Nuggets journal: For first time in Nikola Jokic’s prime, Denver doesn’t look convincing in clutch

The Nuggets are used to finishing strong.

They’re used to walking down their opponents at the end of a close game. They’re used to ratcheting up their defensive intensity when the moment calls for it. They’re used to getting the exact shots they want, imposing their roster continuity, their calmness, their cohesion.

Their clutch-ness.

Three consecutive years, they’ve ranked top-three in “clutch time,” which the NBA defines as any scenario in which two teams are separated by five or fewer points in the last five minutes of a game (regulation or overtime). In five of the last six years, they’ve been a top-10 clutch team, only sliding to 13th when Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. both missed the entire 2021-22 season.

Even then, Denver finished with a positive net rating in the clutch.

Which makes it all the more befuddling for a Nikola Jokic-led team to be stumbling so often in these situations. At the 20-game mark of the season, all six of Denver’s losses had involved clutch time. Its average margin of defeat was 4.8 points, in contrast to a 14.6-point average margin of victory — a trend of missed opportunities to be even better than the record indicates.

It was a source of frustration for Jokic this week after a rare fourth consecutive home loss.

“We were in all four of the games,” he pointed out, “but we just didn’t execute. We didn’t play our best basketball.”

Situational poise does matter, even beyond the standings. In the 2022-23 regular season, Miami ranked second in clutch-time net rating — measured in points per 100 possessions — then made an improbable run to the NBA Finals as a No. 8 seed.

Indiana was the league’s top-ranked clutch team last year, lending credence to the notion that Tyrese Haliburton’s breathtaking highlight reel of playoff buzzer beaters was not an anomaly. Those Pacers also made the Finals despite entering the playoffs as a No. 4 seed.

Nine of the last 15 NBA champions have finished top-five in clutch net rating for the regular season, and none of those 15 teams finished worse than 12th.

The Nuggets were ranked dead last after 20 games.

Their numbers have also been poor in GOLPs (Game On the Line Possessions), a stat invented last year by The Denver Post to arbitrarily track Denver’s execution in the highest-stakes moments.

A quick refresher on what qualifies as a GOLP: Possessions during the last 30 seconds of regulation or the last 30 seconds of overtime in which the team with the ball is either tied or trailing by three points or fewer. In simpler terms, it’s an opportunity to tie or win the game at a point when you aren’t guaranteed to get the ball back. Gulp.

The Nuggets have scored three total points on five GOLPs, all on Aaron Gordon’s go-ahead 3-pointer with 26 seconds to go on opening night at Golden State. That shot went to waste along with his other 47 points, and since then, the Nuggets have come up empty on similarly high-stakes possessions (including Jokic’s missed floater that same night at the buzzer of regulation).

Their offensive rating on GOLPs is 60. Their success rate at tying or taking the lead is 20%. Their shooting percentage is 16.7%. Jokic missed out on another potentially heroic moment against Portland when Gordon completed a Christian Laettner-esque pass to him, but he couldn’t complete the “easy” part of the play. He’s a spectacular 26-for-39 (67%) on shots between 10 and 19 feet deep this season, but when he turned around to release a 15-footer at the buzzer in Portland, his usually soft midrange touch betrayed him.

Nuggets opponents have a 75% success rate and 175 offensive rating on their first four GOLPs. The only “stop” Denver has made on one of these possessions was a play that barely met the subjective qualifications — Alperen Sengun’s half-court shot that was off the mark when Houston had 2.7 seconds to go the length of the floor. Excluding that, the Nuggets have allowed a Steph Curry game-tying 3-pointer and a pair of decisive — if controversial — trips to the foul line at Portland.

They’ve also committed costly errors on a couple of last-minute defensive possessions that didn’t meet the GOLP criteria. Down one point to Chicago and likely to get the ball back in a one-score game, the only shot they couldn’t afford to give up was a 3-pointer, but Nikola Vucevic made them pay for leaving him unguarded on a pick-and-pop. A few days later against Sacramento, they had a chance to get the ball back and draw something up for a game-tying three, but Spencer Jones reached and gave up an and-one to DeMar DeRozan. Both shots all but clinched a loss.

This is all opposed to last season, when Denver succeeded on 53% of its 39 GOLPs (including playoffs) with a 135.9 offensive rating, while opponents were held to an 81.8 offensive rating and 35% success rate. Games overwhelmingly leaned Denver’s way in the most suspenseful moments. That might indicate that the Nuggets weren’t as good as their 50-32 regular-season record, but their knack for the dramatic was also almost enough for them to steal a playoff series from mighty Oklahoma City.

The Thunder, of course, ended up being so good that it didn’t matter if a few buzzer beaters burned them.

“If you’re not in a lot of clutch games, it means you’ve won a lot of games by a lot of points,” Adelman said recently. “I’ll always remember, last year was so crazy with OKC (when) we played them in the playoffs. I had the video guys pull up their late-game situations, and they said there isn’t much stuff (to study) because they just always win by 12 points.”

That’s a difficult level of dominance to achieve, though. The Nuggets have shown flashes of it, but not enough to shrug off the importance of clutch execution altogether. Their 33 clutch minutes were the sixth-fewest in the league as of Wednesday, certainly a sign of their ability to run opponents out of the gym. To return to the OKC reference point, however, the 2024-25 Thunder played 66 clutch minutes the entire regular season — 20 fewer than any other team.

What’s even scarier is that clutch time seems to be an area of growth for Oklahoma City early this season. While winning nine of 10 qualifying games, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been getting wherever he wants on the floor, shooting 54% on a league-leading 46 clutch shot attempts. He also has nine assists and one turnover in those situations.

Jokic and Jamal Murray have combined for five assists and six turnovers in the clutch, when their lethal two-man usually game kicks into high gear, when swagger and nonchalance mix to form maximum composure.

At Denver’s best, it’s thrilling to watch. Nuggets fans are still waiting to experience the sensation this year, to feel like they’re in safe hands.

In their clutches

The Nuggets have been one of the most consistently clutch teams in the sport throughout Nikola Jokic’s prime, until now. This is how they ranked in clutch-time offense, defense and net rating (measured in points per 100 possessions) each of the last six years, compared to where they stood after 20 games this season: last place. Record refers to wins and losses in games that involved clutch time.

Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.