SAN DIEGO — The luxury of Nuggets training camp this year was the peace of mind they already felt about their starting lineup, even before a minute of practice.
The burden of camp was figuring out how the other variables fit together.
David Adelman has inherited a championship contender from Michael Malone, but he also inherited the baggage of Nikola Jokic’s rest minutes. Denver’s fatal flaw, year over year, is now under new oversight. But with access to a deeper tool bag, too. The Nuggets’ offseason moves have introduced an eagerness, rather than dread, to the process of figuring out their bench.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges of camp,” Adelman said during the team’s media day. “I’m not worried about how the starters are going to flow together. It’s just trying to find the right group with that second unit. … We can’t be minus-12 every night in those minutes. It’s just a killer, and we rarely blew people out because of that.”
Here are five things we learned about the bench throughout the week.
1. The starting point: The second unit has mostly consisted of Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Julian Strawther, Peyton Watson and Jonas Valanciunas. So far. That doesn’t indicate a definitive hierarchy, but it does illuminate what Denver’s staff felt was the most sensible starting point. “That second unit will fluctuate,” Adelman emphasized. “We’ll try different people at different positions.”
Brown said that he and Watson have been applying full-court pressure against the starters, an idea that assistant coach Jared Dudley started encouraging earlier this summer. “I think we can do everything,” Brown said of the lineup. “We’ve got shooters. We’ve got defenders.” Not included in that initial wing-heavy lineup: Jalen Pickett, DaRon Holmes II, Zeke Nnaji or Hunter Tyson. But Cam Johnson said Friday that Pickett’s control of both the second and third units has stood out when he’s been involved.
2. Playing through Big Val: “Kind of like the first unit playing through Jok,” as Brown described it. Adelman wasn’t kidding in July when he described Valanciunas as a point center. That doesn’t mean he’ll bring the ball up the floor, but that he can act as a central hub for half-court execution with his size, skill and IQ. Surrounding him with four smaller, more agile players to cultivate a motion-based offense could be a go-to formula for Denver’s bench.
“This has been good for him to get used to our system a little bit,” Adelman said. “He hasn’t done some of this stuff outside of a couple months in Sacramento, playing off the elbow and the top of the key. … So I have to do him a service. We’ve gotta get to some post-up plays and things that he’s used to.”
High praise abounds for the Lithuanian center when you ask around. It’s almost as if the Nuggets aren’t used to having a solidified backup center at training camp.
3. Watson as a ball-handler: Adelman dropped hints throughout the week that Watson might be used a little differently on offense this year. He’s been Aaron Gordon’s understudy along the baseline for the better part of his burgeoning career so far. Now he’s being described as an initiator as well.
“He’s been really responsible with the ball,” Adelman said. “He’s had the ball in his hands a lot with the second unit. He’s made really sound decisions. That’s what we’re looking for. Sometimes guys go into the summer, and they want to show off any dribbling mechanics they’ve mastered. He’s played in straight lines. When you do that, you can be a play-maker.”
Watson might not be a primary pick-and-roll creator, but if the Nuggets can lean on him as a slasher or trust him to push the ball up after a defensive rebound, he’ll add another layer of on-ball offense available off the bench — as opposed to Denver’s over-reliance on Russell Westbrook last season.
4. Choosing a starter to stagger: The Nuggets aren’t just going to make hockey substitutions, of course. The preliminary second unit listed above won’t check in together to replace all five starters simultaneously. Minutes and sub patterns will be staggered out so that at least one starter is always on the floor (especially when Jokic isn’t).
“It doesn’t have to be Jamal or Nikola,” Adelman said. “It can be Cam (Johnson). Maybe Cam flows well with Tim and Valanciunas. Who plays well with Jonas? That’s key.”
Johnson is a more viable stagger option than Michael Porter Jr. on paper. The evidence is in Brooklyn, where Johnson was pushed outside his comfort zone as a scorer and creator. As Adelman has pointed out, the small forward wasn’t dribbling more than once or twice per touch during his time in Phoenix. That changed with a tanking Nets team, attracting Denver to him and preparing him to be more than a complementary off-ball player in lineups anchored by Jokic.
When Porter was on the floor without Jokic and Murray last season, Denver’s offensive rating was a dismal 96.8 in 291 minutes (leading to a minus-23.3 net rating). Brooklyn’s offense was seven points per 100 possessions better with Johnson than without him.
5. Newfound optimism: Murray also remains one of the obvious choices to shepherd the second through some of the non-Jokic minutes. The word out of Denver’s scrimmage on Thursday was that he and Valanciunas were playing off each other nicely. Murray had been asked the previous day if he’s excited about playing with the bench — it’s been a thankless task for him in the past — and he responded with the most striking statement of the week about Denver’s depth.
It could be typical hyperbole for this time of year, but it was also emblematic of a noticeably more upbeat tenor around the team.
“We’re gonna be scoring points and defending at a rate that we’re not even used to (with that unit),” Murray said. “So I think that’s gonna be really good for us. And just having all these weapons in different spots, I feel like we can have one of the best benches in the league, for real.”
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