Colin Cowherd’s Instant Reaction -  NBA Champion Denver Nuggets

this team beatable? Let's head to forty five minutes breaking down the Nuggets championship season.

I thought they were pretty good in the fourth quarter. I thought they were relentless. I thought they were kind of dictating, kind of pushing running Miami off the line, no cheap baskets, made everybody work for everything. Like you know, they always offensive talent and skilled defenses effort. Like Denver can be good defensively. They're so good offensively, they don't

have to be great defensively. But on a night when they couldn't hit anything, I thought their defense in the fourth quarter was really strong.

Coming into tonight, their defensive rating in the postseason was only about two points worse than Golden State last year, who was an outstanding defense during the regular season and continued to be so during the postseason. Now, some of it, I do think it was about matchups, And this is kind of the beauty of basketball, is like it's not necessarily how great of a defense you are in a vacuum. It's how well can you guard the Lakers, how well can you guard Miami? How well can you guard Phoenix.

And with those particular teams, you know, Phoenix didn't quite have the amount of rim pressure they needed. The Lakers didn't quite have the amount of off ball shooting they needed. Miami had all the off ball shooting in the world, but they didn't have the real high level shot creation that they needed. And that's the thing is like, again in the NBA, you don't have to be It's not about being that great defense in the grand scheme of things.

It's about your specific matchup. And they took it very seriously in this particular postseason run. Mike Malone harped on it constantly. They all talked about it constantly after that game, too ugly loss to Miami. And you know what's interesting is they were missing threes like crazy. This was a

classic Eric spolsure game. They ran about forty possessions of zone in the first two games of the series, then almost completely abandoned it in games three and four, and then that was almost all they did tonight, and it did a great job of disrupting Denver's rhythm, and they were missing a lot of open shots. And what's interesting in basketball is you can't control shot result, Like if you're getting good looks, you fire away and you just hope they go in right, But you can control the

defensive end of the four. And I thought their second half was probably their best stretch of defense in this entire postseason. And hell, they had Jimmy Butler pump baking at ghosts and not wanting to shoot the basketball, bamina by missing everything around the paint. It was their defense that got it done. And that's what I enjoyed about it, is like, at the end of the day, it was some of the traditional things that ended up winning in the end.

like Pippen. You know, Michael wasn't a playmaker, he was a great score. Pippen wasn't a playmaker, he was a great defender. You know, like Chicago didn't have a lot of that hybrid stuff where you could do both. Right, even Shaq and Kobe known as score. So Jokich and Murray both become ten plus assist guys.

they've made that sort of defense first game. That kind of game doesn't match up with Kansas City. You just can't stop Kansas City. If you give them twelve possessions, you just can't. And so not only is Kansas City now better than New England, they've kind of ended the idea of ball control because Mahomes needs their teen seconds and he can drive down the field. And I think what Denver's doing? Are they ending small ball? Do we look at now Miami's a pretty small team of bands

done on the floor. Golden State, they just don't match up. They just can't get anything down low. And I also think it was a throwback series. Denver's very much points in the paint. A lot of guys hitting twos. They won a championship on a night they couldn't hit free throws or threes. I kind of like the old school stuff. I got to tell you, people are going to watch them, and I think people are going to say, okay, the small ball. Remember Houston for years chased the Warriors small

ball and they could never win. They were shooting thirty, forty fifty threes. You sort of look at Denver and think, oh, there is another way length twos playmakers. I don't know, I find Denver captivating to watch. I feel like I'm watching a little seventies and eighties and twenty twenty three. I feel like I'm watching a.

even that Warriors team with Kevin Durant. When you really put Kevin Durant with Andre Gudala and Raymond Green on that front line, they were massive. They They're just you have to win with size in the NBA. And what was so interesting with this particular Denver team, and this is what actually your Kansas City Chiefs reference kind of

makes sense to me. Like I can't tell you how many times over the years as a tourd Cowboys fan, I'd be watching, like Aaron Rodgers put together these long drawn out drives and then it just felt like the cowboy offense could never get in a rhythm, and the three and out is almost just as much of a product of the rhythm as it is the defense, just because there's a flow to football in the same way there's a flow to basketball, and it's when you see

a team that's going to get a million offensive rebounds and they're going to score consistently, get back in transition and force you to attack their set defense. Sometimes Denver's best defense is their offense, just by the way they beat you up on the interior of the other end of the floor. I do not one of the one of the weird subplots of this series is Jimmy Butler and bam Adebayo could not make a shot in the paint to save their life.

Kitchen Murray are giving you almost twenty assists a game. Yeah, and then you've got the Murray, the KCP, Michael Porter Junior element, in the Aaron Gordon element. All these guys are coming back. This to me feels like a team that could just as easily make four or five consecutive Western Conference finals and win multiple championships.

they humiliated Minnesota, they swept the Lakers. In fact, you can look at it now, Phoenix beat them twice and actually a little pushback, not at the end of the series, but you look at Phoenix and you think Vogel make DeAndre eight and a little better player, better defensively, certainly Durant a full season booker, a full season CP three

probably resigns. They go get somebody on the bench. I'm not saying they're going to beat Denver, but you look back and it's the one team that made them uncomfortable a little bit was Phoenix. Otherwise they hammered people. I mean it was it was really you start. I mean, the average win in this series after tonight's probably about

six seven points a game. But when you look at how Miami sort of discombobulated, like Milwaukee and made teams look Celtics look so bad in the final couple of games, then Denver pretty much, which Denver played its worst game in a month, and one that's a that's not a very good team. That's a great team. Do you have some projects around the home, the condo, the town home, of the apartment you need done. Whether you're an owner or a renter, it doesn't matter. Download the free Angie

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in the physicality areas of the game. I mean, Miami did about as good as you possibly can do because of how well coached they are, but even they looked physically overwhelmed at times. And look at what ended up making most of the pivotal plays at the end of this game were offensive rebound putbacks and Jokics just mauling dudes around the rim. It was their side that got

them beat at the end. Now as I look around the league, though, like everyone's got to make significant improvements, Like I think Phoenix had some real success with pull up jump shooting against this Denver team. But they need to confront their size issues. That's gonna be something they have to confront. Yeah, oh absolutely. And then the Lakers ironically were the by far the most successful offense against

the Nuggets. That was so weird about that series. You go in there and you're like, Lakers are the best defense, They're gonna be great. Denver cooked La more than they cooked any of the other teams, Like it didn't make any sense. And then on the offensive end of the four we all talked about the Laker offense all season, the Lakers were actually the most successful offense against the Nuggets, in large part because of Lebron James rim pressure, Ruey

hot Mura rim pressure. They were actually able to attack the paint in a way the Miami Heat couldn't. But they have to make so many improvements in terms of their perimeter athleticism because guys like Bruce Brown and Jamal Murray just absolutely destroyed them, and so all these teams have to make significant improvements. You're going to see. I think you're going to see a lot of teams get really aggressive this offseason because they know they're not good

to enough yet. And I think you're going to see a couple centers get some big paydays that don't make a ton of sense, as guys try to throw money at an extra body to throw at Jokic. I think you're going to see a guy like Dwight Howard back in the league. Like it's gonna be this whole summer is going to be like how do we deal with this team who's bringing all their guys back? And it's going to be an interesting chot.

his prime. He's got six more years of it. He's in the best shape by the way he's been in in his career. So, I mean, if you really go back at the end of the year, Jokic I think sat five of their last seven games, so they went on kind of a losing streak at the end of the year.

be special. But d Wade was always a guy that hit the floor a lot aged very quickly. You know, it's like a running back not many years, and so you could see by like year two, it was like d Wade wasn't as good on back to back. She kind of said there's going to be an expiration date

pretty quickly on this run. But I look at I look at Denver, and I'm like, at least for three more years, at least three more handful, because I think I think, to be honest, Murray, Jokich, Porter and Gordon a right smack dab in the middle of their prime, like not near the end of it, like three years from now, let's come back and talk about it. Then they're closer to the end of it. But this will be fun. By the way, I also love KCP Bubble team. This team hit a big three in this game.

They need a score.

out of the regular season. It's like, can Jamal Murray be what he was in twenty twenty And he ended up eating way better than that even but he was dealing with some nagging stuff with his knee. Michael Porter Junior and his back issues flare up from time to time. But what's great about the Jokic thing is like you can just throw four dudes out there with him and he's winning fifty regular season games, so like you're not going to suffer in the standings, you're not going to struggle.

You can buy rest for Jamal Murray during the season and buy rest for Michael Porter Junior, and then when those guys are available in the postseason, it's the simple fact of you better find a way to score on them easily on the other end, because there's just nobody ever really truly bothered them in this postseason. And that's just going to be a recurring theme as far as Miami goes. And this is what is so interesting from

the same point of continuity. And I actually wanted to bring this up because it was something I talked about a lot after Game four. But I do think it's really interesting that from like twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, it was kind of like the Mercenary era, right, Like the Warriors signed Kevin Durant outright, and they win a couple championships.

for Drew Holliday the immediately win a title. That was kind of like that era, But now we're in this era where it's like, suddenly, you saw last year a Celtics group with Marcus mar Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum and Al Horford that had a ton of reps together that made.

So it's the groups that play the best basketball that end up winning. And so you have to learn how to play good basketball over years, and so I do think it's interesting how continuity has taken center stage yeah.

it's it's cyclical. So Lebron and Durant move and they have success. So everybody thinks that's that's but Kevin Durant and Lebron are two of the twelve best players in league history or fifteen best players. You can move around the league all you want, it's not gonna You're not gonna duplicate their championships. So I think Denver. I do think people will look at Denver and try to get

bigger to combat them. It was like when the Spurs had you know, early in the Spurs, when they have Robinson and Duncan, it's like, wow, like this is this is a lot and I think people will try to combat that, but I think a lot of what Denver does is unique to them. There's just not many guys like Aaron Gordon in the league that big. I mean just I saw him the other day. It's it's he was doing something after a game and he had like a sweater on and he was at the microphone and

I'm like, that ain't sit ups and deadlifts. That dude is just built, not like any human I've ever met, Like six ' ten broad He's just not on the market, right, Like.

I was so happy for the city because I've always said Detroit and Denver don't get the love. But everything works in Detroit. They like bowling. I've seen the ratings college basketball. You know, New York City is a great sports city, but they don't love college football, they don't love Nascar. Detroit loves everything. Denver's the same way. Denver loves everything. Every star was out the night in Denver, every coach, every player. It was like, it meant so

much to the city. And it's the fans there are you know, I grew up with the Orange Crush, and you know that was the loudest place in the league. And I don't know, I just I felt, I really felt. I was so happy for Denver. It meant so much to the city. I mean, you see Peyton Manning moved there. Right after he played, he said this story, I want to I want to be the rest of my life, and he's biting his lip and he's sweating, and I'm like, God, it meant so much.

might have been Jamal Murray. Somebody had a breakaway layup and he just qustioned Bryan and yeah, yeah, and he came flying in and blocked it. And I was like, that is just sheer force of competitive will. When he can't buy a bucket and there was literally like ten of those dudes out on the court tonight because nobody could really make anything, you know, even Jokic missed one of his late little push shots that he always makes.

So I wanted to talk about a little bit about Jokic in his place atop the league because I think even as we talk about the tier that you had mentioned, which is Luka, Janis, Jokic, and Steph, I think that Jokic has demonstrated a level of offensive I don't know what it's called, like inevitability, like insistent shot creation that's

even a level above some of those guys. This kind of reminds me a little bit of Lebron in the early twenty tens, where there's kind of like the changing of the guard, where it's like Kobe's tailing off right and Duncan's tailing off, and so Lebron's kind of filling that void, and then some of the younger guys like kd just wasn't quite there yet. Steph Curry's not quite

there yet. That's kind of the way I'm looking at this right now, Like Jokic feels like he's at the absolute peak of his powers here in his late twenties, and Giannis is like dealing with some flaws in his game in the half court, and Steph just didn't quite shine through against that dominant Laker defense the way that

Jokic did. And Luca's struggling in the margins of basketball, like he's unbelievably great, but he's struggling defensively, and he's struggling with his attitude, and he's struggling with kind of maintaining the flow of a team with how kind of ball hockey he can be sometimes, And so like, do you do you potentially see Yokic starting a run here where he's the best player in the world for a while.

to him, meaning he'll be easy to play with. Kobe, wasn't I mean Kobe won force of just a wilfulness, and then with Shaq and then with Gasol, like Kobe willed his way to a championship, a lot of that was Jordan. Jordan wasn't as easy to play with. There's a lot of different ways to do it. Then you

get Magic and Lebron where they make everybody better. I feel like Bill, Russell, Magic, Johnson, Lebron, and Jokic feels similar to me that stylistically they're all different, but their ability to make my players plus players B minus player A B plus C minus player a C plus, Like I mean, Murray was an A player in this I always thought of him kind of as an A minus a B plus and I'm like, no, he was an A player with some A plus knights and he's not

doing that without the screens. Inevitability is a good word. Like Russell, Magic, Lebron, it wasn't just them. I've said this before to you. Is the greatest stat in Lebron's basketball careers in high school, where he averaged like twenty six a game. As a junior, he scored he could have scored fifty a game. As a senior, he scored twenty seven. That told me all I think all I needed to know about Lebron is junior and senior year. He averaged like a point and a half more. That's

never been Lebron games to outscore people. It's always been about elevating others because he knows he can get his points. And it's like that told you what Lebron was he? I mean, Lebron James best basketball player ever. If I said, what do you think he averaged his last year of high school, you'd be like forty eight, Like no one more point than his junior year. And I think that's

the key. I think free agents and people are gonna look Jason at Jokic and be like, Denver's not a bad place to live, right Harden Luca, It's like, man, am I gonna get the shot? Am I gonna get looks? You watch Jalen Brown explode in New York, Jalen Brunson explode in New York, You're like, Holy God, Luca got.

it's really easy. You become your star. Somebody once told me this. It's the smallest locker, the fewest players, so your star has more of an impact on the culture and the attitude of the team. Like in the NFL, you split at halftime, offense here, defense there, baseball bullpen A third of the teams down there. Basketball stars. It's not about getting a star, it's about getting the right star.

Like Jokic, Lebron, Magic, Russell, they were the right star and that's why you have all these potential championships to meet Jokic.

be a market, you think it'd be a championship. It's like, No, it's usually playing time and big shock basketball players like to play basketball, and especially when they're at that phase in their career when internally they have that combination of confidence and experience where they feel like they can really help. The thing with Denver is they're gonna lose Bruce Bruce Brown in all likelihood because he's got like something like

a seven million dollar player option. He's gonna off out of that and he's gonna go somewhere and get one of those like fifteen million.

You know, like last year it was DeAndre Jordan. What if this year it's a like a better version of that type of player, you know, and then same thing goes for that bench wing bench guard type of stuff. Like they never really could figure out that backup point guard position. It was Bones Highland for a while. I was like, Okay, let's get Reggie Jackson in here. Okay, Reggie Jackson's not working well. We ended up just using

Bruce Brown and he's gonna be gone. So who's the backup point guard that they're gonna be able to sign? Because it's like, hey, guess what you're gonna get twenty seven minutes a night, and especially during the regular season when we're trying to eat innings and you're gonna get to get to start when Jamal mur he's taking his rest days, Like, there's gonna be people that slot into that spot. And you know, it's funny because we talk a lot about what kind of dynasty is Denver capable of.

I tend to think that next year could be the most dominant year of this entire kind of Denver Nuggets experience. It's that confidence of champions that always comes back. Underrated thing Jamal Murray's first full season coming back from the knee, where like he's got the confidence of that great playoff run. Jamal Murray has never had like that. I made the All Star team and I made second team All NBA season. That's probably going to be next season for Jamal Murray.

A guy like Michael Porter junior. He had some struggles in the finals that will get him in the gym all summer, working on specific things, particularly putting the ball on the floor. I think Denver could win sixty games next year and repeat, like next year is the year and then the other thing too. Phoenix is just still a ways away, like they might take them two off seasons to get the requisite pieces.

not what I would call twitchy. He's an ok ball handler, gets very sloppy at times with one hand passing, and sometimes he can always get a shot, a lot of fallaway stuff. But I don't consider him a dynamic athlete. I think I think Devin Booker, I think he's a more dynamic athlete. I think Jamal Murray became a little bit better playmaker the night suspected. I thought they were kind of even players. So there's still a team. Sometimes get into the offense, they hover around the outside. You know,

I'm like, okay, guys, okay, guys. It's a beatable team. But I think what they'll have to replace some of their gifts are just unique body types. I mean, Michael Porter's that move tonight down the floor behind the back, that's a very unique h Gordon's unique, Yokic, A lot of what they present, they're just unique body types that aren't on the market. And so if they lose a Brown, you can go find a shooter. You'll you'll find a shooter.

So but they're It's interesting. It's not that they're not beatable. It's just that, like I think if Phoenix found a couple of bench pieces and Chris Paul came back, I think they'd be a handful. I think they really would be a handful. I think DeAndre Ayton is going to be fifteen to twenty percent better just because of Ocal if they could get a bench piece, a really nice you know, almost a Malcolm Brogden, like, oh okay, just sixteen points, somebody a white or a brogged in from

Mike Boston, that kind of player. But what they have, and I think the organization has been good at drafting and developing what they have is unique bodies. It's just not those kind of bodies are you know, you see certain NFL teams that have defensive linemen. Philadelphia has three or four body types, and you're like, you know, they're not available on the market. Nobody lets Aaron Donald go or Fletcher Cox go or Chris Jones and the Chiefs go.

And so it's not like you're just replacing shooters. You can find guys that can shoot. Jokic, Gordon Porter Big that is I don't know, I watch them and I don't want to be hyperbolic, but I watched them and I'm like, this is you can beat them, but you'd have to shoot really, really well to beat this team in a seven game series.

where they are going to be in some wars. They're going to be in some six to seven game series in the future, especially with the CBA, when things get crunched, like sometime three four years from now, one of those dudes on the wing is gonna get you know, is going to have to be moved on from just simply from the standpoint of the financial elements of it. So yeah, like they're gonna be in some wars and we'll get

to see. Like you and I have been around covering the league long enough to know that not every playoff run looks like this. You don't always just dominate like they are gonna be tougher ones, but it is nice when you get one like this. So congratulations to Denver Nuggets fans. You guys have a really really fun team to watch, one that I'm excited to cover. And shout out to the Miami Heat for making that NBA Finals as entertaining as it could have been under the circumstances.

they've had. They've gone through that with Tyler Hero. But they need they need a star shooter because I mean, I thought what you said earlier, Jimmy Butler was I mean, he was running from the ball for about a quarter and a half, like he didn't want to shoot, he had no interest in it, Like Lebron got crushed for that in that series against Dallas. Like Lebron's running from the ball, Jimmy did a little bit of that tonight for about a quarter and a half like he was.

He had eight points entering the fourth and like stop shooting for a while. So yeah, I mean, it's it's sometimes when you lose how you lose and you get thumped, it's like, Okay, there's clarity, here's what we need.

like let's go back on it, let's work harder. And that's a very admirable, redeemable quality. But I don't think Brad Stevens is going to take a big swing. But Milwaukee's rebuilding, Darryl moriole be aggressive. Miami's going after Dame. If they land Dame, Miami feels better than Boston to me more explosive they've got, Like whereas I get Jalen Brown and Tatum on the wing, Robert Williams, you bubble wrap him. Marcus Smart's a defensive guy. I still don't

think they have a facilitator Dame Butler, Bam Spoe. It's like, oh yeah, that's a that feels like a potential championship team.

Pat or excuse me, Spoe and Pat. They're gonna find three or four dudes that have a chip on their shoulder that were undrafted, that didn't get all the attention that they wanted. So they play hard every damn possession of their lives and they're going to find a way to round that out. I agree with you. I think Boston is going to be the one team that kind of runs it back, just because I don't think they stand as much to gain from an aggressive trade as

some of these other teams do. And you're right talk about like knowing what you need, Like Milwaukee knows we need a significant turnover in our half court offense.