The Blueprint For Beating The Denver Nuggets

While the Boston Celtics (54–14) have been the best team of the 2023/24 regular season by a relatively wide margin, the reigning champion Denver Nuggets (48–21) remain the team to beat. Denver returns the league’s best player, Nikola Jokić, and for the most part, the same group of players around him to defend their place at the top of the NBA’s food chain.

The Nuggets have built their team to run through Jokić as a point-center, surrounding him with a plethora of skillsets. Jamal Murray, Jokić’s primary sidekick and arguably the best 2nd option in the league, is a combo-guard that offers the most relief in terms of scoring and on-ball duties. Whether it be a high pick-and-roll with Jokić or creating out-of-isolation opportunities that bail the Nuggets out of their rare stagnant possessions, when healthy Murray has proven to be a more-than-worthy Robin.

However, when Denver’s offense is at its most potent the ball is often doing the most work. The dynamic differences between their wing players, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon offer the Nuggets a near-unprecedented level of offensive flexibility. Porter Jr. is a 6'10 deadly accurate 50–40–80% shooter who can also drive, finish at the rim, and pull up off the dribble in one-on-one situations. Gordon, an athletic 6'8, is one of the league’s best baseline runners. His backdoor cuts are second to none, with his combination of speed, size, and ever-developing basketball IQ making him the final piece to Denver’s daunting three-level offensive attack.

The Nuggets appear to have cracked the NBA’s offensive code, having answers to every question the modern defense can ask. For starters, they control the paint on offense through the sheer power, will, and dominance of Jokić. His combination of being powerful enough to control hot spots in the center of the court, finishing ability, and vision, make him impossible to guard.

Single coverage? He’ll stoically back down his defender and place the ball in the hoop. Double off of either wing? He’ll find the open shot, or begin an action that forces the defense to rotate that leads to an open shot. Play a zone? Possibly… but Jokic is patient and wise enough to crack it.

The basic conclusion anyone who regularly watches this team has to arrive at is that there’s no way of stopping Nikola Jokić…

So, how do you stop the Denver Nuggets?

The last time there was a situation like this, the player in question was LeBron James. It turned out he, too, was effectively unstoppable, even if most of the teams he played on throughout his career didn’t come close to Jokić's Nuggets in terms of the surrounding talent and allocative efficiency.

Dallas’ zone beat the 2011 Miami Heat, though at that point the NBA hadn’t quite broken through the spacing evolution we’ve seen since the Splash Bros took center court. LeBron also still operated largely as a perimeter player at that point, attacking via slashing, driving, and exploiting mismatches. Likely, Jokić's ability and willingness to control the center of the court would’ve resulted in a less successful experiment for Dallas, and it’s unlikely that simply playing a zone-match concept will do much to bother Denver’s offense, personnel aside.

Through extensive film study, it seems that there are effectively two potential methods of beating the Nuggets, one being far more reliable than the other.

1. “The Regular Season Way” — Simply try to Outscore Them.

Yup. The unfortunate truth that most of the league has likely realized by now is that they simply don’t roster the necessary personnel to deploy an effective defensive strategy against Denver. Their best bet is to depend on three-point variance, play relatively conventional defensive tactics, and hope that your team gets hot and the Nuggets go cold. Obviously, this is not the blueprint that the title of this article speaks to, but it’s the reality that most teams face when tasked with playing Denver. With that said, there’ll be no deep dive into this strategy. Spray and pray, baby!

2. “The Playoff Way” — What Can We Learn From LeBron That Can Be Applied To Jokić?

It should go without saying that any team that’s going to have a realistic shot at deploying the ensuing strategy will need to have an elite slew of defensive talent on all three levels. If the team at hand can’t switch off every action, and also potentially fight through screens as well to keep the ball handler guessing it’ll be impossible to deploy the strategy about to be explained.

The best way to stop the Denver Nuggets is to turn Nikola Jokić into Joel Embiid…

This sounds absurd, and like a knock on Embiid, and it’s neither of those things. In fairness to Embiid, he’s never had anywhere close to the supporting cast that Jokić has had, and has had to endure the growing pains of a relatively inept franchise. The quickest way to summarize this is that Jokić got Jamal Murray, while Embiid got Ben Simmons… but I digress.

If a team beats Denver in the playoffs it’s going to be because they were able to slow down everyone on the roster not named Nikola Jokić. The strategy being proposed would entail leaving Jokić in single-coverage on and off the ball for the entire series and allowing him to attempt to score as much as he decides to, but not helping off of Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon (even though he’s not a shooter), or any wing/three-point threat.

It’s likely that early on in a series where this was deployed, Denver’s opponent would feel the wrath of Jokić scoring at will. The risk to sticking on Jokić's supporting cast is that it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t have good offensive games, but taking Murray, Porter Jr., and Aaron Gordon out of their rhythms, while difficult, appears possible, unlike the idea of trying to stop Jokić.

The heat that an opposing head coach would take from the media would likely cause a stir, particularly if they were to lose a game early in the series with Jokić putting up a historical scoring performance. This is a total “look like a genius” or “you’re fired” strategy for a coach, as it’s possible Jokić could simply beat a team by himself. However, as the playoffs progress players become fatigued, and if an opponent can stretch a series past game 5, in the WCF or Finals, it’s possible that the fatigue factor of forcing a point-center into putting up multiple high-output scoring performances could start to yield positive results for Denver’s opponent.

The Boston Celtics have done this to Joel Embiid multiple times in the last few seasons. While he’s also battled injuries, and as previously noted, has a far less impressive supporting cast, leaving Embiid alone and not allowing the rest of the team to beat them has yielded results, as Embiid clearly showed signs of fatigue in the back half each of those respective series.

The team to beat the Denver Nuggets will make Jokić work hard in single coverage, but accept the fact that he’s going to score regardless with the goals of extending the series and tiring him out in the process. They won’t accept Aaron Gordon lobs, Michael Porter Jr. open threes, or Jamal Murray running successful isolations. The primary difference between this situation and most previous LeBron James and Joel Embiid situations is the surrounding depth and plethora of options that Jokić has. So while this tactic has worked on both of those players’ teams in the past, it’s going to be even more difficult to do it with this Denver Nuggets team.

But it’s the only way.