing about Janus last year, right? Where it's like he's, you know, he's doing his freaking Alan Iverson routine on the, perimeter. And it's like, no, Janice. Like, you're actually a finisher of possessions. And we don't need you doing dribble, dribble, dribble from 30 feet. We do need you actually setting these hard screens, freeing up guys like Holiday, freeing up guys like Middleton, you know, like providing the ancillary actions that contribute to these great shots that we need in late possessions.

And just watching Janus, like, figure it out in the postseason, which you just described about Yolk is like, all right, you, y'all not going to let me post up? Watch me do this. Watch me do that. Watch me learn how to still be effective, no matter what defense is throw at you. That is the best part about basketball. And it's so funny because we talk about it.

The MVP conversation has become a six-month conversation. It starts on October 15th, and it just goes. And the thing about it is, is like basketball is so beautiful because it is a team game. All of this stuff is like, how does the one player impact the whole and how does the whole impact the one player? And we try to reduce it down to this little thing.

but it is about how do you solve it and how do you use the pieces that are at your disposal to solve any problem? And I love that you use Janus for this because to me, that was the story of last year's playoffs. And it manifested itself so beautifully in the close-out game six where Janus had to do all of the things,

all of them that like he couldn't do. So it's like, can you hit your free throws? Well, you're going to have to. If you want a championship, you're going to have to go 17 and 19. He hit the three. You're going to have to because they're going to be syncing off of you. And it was so cool. So that's what I love about sports.

And I see Yoke. He's not full. there. Like he's still got a couple more check marks, namely to me, vocal leadership. But number two, that killer part where it's like, he doesn't always get up for Carl Antony Towns is in town. He doesn't always get up for that. He doesn't always get up for, like, for whatever. For whatever, he's like, hey, I'm just going to play my game and I'm going to read the court or whatever. And they'll still win or whatever, but there's a part of me that thinks you want to say, take that personally. And you also have to tell your teammates like, hey, that guy, I heard what he said. I heard

but he said he's the MVP. I heard it. Just watch me in the first quarter and know that I got this. And I think that there's an important thing. It's not like hubris. You could take it too far where you make things too much of a one-on-one. But there's this level of just making sure your guys always see that you got this. And he's getting there. It's getting closer and closer each month, really. So, man, I want to stay on that because I remember we had Michael Pina on of Sports Illustrated after he did this really dope feature of John Morant and just being around the team. And, you know, You got a real great sense of how the people in and around the organization feel about John Moran. And, you know, the answer is they fucking absolutely adore the guy and rightfully so.

What's your sense of how the guys feel about Yokic and his position within the organization and just as a bona fide super star in the league? They all stand this guy. And it's funny because not everything that happens in Denver makes it outside. But I'll tell you a story Austin Rivers told where he was going off on Yoke and just how crazy is. is he said yoke was one time he comes in the practice court yoke's working out on the main court and when austin rivers came in he bumped over to the side court's like hey you can work over here i'll go over here and he's just like i've never seen an NBA player do that wow this stuff can get overstated and i don't want to be the guy he's the most humble do play the card you were talking about earlier

but there is something to yoke where he's just like doesn't care about all those things i honestly think there is a little bit of he's from a small town in syria he's not from even belgrade like the big city. He's from a small town. And I think there's this part of him that views all of the marketing, American marketing machine, you know, where you always have to be selling something. I think he looks at that and it's just like, this is so foreign to me. This is so weird. Like I don't ever, he doesn't do ads. He doesn't have social media. And I think a lot of that is because he's like, man, man, I just want to play basketball. And I know for me, the way that works is if I just like develop these two man games with everybody on the team differently. And so I think they all adore him.

They all know he makes them better, and they all stand in. So we got the news today, or it trickled out, that there's a sense that neither Michael Porter Jr. nor Jamal Murray will be back for the postseason. So what's your sense about the plan going forward? Like, I feel like they're pretty invested in this core, and I think rightfully so. What's your sense about how they feel about things going forward,

especially with Porter in the back. Yeah. I think there's only one takeaway you can have a few of the nuggets on this season, like one real overarching, how do we build our team? And that is that they have to get better perimeter defense. I mean, as much as they miss Jamal Murray, he's not the defensive stopper. You mentioned Monta Morris, Will Barton, Austin Rivers. None of those guys are guys that you look at and say,

hey, they got Steph Curry round one. Somebody's got to make his job tough. They just don't have that guy. So to me, I think you look at it and you say, Chicago was such an interesting team this year because they had Lanzo Ball, Alex Caruso, I would assume, with all these great perimeter defenders

and when they were all healthy, they were a great defense even though Vucevic was their anchor, right? Exactly, yep. And I think you have to look at that and say, is rim protection in today's NBA, the way these guys have really figured out the pick and roll and how to score,

is it as much about how you can get through and contest shots on the perimeter, get through screens and contest on the perimeter? And does Denver have the horses to do that? My answer would be a resounding no. You probably got to add one, maybe two guys in your back court, which means you got to lose one or two guys in your back court, you know, to kind of replace. I think they have to do that going forward. So when

Jamal's back, I think Yokic and Jamal are all you need on offense. You just need a bunch, plug the rest of the guys in. I agree. You got to put the defenders around those two. What's Denver sixth in offense this year without those two guys? You get those guys back. You're going to be top three. You just got to defend around it. So, and I do want to talk about Michael Porter because he's important. Like they gave him that huge asses. deal, all the guarantees. This isn't even like, you know, incentive laid in, games played, yada, yada, yada, huge guarantees for a team that, let's face it, Adam hasn't always been, you know,

Daddy Warbucks here. Like, they've been very frugal in the past. So I wonder what the optimism was with his injury. And I think it bears repeating as much times as often my old colleague, John Hollinger said, when he was with the Grizzlies, Michael Porter Jr.'s medical was the worst that he had ever seen. That's an insane statement. And so how optimistic is the team really?

Is it? Do you get the sense that it's just lip service? Because you can't say that this asset that you have is completely depressed. Or do they really feel like they got a program with this guy and he's going to come back reasonably healthy? It's so tough because, I mean, I think when you talk about an asset, you're talking about can you trade a player? Like, I just don't think the nuggets, they're going to sink or swim with Michael Porter.

I don't think any other team is going to look at it. at him and say it's going to work. The thing about him is he's a 44% volume three-point shooter at 6'10, 6'1 foot 11 with a 45-inch vertical. Like the guy has, that's his game. He shoots well. He's super athletic. He's super tall. You really can't contest, like Kevin Durant, you can't contest his, you know, his jumper. So when he's available, he provides something that's really, really valuable. I talk to enough doctors, including back surgeons, you know, at the time, like throughout his time in Denver. Even when he had the second surgery, a lot of people said, look, It's bad, but the odds of it, you know, him needing a third one are pretty low.

You just got to roll with it and see what happens. The fact that he got a third one, I talked to those same doctors and they're like, I don't know, we're on uncharted territory. Oh, man. Jesus Christ. We got to see. My hunch is MPJ is going to be one of those guys that plays 40 games a year every year, and you hope it's the 40 that matter.

Man, and I do want to get you out of here on this. And shout to my man, Zach Lowe, because he was somebody who was really on this, too. before Jamal Murray went down and right after they executed that Aaron Gordon trade, the nuggets looked like absolute world beaters. They were blowing my freaking mind

in that little bit of area, man, that they actually had those guys together. And it just looked so perfectly like Yokic had developed an immediate synergy with Aaron Gordon's ball movement and cutting

and vertical spacing and all of that. Man, please just talk to the people about what it was like for that brief little moment where Denver looked like. They was about to fuck some people up. It was, man. It's tough because it was only five games, I think, that they had everybody. It was eight games.

Murray went down with an injury. Then he came back. And the game he came back is where he ended up tearing his ACL. And then, of course, they finished the season. People forget this. From the time Murray went down to the end of the season, it was like 20 games, 18 games, something like that. They had one of the second best record, I think, in the NBA.

for that even without Murray, just with Porter and with Gordon. And so you looked at, like, taking all of that sample size, you look at it and you go, those pieces really worked. You had a ton of length. You know, Michael Porter and Aaron Gordon are just so long, so mobile. They could shoot, they could dunk, they could cut. They worked really well together. Yokic and Jamal Murray started it all with that two-man game.

It just, they steamrolled everybody. They were steamrolling. It looked like this new thing that teams hadn't figured out, and every piece mattered. You could defend, you could run, you could play slow, whatever it was. So yeah, it was beautiful to watch, but it is one of those things where you sit there and you go, okay, that was, you know, 13, 14 months ago. We probably aren't going to see that for another six months.

Like so much time passes, you wonder, is that chemistry going to be the same? What's changed in the two years, basically, between when we saw it and when we'll see it next? And I just don't know. The league has changed a lot. I think the concept still works, but it's one of those things that you can imagine if the Golden State Warriors back in 2014-15 sustained like a, a, a Draymond Green injury in November and missed two years. Would they have come back and, like, completed the road that they were on that year?

I don't know. We're going to find out, though. Hey, man, I just wanted to bring that up because I think the nuggets are absolutely something to look forward to next year. If not the playoffs, I'm going to enjoy watching, you know, Yoko's shot to put the team on his back and figure this thing out. But I think next year, they're going to be something to watch for. I just really believe in the young guys and what they're going to be.

they've developed it on a continuity basis, which I don't think it's enough credit in our league as how important it is to have that level of continuity and just mind meld with your best player. So I'm looking forward to that, hey, man, Adam Marez of DMVR Sports. Tell the folks where they can find you in your work because I really truly think you are one of the best guys

in our entire business, bro. Well, I appreciate that. The best place people, if you're not a Nuggets Fair, the best place you can go is our YouTube channel, DNVR. We cover Nuggets pregame and post game shows. We got good guests on. We do all kinds of good stuff. I might have to get you over there at some point. But that's the best thing you can see our live shows right after games. They're a lot of fun. All right, man, that's our show for today. Make sure you subscribe to the Ringer NBA podcast everywhere you get your podcast. Of course,

you know group chat. You know real ones. You know the answer. You know what we're doing over here. We'll see you guys next week. Peace out.