The Nuggets dropped game one against the Minnesota Timberwolves at home. The biggest question for the Nuggets remains one that is quite complicated: How do you manage Jamal Murray and his injuries going forward.
On the latest Mortcast, Jeff talks about threading the very tight needle between making sure Jamal Murray is healthy and trying to win. What that means for these playoffs and going forward into next season's big decisions.
Enjoy the show!
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And to be honest with you, it is basically the future of online sports gambling. And bet online is your one-stop shop for that. Head on the website today or use your mobile device to get in on the action. Bet online, where the game starts. You know, I was thinking about it as I was watching game one, the Nuggets lost to the Timmer Wolves. In a game that was the Nuggets led most of the game aside from the first half of the first quarter when the Nuggets were down 18-4. And then the Wolves kind of got ahead midway through the fourth and then kind of pulled away. A lot of that had to do with the Nuggets inability to cover Nas Reed. Ed Littleton actually didn't have much to do with Ant Edwards, who was killing him all game. But the Timmer Wolves offense is pretty bad. And you could tell the Nuggets do this. So the Nuggets biggest issue was Nas Reed, who was hitting some shots, including a weird banked in three that shouldn't have gone in. And then the Wolves shot 70% in the second half of the game insane. But when you're thinking about this game and the problems that arose, you looked at it and you saw Jamal Murray unable to get his on offense and getting blown by on defense. And if you are a Nuggets fan, it brings about some uncomfortable questions. Because Jamal hasn't looked right this entire playoffs. And someone pointed this out on Twitter when I brought it up is that this will be, if things go awry for the Nuggets in these playoffs, it'll be three out of the last four playoffs where injuries to Jamal Murray really have derailed the Nuggets' chances. And you don't want to blame someone for being injured. But it does bring up a conundrum for the Denver Nuggets. Now, let me bring an analogy into this. And it's all going to come back to my player I've brought up frequently throughout my time covering the Nuggets and his Daniela Galinari. And it's more in a sense to talk about the injuries. Leg injuries tend to pile up on each other. It's kind of like unchecked cavities in your mouth. It's just if it'll just lead one thing leads to another, no matter how much you brush basically. And lower body injuries tend to compound on each other. Because what one injury does, because you put so much, you have so much reliance on your motor ability with your legs, what one injury to one leg does inevitably leads to overcompensation injuries with the other leg. And it's just that it doesn't matter what it is. It could be a hamstring. It could be a sprained ankle. You know, calf injury, like Jamal has right now. And Jamal's had a calf injury. He's had an ankle injury this year. He's had a lot of it. And what you have seen with the Nuggets this year is Jamal's injuries have directly affected their outcomes. But more than that, it seems like the Nuggets are always chasing their best examples of how they can play. To be honest with you, the best they ever played as a team was that eight game stretch right after the Aaron Gordon trade and the playoffs last year. Those are the two examples of the Nuggets, the ideal of this Nuggets team and the ideal of this Nuggets team achieving what they can. Jamal was finally healthy this last postseason. Michael Bork Jr. was healthy and the team rolled through the playoff 16 to 4. But what we are seeing this year is Jamal's injuries really caught up with him again. He only played 59 games this year. And there's decisions that need to be made and I'm going to be getting to that in the second half of the podcast. But this Nuggets team seems to suffer when Jamal's suffering. And primarily it's on defense. Teams are starting to hunt Jamal. And what was striking to me was when Jamal was subbed out for holiday and then Justin Holiday and then Reggie Jackson came in. The Nuggets immediately went on a 21 to 5 run. And Mike was at the four. Aaron Gordon is another story we need to talk about eventually because this is a terrible matchup for Aaron Gordon. But there is a because of the lane clogging. There is an issue that the Nuggets have with Jamal specifically, I think worse was on defense because they kept attacking Jamal. But at the same time the Wolves, the Nuggets, you could tell the Nuggets don't really have a high regard for the Wolves offense. And honestly, if it wasn't for Nas Reed, the Nuggets win game one. He hit some crazy shots. This wasn't an ant thing because ant was going off in the first half too. This was really a Nas Reed thing. And if you talk to people around the Nuggets, they will focus in on Nas Reed being the difference. It wasn't go bare. It wasn't Yokic's turnovers. It certainly wasn't Cat. It was Reed, Nas Reed, and him hitting that banked in shot, that crazy banked in shot too. There are just things that happened in the second half, and the Wolves hitting 70% of their shots, which will not happen again. And you're like, okay, there's a lot of anomalies that happened in this game that you can't count on. And you could tell the Nuggets don't particularly respect Jaden McDaniel's offense. So all that aside, the problem is Jamal. And people tried to say that it was Yokic's defense and all this stuff, and he wasn't great, and he had turnovers. He had seven turnovers in this game. But it really wasn't that because Yokic did what he could. Yokic did his Yokic thing. This really was Jamal not being able to overcome being injured and hurt. And that is something that has been a consistent and thorough thing with the Nuggets going back years now. Jamal's injuries have been one way or another hampered this team. And how do you thread this needle? In the second half, I'm going to be talking about that. How do you thread the needle between someone you know is a difference maker and is one of the difference makers on your team? How do you go through that through line to being able to still have a championship roster? And this is the conundrum that the Denver Nuggets face right now. Coming back to Gallo. Gallo had his series of injuries starting in 2013. And if people would recall, he had his botched procedure and then he had a surgery which cost him a year. And then he comes back and then he tears his meniscus. And then he had a series of lower body injuries that would inevitably keep him out. He would miss 15 games. He would miss 10 games. He would always in and out of the lineup. And it was always lower body injuries. And Gallo and Ari already had a bad back from his days in New York. But once one happens, it is inevitably followed by more. And what you've seen with Jamal is even last year when he was coming back from his ACL injury, Jamal still had things that would keep him out of the lineup. And this is the story of Jamal Murray. One of the things about Jamal is that I've always described Jamal on this podcast as someone you could tell works for everything that he gets, which is both a good and bad thing. There's nothing I see from Jamal Murray where he makes something difficult, looks easy, look easy. Everything with Jamal looks difficult. And it's because of how hard, clearly how hard he works. You can see and I've said this over and over. These injuries often happen because Jamal really is contorting and working his body in a way that his physical build isn't necessarily made up for some of the acrobatic layups and stuff like that. They look difficult because they are difficult and sometimes people like Kyrie Irving can make him look easy, even though they're difficult. Jamal's a little different. Jamal makes those difficult shots look difficult, which is why they're so amazing. Jamal Murray is a guy who you can see every bit of fiber of his being working to make a shot. Every fiber of his being is going into whatever he is doing on the court. And it is on one hand, tremendous. And on the other hand, it leads to issues. And it has led to just series of injury after injury, after injury, muscles being hurt. And the point of this podcast is not to do doom and gloom. On the Denver Nuggets, I fully expect the Nuggets to win the next two games. That's my prediction right now. The Nuggets will win the next two games in this series and go up to one. And then I fully expect this series to be nipped up after that. But there is this, there is this thing you are seeing from Jamal and how the Timberwolves knew Jamal's injury were going to attack him. There's something in a way that definitely the Lakers weren't able to do. And the Nuggets didn't take the Lakers seriously anyway. So what you have seen is of Jamal Murray get attacked. You have seen Nicole Yokich suffer because his partner is not able to compete with what he's complete. The dynamic duo that they have. It's when you had two games this last series where that was really the case. Another another times the Nuggets didn't have to rely on Jamal Murray last second shot or something like that. But really truly this was what you saw in game one was Yokich missing his partner because Jamal just couldn't do it. Now some of this is there was a very clearly a rust effect from Jamal specifically not playing or doing any activity of any substance from Monday to Saturday. That is a long time for no activity. And even when you're injured resting like that can has a has a side effect of amplifying rust. And we saw that. So I expect Jamal to be better in this next game game in the second half of the podcast. I'm going to talk to you about the questions that need to be answered with Jamal, particularly when it comes to the rest of these playoffs and the off season in a really difficult spot for the Denver Nuggets to where they go forward in this window of contention with Nicole Yokich. We will get to that right after the break. The Nuggets have some questions that quite frankly are going to be difficult to answer here. Next season is Jamal Murray's last season. And inevitably, and I know this is going to be true. The Nuggets will offer him a contract extension. I don't expect the Nuggets to monkey around with it. And that's not the point of this podcast. I fully expect the Nuggets to do right by Jamal. That says nothing to do with this. I do think there is some questions about how you how you manage a roster with someone who is as prone to lower body injury as Jamal is and how clearly it hampers his effectiveness. There's a reason Jamal has never made an all-star team. And it is 100% because he misses a lot of the year and he misses the lot of the year and key parts of the year where people are paying attention. And you don't want to blame a guy for that. And I'm not blaming a guy for that. But that's just part of the story of Jamal Murray along with the game winning shots, along with the toughness, along with his ability to outwork the guy opposite him. The problem is Jamal Murray, the story of Jamal Murray isn't complete without talking about his lower body injuries. So how do we approach the rest of these playoffs? I fully expect the Nuggets to, well first of all, Jamal will be better in game two. But the, which is tonight, they'll, where I expect the Nuggets to adapt is quicker substitutions. And I think just, just if the Nuggets are going to be able to stretch this out, they're going to need to maximize Jamal in different lineups. Not, not necessarily because they're worried about Jade and McDaniel's or Nikhil and Alexander Walker or anything like that. It is because Jamal and his effectiveness goes hand in hand with the Nuggets ability to close. And the Nuggets need to get to the end where they can have the closing. Yokech Murray, two man game and have Yoke and have Murray effective in that time. So whatever the Nuggets do needs to get them to that end point. I fully expect the Nuggets to substitute quicker. Do what they did in the first quarter of the last game. You know, I think people have over focused on, on the end of the game and had it forgotten about the Nuggets leading for a significant portion of that game and the game being tied going into the last four minutes of the game. I, I, or five minutes of the game, I think people kind of forgot that because of the way the game ended and Nas Reed hitting those ridiculous shots. It really was truly a nip tuck game. It was a war regardless of how well the wolves executed. It was a war. It wasn't like the game series against the Suns, which all ended up in blowouts largely except for game four. But that is just this series and I think the Nuggets right now at this point are really thinking about how they are able to keep Jamal fresh. Keep Jamal from having every fiber of his being exhausted and because he is 100% extremely compromised at this point. Half injuries are just, they take time. They're like hamstrings. You know, if they're not in danger of, of the Achilles issue, it really is, you need to be able to, to rest the thing. You know, he did rest it, but it caused rust. Rest caused rust. So the Nuggets are going to catch 22. Actually, the best thing for Jamal is to have consecutive games and then the unfortunately is as after tonight they don't play again till Friday. So there's another big gap in games. It's thank you NBA, you know. So the Nuggets will be heading into Friday, you know, with another long gap. During the game, I expect the Nuggets to do what they did in the first quarter. Bring in Holiday, bring in Jackson, have Mike at the four. We could be talking about Aaron Gordon right now and how this is just a terrible matchup for him and the Nuggets are kind of in a bind as to what to do with him specifically. Gordon is very good at guarding, but they leave him open on offense and obviously that resulted in what we saw in Game 1 as it was an ineffective game for Aaron Gordon. But going forward with Jamal Murray, the Nuggets need to do a better job in mitigating what is going to come with Jamal and that is the times he is out with injury. The Nuggets did a poor job of that. I have said over and over that the giving the mid-level taxpayer led mid-level to Reggie Jackson was a mistake. It was a mistake because it locked them in. Once you give out the taxpayer mid-level, you are hard-capped and the Nuggets, it was clearly a make good contract with Reggie. But this is less about Reggie Jackson than giving it to the type of player that Reggie Jackson is, a 35 year old point guard. Who is who he is? And the Nuggets really needed someone who could supplement on the minutes and someone who could really help that time, the times that Jamal is out and which Reggie Jackson had done, admirable, ugly. But it wasn't necessarily something that was going to, I mean the Nuggets would have won over 60 games if it was someone not Reggie Jackson. I would just put it to you that way. And then when the Nuggets went all in on youth this year, it really kind of exposed some of the systemic issues that the Nuggets had. They over relied on their starting line up this year because there was so much youth on the bench. And it was inevitably going to be this way, just the way this year played out. And Calvin Booth said before the year, I'm not necessarily concerned about repeating. So if the Nuggets end up losing to the Wolves, obviously this is following in with that pattern. But going forward, the Nuggets cannot be relying on the likes of Jalen Pickett and Colin Gillespie. You know? And certainly not Reggie Jackson, who are there, they're inevitably going to be locked into another year with Reggie Jackson because they gave him a year and a player option in his second year. And there's no doubt that Reggie Jackson is going to take that. So the Nuggets need to find a way to adapt to this. And another factor going forward, as I pointed out earlier, is it's been two years, essentially, well, an entire year, what last off season and then this season of Jamal Murray being extension eligible. I think that Jamal will prah. I couldn't tell. This was me predicting and I'd have no idea. I don't know, I have no idea how this is going to go. But the Nuggets need to start thinking about how to maximize the roster in Yokic's championship window. And they need to have money available to get a backup point guard who can be a guy you can rely on consistently as good as Reggie Jackson was in stretches this year. Reggie Jackson is who he is. And everyone knows who Reggie Jackson is. He's not a player who's going to be consistent. Nor is he a traditional backup point guard. He is someone who is who he is. And the Nuggets will be needing to address that in a way that they haven't. And not only the point guard thing, there's other little holes on the roster that we're going to be needed to be improved that it's going to be a hard needle to thread. And it all starts and centers around how you manage Jamal. How do you manage Jamal Murray, his injuries, inevitable time off that he's going to be needing during the year to make sure that he is fresh for the playoffs? How do you make sure you manage that? Because there's been a tremendous amount of strain on Yokic, on Michael Porter Jr., on Aaron Gordon, and continues Caldwell Pulp, who is now coincidentally also injured and who will probably opt out of his contract this year and hit the free agent market after two years with the Nuggets. Decisions need to be made and it all centers primarily around Jamal Murray. And how the Nuggets compensate, because like I said, I don't anticipate the Nuggets mucking around with Jamal. They will give him a contract that both parties are comfortable with. I'm talking about how they adjust. How they manage this roster. How they make it slightly less top heavy than it is. And they lucked out last year with Bruce Brown being able to have that both toughness and his ability to be a point guard in the second unit. You need a Bruce Brown mold and you don't, you know, Bruce Brown, who knows what's going to be happening with him this offseason. So that's another thing. Maybe he slides into the KCP role if KCP ends up leaving. There's a lot of things going on with that. But as far as the rest of this series, I didn't come away from Game 1 thinking that this wasn't a series the Nuggets can't win. They absolutely can and should. And I do believe it starts tonight. The Nuggets will, in my view, the Nuggets will win tonight. They will also win Game 3 because for whatever reason, the Nuggets win Game 3. They always win Game 3. I think the Nuggets do enjoy that first game on the road. I think they enjoy that atmosphere. And I think this will be something that the Nuggets really enjoy going into. The Nuggets are a team that is battle tested and it's not going to be intimidated by the crowd. They've shown that over and over and over again. And I'm looking forward to that challenge when the Nuggets are facing with it. But I do believe it starts tonight. The Nuggets counters to the Wolves are pretty obvious. And like I said before, the Wolves offense is not great. Aside from Ant and Cat. But I mean the Nuggets clearly do not care about Cat. Aside from Edwards, their offense is the Wolves offense is pretty pedestrian. And they are almost wholly reliant on their defense to produce offense, which is something that they're very good at. But the Nuggets, the Nuggets adjustments are easy. The Nuggets adjustments are something that they can really easily manage. And I'm curious to see one thing. And I'm going to leave everyone with this. The Nuggets best offensive option lineup against the Wolves is Michael Porter Jr. at the four. Even Michael Malone sort of hinted at that in his postgame presser and yesterday when he was talking about offense. And the Nuggets, you're getting offense against this Wolves team. One of the things that having Mike at the four does is it leaves Go Bear on the island. Regardless of whether Mike is able to hit over him, it puts Go Bear in that 2021 Utah Jazz playoffs thing. Putting Go Bear on the island is the way to take care of Go Bear. And Yogech can handle Go Bear. Brother, I have 47. We all know about that. So if the Nuggets are just able to get Go Bear as Adam Mar as is pointed out, get him into that rotating spot where he has to cover a guy on the perimeter. Everything opens up. And, you know, Cat's not a rim protector. So if the Nuggets are able to do that, there'll be a leg up. I kind of wonder if they may start using exclusively the Gordon at center thing more to combat Nas Reed in the second unit and see how they approach that because they've got nothing but defenders in the second unit. And that will help mitigate a little bit of the staggering that, excuse me, Ant does. But we shall see. But anyway, I expect the Nuggets to win tonight and I expect them to win Game 3. That's my prediction. Come at me if I'm wrong. Alright, thank you for joining me on the latest morecast presented by BetOnline. I'll be back in a couple days with another episode. Goodbye. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]
The Nuggets dropped game one against the Minnesota Timberwolves at home. The biggest question for the Nuggets remains one that is quite complicated: How do you manage Jamal Murray and his injuries going forward.
