That makes this next statement pretty wild. One of the biggest question marks about the Nuggets heading into the postseason was regarding their depth. (Sidebar: Murray has been playing some of the best defense of his life so far in this postseason!) 4.
With how evenly matched these teams seem to be on paper, if Murray’s out here winning games on his own it might just be enough to push Denver past Phoenix in this series.
#Nuggets suns series
This is especially important to keep tabs on moving forward because, along with taking relief off of Jokić’s shoulders and bringing out the best in Michael Porter Jr., Murray’s offensive performances tend to have an eruptive quality.īasically, he’s the kind of player that can get so hot that he can swing an entire game or two in a series on his lonesome. His volume scoring and playmaking numbers are at or above the levels from his Bubble run, and his efficiency isn’t lagging too far behind, either. Here’s a look at how his stats in that five-game series compare to his illustrious 2020 playoffs: After spending most of the regular season getting back into form, Murray started to look more like the guy who stole the show in the 2020 Orlando Bubble during Denver’s first-round series against Minnesota. The Return of Bubble Jamal Murrayĭon’t look now, but Jamal Murray is hooping.
He doesn’t need to put together a repeat performance of 2021, but can he slow Jokić enough to get them across the finish line? 3. This means that the Suns can no longer allocate extra resources toward assisting Ayton in defending the two-time MVP, who averaged nearly a triple-double with 26.2 points, 12.4 rebounds, 9.0 assists and 1.2 steals in the first round.Īyton will be left largely to his own devices in this playoff series. Simply put, Jokić’s bandmates look more like The Beatles now rather than the group of high school misfits they were in 2021. At the time, Denver was without Jamal Murray (who had been lost for the year with a torn ACL) and had still yet to acquire staple contributors like Bruce Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Jeff Green and Christian Braun. When these guys brawled in 2021, Jokic was flanked by a motley crew supporting cast. Will a similar story play out in their playoff rematch? Well, in the 2021 second-round series (the last time these two teams had it out), Ayton made a name for himself as a Nikola Jokić stopper after he held the Joker to 27-of-64 shooting (42.2%) and just three free-throw attempts in their encounters during the four-game series (per NBA.com). We recently went in-depth on Deandre Ayton’s importance to the series. How will Denver navigate this spacing alignment? Will the Nuggets send help from elsewhere?ĭo they turn to a different defensive coverage? 2.
#Nuggets suns how to
But it comes with the tradeoff of conceding an automatic 4-on-3 advantage to the offense (because you are effectively putting two defenders on the ball).Īmong other things, one wrinkle the new-look Suns discovered against the Los Angeles Clippers was how to station Durant/Booker on the weak-side corner (the place where defensive help usually comes from) to burn teams when they’d put two defenders on the ball handler. This effectively takes away the red carpet that drop coverage rolls out. To avoid getting torched by these pull-up assassins, Denver will likely play many screens at the level. With the Suns rostering the likes of Durant, Devin Booker and Chris Paul, it seems obvious that this would not be a good idea. The former will largely be a no-go in this series, as drop coverage’s most exploitable weakness is that – unless you have great screen navigating perimeter defenders – it provides a runaway for pull-up jumpers. In their first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Nuggets typically played ball screens featuring Nikola Jokic as the defending big man in a drop or at the level of the screen. (Sidebar: Stick around until the very end to see what our playoff projection model thinks of this series!) 1.
To prime you for this earth-shaking showdown, here are five storylines to keep an eye on heading into the Western Conference semifinals. Since the moment that it was announced that the Phoenix Suns had acquired Kevin Durant to tipoff what will forever go down as a historic trade deadline day, a matchup between them and the conference-leading Denver Nuggets in the NBA playoffs has seemed almost preordained.Īnd while this heavyweight fight against arguably the two best teams in the conference may be coming one round sooner than we’d hoped, it is nonetheless a heavily anticipated battle.
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