This is why basketball is so fascinating because there are no sort of easy, there are rules and sort of truths of the game, right? But even some of the truths sometimes crack apart when you interrogate them. So one truth is like continuity, universally a good thing. More continuity better. There's, there's a place where continuity can blur in to staleness. If the same team is together for too long and then it can blur back out of stake. That same team can find a new wrinkle or find some new juice for whatever reason. But it's just fascinating how that happens where, because I do think this team partly because they were exhausted. Partly because I mean you talked to people within the team and Calvin Booth talked about this with me too. It's hard to summon the same just ferocity and hunger for the second title after a really long playoff run to the first title where everyone's got their chip on their shoulder they got something to prove. And partly because they've just been together a while, continuity can kind of morph into a semi-staleness. And I think like you mentioned Russ, the word speed came up in my conversation with Calvin, 15 times speed speed speed bringing the ball up, speed cutting in the half court Christian Brown's a faster cutter than KCP. Julian Strahler moves pretty fast. We want Russ to play fast. We want Jamal Murray to come off screens faster. Like just go full speed around the screen more often than always defaulting to like the Bob and weave and the caginess, which he's a plus app, but like sometimes you just gotta go. Speed came up a lot. It's really interesting. And the other thing is like, some of it is, to your point, like I think Michael Porter Jr. just has to shoot more threes. Jamal Murray just has to shoot more threes. Just get more threes up, even if they're not these perfect wide open catching two threes. Like you just got to take more threes. But the speed factor was really interesting how often

that came up. And I think it's real. And I love that you mentioned the half court, because it's not just about playing in transition. It's once you get to the half court, I've always said, Jokic is the slowest player physically, but the fastest player mentally. He makes the quickest decision. So the quicker you're cutting, the quicker the ball is moving, the quicker that the defense has to react, well, that's increases Jokic's advantage every, every time you compound that. So to me, that is a big part of it. And by the way, another thing Denver is getting is a little bit more athletic, a little bit bigger. I mean, Christian Brown's a great athlete. Peyton Watson's a great athlete. Julian Stromer has length. He's not a great athlete, but he has a lot of length. And I think that those things actually are a sneaky benefit. And then lastly, you lose a little shooting, but you speed things up. You play a little bit faster, so the athleticism advantage moves more in your favor. But the other thing this team, I think, is going to be able to do at a high level as offensive rebound. Christian Brown's a phenomenal offensive rebounder. Russell Westbrook's a phenomenal, one of the best guard offensive rebounders in NBA history. You've got more size and length. Dario Sarich is a very good rebounder, actually, for his position. Rebounds at a higher rate than Aaron Gordon does in terms of just statistically. So you look at this and you say Denver should be able to clean the glass on both ends. And this used to be a calling card. If you go back to the 2019 and 2020 Nuggets, even the bubble run, they rebound, offensive rebounded at the best mark in the NBA. Now they're about league average over the last like three years. It's an identity that they've kind of gone away from in favor of more transition defense and spreading it out more. But I think that that's another way where you could say okay you lose a little shooting but you need to increase your pace and your offensive rebounding and you might be able to make up for some of that, at least in the regular season. In the playoffs, a team might be able to take advantage of it. But I think that that's an identity they're going to have to shift to.

Well, offensive rebounding has been a big part of their identity off and on. I think they were top five again last year or something close to it. Um, and I think one of the reasons they're offense slumped in the playoffs was they came across two of the 10 best defensive rebounding teams in the league and they just couldn't get offensive rebounds. Another thing, offensive rebounds in rim pressure and other of these things that speed lead to athleticism, ferocity is free throws. And I think the Nuggets are keenly aware that, okay, we're never going to be even an average three point shooting team in terms of volume. Like we're just, that part of the math is going to be against us in a lot of matchups. That's fine. We have all sorts of other ways to compensate for that, including being the best mid-range team in the league and the best floater team in the league and all of that. We do need to get the free throws up to average. We can't be a bottom five free throw team and a bottom one three point attempt team. And I think that's, that's part of the hope that said, man, I don't have a lot of high hopes for the Russell Westbrook experiment. Do you? It's more, this is the first move.

The Nuggets have been so tough for nine years, they've been climbing. It just feels like it's been a linear, we're moving upwards. This is the first one that feels like it has more downside than upside. So I don't, at this moment, there's definitely avenues where I see it working out. They're more like intangible avenues. And I'll give you an example. You mentioned there was Denver, maybe didn't have the same motivation. Jamal Murray mentioned this by the way, after the season that it was hard this year, because the 82 game season, you know, what did it really mean? They kind of know what really matters and what have you. I think bringing in a veteran player that's beloved and has not won might inject some life back into the roster a little bit. Cause I remember when Yokich won in 2023, he said, yeah, I really wanted for Jeff. Jeff and Ish, these guys have been in the league for 20 years and they never won when I wanted that. I think that Westbrook might bring some of that enthusiasm. And then also just shifting your identity. I think Denver last year was again stale. It felt like a repeat of the same season. And I think it got stale this year. If you are bringing in new guys and changing your identity, it might keep things fresh enough to reenergize and, and make this less monotonous.

So I was 1000% against the Clippers acquiring Russ. I told people at the Clippers that they were like, we're doing it anyway. We don't care what you think and where we think it's going to work. And we did not that they would care what I think. just we were just shooting the breeze and for a while it worked and I ate crow like Russ was buying into a roll off the bench rebounding like all hell pretty judicious with his shot selection they found ways around his complete lack of spacing away from the ball and I was like, I guess this is gonna work. I mean all along I had this nagging feeling like I just don't really trust this and then The playoffs came along and I don't know how much of that Clippers Mad series you caught probably all of it Cuz you're doing all NBA wide stuff now It's hard to play worse in a playoff series for a high level on-ball player than Russell Westbrook did in that series on both ends of the floor. And I was like, Oh my God, he shot 13 of 50 in that series, 11 turnovers, 10 assists. It was just on tilt the entire series. And I mentioned that not to harp on it, but to say this, Russell Westbrook is a backup now. He's going to be a backup on this team. And I think he's the kind of backup where to your point there are slices of games and slices of the nuggets style and slices of their rotation where you can fit him in and think that makes sense. That works. There are also going to be games and weeks when it just goes completely haywire. And I think he's at the point in his career when during those games and weeks you just have to not play him or reduce his minutes to the point where he's a real bit player. The Clippers didn't really do that. The Nuggets may conclude we don't really even have the depth to do that because they don't have another backup point guard. They kind of have to do it by committee. But I think I mean the way he played in that math series merited that kind of treatment. And the response to that is, you know, you just don't know how he's going to respond to something like that. You don't know if how he's going to respond to being like coming to Denver and like, Oh, yeah, I'm a complete there's no chance I'm going to start like I should start a blow. I don't know. You just don't know.

Right. I think those those concerns are all extremely valid, especially the just the note about the slumps that he gets into because he is not a guy that scales his game down. Like, okay, my shot's not working. Let me try something else. He's a guy that just will keep taking them. Um, I think that the playoff rotation for Denver yokes on the court for all, but six minutes in a playoff series. And I think he is the big factor for that. If playing alongside Yokich opens up the paint. You can play more with Murray, more with Michael Porter. I've given you the optimistic spin here, but you might be- No, no, I'm

not totally pessimistic. I just have been sort of trained. I mean, Russ has been on all these teams in all these years. It doesn't seem to end well.

And look, it is the meme, right? But it might work for us. And that's what Denver is doing here is that this is this time it might work. But I do think there is a reason to look at his teams at Oklahoma City, his teams in Houston, his teams in both L.A. places and say Denver plays a completely different brand of basketball, one that he's never proven to be able to do. But if he is able to translate his game to fit into that system, I do think it's different than, OK, we just got four spacers and our three spacers in a roller and now we're all just kind of driving and kicking to each other, which is what he's played in. So there's reason for it to work out. And I do think that more than anything, because you know, the reports have been that, that Yochitch was one of the people that said, hey, I really like Russ, I want to play him. We need what he brings to our team. We need that here. And I think one of the things that Denver desperately needs is what one of the things Bruce Bratton brought was intensity, every single night, every single practice, every single quarter. And Denver lacks that. They're a quite, we're not that far removed from Richard Jefferson saying it's the quietest locker room he's ever been a part of. Nobody talks, nobody says anything. And I think Westbrook will bring that in every game, 82 game mentality to the nuggets that they desperately need. And if that translates to the playoffs, if they find a way to make the on court stuff work, I do think that there's some positive upside to him coming here.

I'd say I'll end with the same challenge I gave Tim McMahon before. It's July 26, marking an unsettled, Ingram unsettled, a little bit of stuff unsettled in the West. Who would you pick today to make the finals out of the West?

Right now I would pick the Oklahoma City Thunder. I think that they're the most complete team. The concern is of course just when a team hasn't done it before and they're young, you think can they do it? But when you look at what they were good at and what they were weak at last year, they doubled down on some of the things they were good at. They were good at perimeter containment last year and they add out Caruso now. If you you just talk about who you're gonna have to stop including Denver. Well, we just saw Jamal Murray struggle with a three headed monster of Jaden McDaniel's Anthony Edwards and Nikhil Alexander Walker. Well, now you have Dort Wallace and Caruso to throw Adam that's equal in my opinion in terms of how you can harass an on ball pick and rolled player. And then now you have the best defense anybody's ever come up with you against Jokic, which is a large bodied center in Hartenstein, who by the way knows and admires his game and has tried to mold his game after Jokic and a great rim protecting for that can sag off of Aaron Gordon and Chet Holmgren that that he already had nine blocks against Denver once playing that role sagging off of Aaron Gordon. now you have a true center to play alongside him. So I look at that team and I just say, they have fewer weaknesses than they did last year when they were the number one seed. They're more mature, they're more experienced. And I think they're the best team in the West.

Now, I wanna be clear, this is not my final finals pick. It's July 26th, this is not your final finals pick. But I also defaulted to Oklahoma City for now. I, I, I think there will be the number one seed if they stay healthy. I think they learned some stuff in the playoffs last year, including they need a little bit more kind of zest and playmaking in their offense around SGA. And they obviously addressed a bunch of needs in size and shooting in defense depth. I think they are the best, most plausible answer among several plausible answers for now. My general point about Denver is, A, we could have an argument over who has the, what team has the most pressure, the highest stakes on this season. You could argue for the Bucks, could argue for the Sixers. I think Denver has a pretty plausible argument after coming up a round or two short of what they expected in their bid for a repeat, after the second straight off season in which a critical player left. And Bruce Brown, there was just nothing they could do about Bruce Brown. The offer from Indiana was just too big. And with a three time MVP at age 29 and all the flak that took about the apron and all of this, I think Denver has as much at stake as if not more than any other team in the league in the outcome of this particular 24, 25 season. I also think they remain an inner circle title contender and that the attention on the free agency departures, I think the consensus is a hair too low on the Nuggets in their championship outlook in 2425. If Yo-Kitch is healthy and Murray is healthy and they make some adjustments and one or two of the young kids pops even a little bit, I just would never sleep on Yo-Kitch in prime ever. And I may we make it to September when I make my real pick it may very well be Denver. I don't know. Yeah,

I think and that's exactly how I feel about it. And I would add Murray to this now where he's in a really weird spot because he underperformed in these playoffs and he missed 23 games last year. But it's really when Murray and Yoko are healthy, they win like 80% of their games, this full stop, forget everything else, all the other moving parts. And that goes back to playoffs, the way as well. So I tend to agree that their floor is higher than I think people are kind of giving credit for just because of having Murray and Yokoch. But they're more volatile than they've been

in any of the healthy Murray-Yokich seasons. Adam Morris just must listen. Podcasts with Tim Legler, legs, you You stole legs from us stole legs from me. If you know the NBA better, nobody knows the Nuggets better. Thank you for lending us more of your time. I hope to see you soon my friend. Appreciate it. Have a good one. All right, last but definitely not least, never least, one of the best in the business from the athletic Minnesota expert, Timber Wolves beat writer, John Krasinski. How are you? I'm good, Zach, just enjoying a little bit of downtime here and

soaking it up, but a shorter off season than I'm used to having. So I got to adjust to that now, covering a team that's actually pretty good. How

are the twins?

They're good. They're kind of like, they're in the wild card race. They're about four and a half out in the division. Cleveland's had a really good season. So they're in the mix. I'll say that, but I don't know that they're primed for a deep run or anything like that.