The Nuggets sound like they’d be a fun team to watch, especially for fantasy. They have a lot of young talent, some of their players have a very unique skill set, they’re top 10 in pace, they are currently a sub-par defensive matchup, and coach Mike Malone runs some cool stuff.
While that stuff is all true, it’s become a very tough lineup to project and predict. A number of players on their roster were playing a ton of different positions and there aren’t really any trends for matchups either. For instance, coach Terry Stotts and coach Brad Stevens mix it up a lot. The difference is there are some trends to when they’ll go smaller or bigger. For Stevens, he’s more about feel, which means he’ll have a different starter in the second half when things go south. He’s started Tyler Zeller for the first half and subbed him out for Kelly Olynyk to start the second. By the way, it should be interesting to see how KO fits in with Horford back going forward.
After a complete mess in the first eight games, coach Malone finally jettisoned his starting lineup. I know I’ve talked about this before, but Malone finally made the smart move and we have to talk about the changes. Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic played 91 minutes together in the first eight games, posting a lowly -15.4 net rating — that’s about 10 points worse than the other lineups combined.
We finally saw some lineup tweaks because Malone said Jokic actually asked to change it up, and Malone even admitted he screwed up (all quotes via BSN Denver, also follow Harrison Wind for great Denver info). “He had an unbelievable rookie year and he had an unbelievable rookie year playing the five. I told him, I feel bad, I feel like I’ve done him a disservice almost exploring playing big,” Malone said after Saturday’s loss to Detroit. “The hope is to try and get him more minutes at the five, he will play some four at times. We need to get Nikola back.”
There are a lot of positives there and Malone even called Jokic “probably the most selfless player on the team” on Saturday. Jokic himself also sounds totally fine with it. “I actually talked to coach about that,” Jokic said of his move to the bench and back to playing more center. “I’m good with that. All last season I played center. I had a good season.”
So let’s take a quick look at what Malone did over the weekend. He used a whopping 31 lineup combos in just two games, but keep in mind Gary Harris (ankle) wasn’t out there for one of those. Here are the lineups with more than two minutes:
Yikes. To be fair, one of those games was at Portland on the second night of a back-to-back set — that was the game without Harris. As you can see, three of the four most-used lineups were smashed on, and two of those were the starting groups. Simply put, those new lineups didn’t work... like... at all.
So for now, Malone is going to push Jokic to the second unit. That may be more because Jokic is more willing to move to that role based on the above comments. Nurkic, on the other hand, may not be willing to make that move. He’s on Twitter saying #ProveThemWrong and #BosnianBeast, so a move to the bench may be bad for his #brand.
If that does stick, it would appear Jokic would get most of his minutes next to the second-unit guys. Over the weekend, here’s a rundown of what players Jokic played next to: Wilson Chandler (36), Jamal Murray (35), Jameer Nelson (26), Danilo Gallinari (24), Juan Hernangomez (19), Emmanuel Mudiay (19), Kenneth Faried (14), Gary Harris (7), Malik Beasley (6).
While the Nuggets were not good last year, they had a lot of success with Jokic lineups. In fact, the post-break lineup with the most minutes had a net rating of +9.1 — that was Mudiay, Harris, JaKarr Sampson, Faried and Jokic. Plus, Mudiay playing off the ball seemed to help him, too. In fact, Mudiay has made 44 percent of his attempts from deep off Jokic passes in his career. That’s almost 50 percent better than the 30 percent on other 3-pointers. On top of the better ball movement, it makes sense to put Jokic in the first unit because he’s a low-usage guy and fits better with guys like Mudiay, Gallo and Harris.
The other thing that should happen would be to slide Wilson Chandler into the first unit. He’s done a fine job of playing the four next to Gallo and they can use it against pretty much any team. In fact, the Gallo, Chandler and Mudiay lineup is a +1.6 in net rating — also a fun 106 pace for the fantasy people.
I love Nurk and he’s one of my favorite players to watch, but it just makes too much to bring him off the bench. We’ve seen the 2015-16 group succeed and they need to get back to that. It’s not like Jokic forgot how to play ball.
Alright, so obviously Jokic fantasy owners just have to hang in there. He showed he can thrive in a 24-minute role. He’s a good shooter and he can add stats across the board. For DFS, it’s going to tough to count on him because he’s not a volume scorer or a strong rebounder. I don’t think Nurkic is really affected too much outside of a overall dip in playing time. Gary Harris should still be owned everywhere and hopefully Mudiay can make shots.
The Belly of the Beast
We saw the Wolves go with a brand new lineup on Sunday with Zach LaVine (knee) out. Before Sunday, Nemanja Bjelica played 0.0 minutes next to Karl-Anthony Towns and Gorgui Dieng as a three-man group, but those three started with Andrew Wiggins and Ricky Rubio against the Lakers.
That lineup was used for a whopping 24.3 minutes in the win. That playing time in the one game makes it the highest per-game lineup in the NBA, but we really shouldn’t be surprised. Coach Tom Thibodeau runs a tight ship with his rotation and an old Bulls team back in 2010-11 had just one of the five combos to be used for 20 minutes per game since then. The success of that lineup bodes really well for Bjelica, as well.
Thibodeau talked about how he liked that lineup after the game. Here are a couple tweets about it:
Thibs on Bjelica: "I thought he played a beautiful game tonight. He made really good decisions. ... I thought defensively he was really good
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) November 14, 2016
Thibs gushed about the length with Wiggins at the 2 and Bjelica at the 3. Have to wonder if he'll revisit it going forward.
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) November 14, 2016
Nice. Bjelica also said he played more small forward 3-4 years ago and said he felt “great” about his game on Sunday.
There should be minutes up for grabs, too. With Brandon Rush banged up and certainly not a lock to keep his minutes, Belly could take run from him with Wiggins running more shooting guard to offset that. Additionally, Shabazz Muhammad is also hurt and he’s not necessarily a Thibs guy either. That all means Bjelica has a number of avenues for minutes.
If LaVine is out again tonight, you absolutely have to use Belly in DFS. If he goes off again for season-long owners it’ll be hard not to pick up all that upside, especially if the Wolves win. Thibs is looking at Bjelica like
(Via Grantland)
