Red, yellow and blue have each taken their turn to no avail. The Nuggets might cycle through all the colors of the rainbow before they make it to an NBA Cup quarterfinal someday.
Those candy-colored novelty courts remain cursed in Denver. One of the winningest NBA teams of the decade hasn’t advanced past the group stage three years into the league’s in-season tournament, an invention that has introduced arbitrary but seemingly effective competitive stakes to November and December basketball. Knockout stage participants are rewarded with money from a prize pool. Eight teams make it that far every season. Four make it to Las Vegas, where the semifinals and final are played on a neutral court.
“It’s a great bonus,” Jamal Murray admitted this week, “and guys want to go to Vegas and have some fun. So I think it’s good little motivation to go there and play hard.”
Friday night was the closest the Nuggets have been to the last eight, but the capacity to play hard ironically eluded them. Ahead by 18 in the second half of their group-stage finale — a win would have clinched first place in the group and a quarterfinal date with the Lakers — the Nuggets fell flat on their “flatiron red” Ball Arena court. They scored 136 points to take advantage of a Spurs squad trying to survive without Victor Wembanyama. That wasn’t enough. They gave up 139.
“All these offensive stats are shiny, and you still lose the game,” coach David Adelman said. “So we’ve gotta grow up and compete defensively.”
Even before the Spurs became the fifth Denver opponent to make more than 15 threes this season, Adelman was already alert to the fact that his team’s defense was regressing. It was always inevitable, to some extent. The Nuggets were a bottom-10 defense in the league last year. That they briefly ranked second-best earlier this month was likely more of a testament to the miniscule sample size and shooting variance than anything concrete.
But they hoped it was an encouraging sign of improvement, that their defense could at least return to the top half of the league rankings. It still could. But the painful loss in a Cup elimination game was evidence Denver still has a long way to go at its weaker end of the floor — a harsh wake-up call near the quarter-point of the season.
“This is honestly good for us,” said Peyton Watson, whose defensive upside is the reason he’s been starting in place of the injured Christian Braun. “We need this experience. We need to know the things we aren’t good at to work on and continue to sharpen. … We also had a completely different team the first two, three games of the season. We had everybody (healthy). We’re spread out a little bit thinner now.”
“I have to rotate guys through to find the right five that’ll compete defensively,” Adelman said. “Because I know we’re going to score. We score a ton, all the time.”
Watson and Spencer Jones have been the replacement starters for Braun and Aaron Gordon, whose coinciding injuries are clearly leaving a mark on the entire team. Zeke Nnaji has filled in with rotation minutes at backup power forward.
But the Nuggets are allowing 120.6 points per 100 possessions over their last eight games, ranking 27th in a span that covers almost half of their season so far. It’s been a gradual fade-out dotted with fewer and fewer flashes of potential.
“It’s a mindset thing,” Adelman said. “Sit down and guard.”
The problems against San Antonio felt reminiscent of the 2024-25 Nuggets. Their lead defenders such as Watson failed to hold up at the point of attack. Adelman was left frustrated by Denver’s lack of tenacity and physicality when navigating screens, on and off the ball. “They hit us over and over and over,” he said. “We have to understand that in this league, you have to fight through that stuff.” He felt Denver’s focus was “in and out,” not ideal for a game after three days of rest.
Pick-and-rolls opened up the floor, inviting the Spurs to make simple reads and rely on ball movement. They rained open 3s. Denver’s off-ball defenders collapsed in too far against the roller, making recovery close-outs ineffective. “You see a big rolling, 7-footer rolling toward the rim, you don’t want to just leave him there,” Cam Johnson said of the conundrum. What he and Murray provided offensively went to waste in Denver’s third consecutive home loss.
“We’re scoring well. Playing well. Moving the ball well. Guys coming in are playing hard, playing well,” Murray said. “The other team is just making shots. Making shots, and a lot of them are open.
“Honestly, I don’t know how they’re getting so open.”
“With how ball-screen heavy the league is now, there’s always kind of an advantage you can create with the ball-handler,” Watson said. “And then on the back side, we’re playing 2-v-1s. With their team, they have a lot of good shooters. … When you’re playing in between those two guys on the wing and the corner, it’s tough.”
The Nuggets will visit Sacramento on Dec. 11 and host the Rockets on Dec. 15 in two replacement games added to their schedule late Friday night — assignments issued by the league in lieu of NBA Cup knockout games for eliminated teams. The courts will be a normal shade.
“When it started (in 2023), you kind of just look at it as part of your schedule with a funky court,” Adelman said of the tournament. “As you go through it, you realize there’s something to play for, which is cool.”
Playing in pursuit of defensive competence will have to suffice instead on those December dates.