Since cleaning house, the Denver Nuggets are 3-0 and have looked like a different team than the one that struggled through much of the regular season.
The LA Clippers are one of the hottest teams in basketball. They enter the playoffs with the momentum of having gone into Chase Center on the last day of the regular season and beating the Golden State Warriors. It was the Clippers’ eighth consecutive win.
It’s almost a shame that one of these teams will go home because the quality of the matchup is so high. But this first-round series, with Game 1 tipping off on Saturday afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), figures to be competitive, long and exhausting.
The Nuggets will begin preparing in earnest with Wednesday morning’s practice. In the meantime, here are some initial thoughts on the series, what makes it so hotly contested and how things might play out by the end.
Russell Westbrook’s return
Russell Westbrook wasn’t thrilled with his Clippers experience, particularly being played off the ball more than he would have liked. One of the things that drew him to Denver was that the Nuggets would allow him to be the point guard and run the offense. He’s been mostly good doing that this season, providing a shot of energy in transition that Denver’s roster sorely needed.
He’s going to have to be good in whatever minutes are allotted to him in this series. And there isn’t a guaranteed number. For Westbrook, his time on the floor will depend on how effective he is. The matchup against the Clippers is a good one for him, particularly off the bench. With Ivica Zubac in the game, the Clippers run a bunch of drop coverage, and Westbrook can play out of pick and roll and get downhill and put pressure on the rim off the dribble. But Westbrook will need to defend well, play a cerebral game, limit turnovers, and make the open shots that will come his way.
This is a chance to face his most recent previous team. Getting a series win would mean a lot to him personally. His importance is magnified because Jamal Murray will see a lot of Kris Dunn as his primary defender, and Dunn is truly one of the NBA’s elite perimeter defending guards. It makes sense to have Westbrook on the floor handling the ball and having Murray running off screens instead of spending too much time grappling with Dunn off the dribble. It will potentially make Westbrook a central character in the series.
Guarding Kawhi Leonard
One of the things that makes this series fascinating is that Kawhi Leonard is back to being Kawhi Leonard. That’s a good thing for the league, because the NBA is better when Leonard is healthy and at full strength. Frankly, with all of his myriad lower body issues, Leonard being this healthy had been seriously in question. But he looks like the player who spent most of his prime as one of the best 10 players in the NBA.
That’s not a good thing for the Nuggets. Nikola Jokić is the best player in the series, but Leonard can match that ceiling and dominate the series possession by possession. And the series may well come down to which team guards Leonard or Jokić better. They are both going to get their numbers. But which team can limit the impact of the star on the other team?
Expect to see a ton of Aaron Gordon as Leonard’s primary defender. Gordon is the one Denver player with the length, athleticism, discipline and strength to guard Leonard, and also deal with his ability to be cerebral with shot fakes in the lane. Leonard has become the wild card in this matchup. Once he returned to a prime level, the Clippers became one of the hottest teams in the league … and this became a difficult series for the Nuggets.
Who gets the schedule advantage?
It will be interesting to see which team deals with the schedule better. Game 1 is on Saturday afternoon, with Game 2 on Monday night. That means one day in between to heal the bumps and bruises from Game 1. Who does that favor?
Ideally, if you are the Clippers, you want this series as stretched out as possible to give Leonard as much recovery time as he can get. Then there is the possibility of James Harden playing extended minutes in Game 1 as well. Give the Nuggets a slight edge here. They are a slightly younger team. They are playing at home. Jokić is the Energizer Bunny. Seriously, the man is as well conditioned as any player in the league. And the Nuggets are sleeping in their own beds.
This series doesn’t have an advantageous two-day break between games. Take Golden State and Houston, for example. That series takes two days between Games 1 and 2, as the day after Game 1 will truly be a rest day. The same applies to the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves series.
The Nuggets and Clippers have two days between Games 2 and 3 and between Games 4 and 5. The days after those games will be travel days, so unlike the two aforementioned series, there won’t be true rest. That means all seven games of this series will either have just a day in between, or a travel day and a practice day in between. If this series goes seven games, the winner will probably be leg weary. The Warriors-Rockets and Lakers-Timberwolves have multiple built-in rest days.
David Adelman’s postseason debut
Nuggets interim head coach David Adelman is about to step into the playoff arena. He’s not being eased in. He’s coaching against Ty Lue, who is one of the best playoff head coaches in the NBA over the last decade.
The list is long with Lue. He’s the man who came up with the adjustments in 2016 that won the Cleveland Cavaliers a championship. Down 2-0 against the Utah Jazz in the 2021 second round, Lue decided to go small and that adjustment turned around a series. Lue is a master at figuring out what his team needs in a series and making the needed changes, even if those changes hurt some feelings.
Adelman is going to have to coach against that kind of aura. He and his staff will need to come up with schemes, defensive coverages and adjustments. One of his strengths is that he’s comfortable in his skin. That part has been evident since he took over the job on an interim basis. Having Jokić is an advantage as well, because he’s one of the rare players in NBA history that you can’t scheme against. For Adelman, having that kind of piece on the chessboard is big.
But there will be questions. How much does he play Westbrook? What can he do to make life easier for Murray, who will be hounded by Dunn? How should the Nuggets cover Leonard? What are the coverages against James Harden? How these questions get answered will go a long way toward determining the winner of this series. It might go a long way in determining whether Adelman gets the head coaching job on a full-time basis.
Will we get playoff Murray?
We’ve touched on this a bit before, but Jamal Murray will need to be huge in this series. This has been said so many times, but it always rings true. Jokić represents the Nuggets’ floor. The Nuggets have been a team of turmoil all season. They just fired the coach and the general manager. They went through large stretches of the season disinterested in playing defense. They have been injury-ravaged throughout their rotation for much of the season.
And they still won 50 games, because No. 15 suited up almost every night.
Having Jokić means having a floor that’s one of the highest in the NBA. But for the Nuggets to compete for a championship, they need Murray to be at or as close as possible to his 2023 playoff self.
That makes him a gargantuan figure in this series. History tells us that he will be fine and that he will rise to the level of the occasion. That’s who Murray has been. The last time these two teams met, the Nuggets overcame a 3-1 deficit in the bubble. The two teams have changed dramatically since, but some principal figures remain: Murray, Jokić and Michael Porter Jr. for the Nuggets, and Leonard and Lue for the Clippers.
This is also what makes this series so potentially intriguing. It’s a chance for the Clippers to erase some past demons.
It’s a chance for the Nuggets to put this season’s drama further in the rearview and make some positive memories.
(Photo of Nikola Jokić, Ivica Zubac and Kris Dunn: Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)