The Nuggets have been playing some pretty poor defense this season, and they have been noticeably less physical than in years past. What's changed?
Coaching, for one, and Brian Scalabrine didn't "want to throw Adelman under the bus," but he thinks it comes down to the swap on the sidelines from Michael Malone to David Adelman. And he described an edge Malone possessed that Adelman just doesn't seem to carry, and it may be what's been missing on the defensive and physical side.
Scalabrine, a former Celtic and current analyst for the club, who also announces games nationally, had some scathing words for the Nuggets' defense, and on "The Zach Lowe Show," he didn't hold back about what he thought the Nuggets lacked, and former head coach Malone brought to the table that's now missing.
"I think Mike Malone’s, like, ruggedness, was really good for their team," Scalabrine said. "They looked big, they looked imposing, they looked physical. That has all disappeared to me."
He's not wrong. And he may be on to something, because there's definitely something missing this year.
The Nuggets defense allowed a ton of points in the paint to the Jazz
84 points in the paint to be exact. That's how many the Nuggets allowed to the tanking Jazz, who ran a layup drill all night and looked like they were practicing the three-player weave down the court.
The Nuggets had no answer for the Jazz in the paint, and nobody got a body on anybody. It was atrocious, and it was the most points the Nuggets allowed in the paint since 1996-97.
The Jazz shot 56% from the floor and only coughed up the 10-point lead they held with five and a half minutes to play because it looked like they got a memo to abandon the script and start shooting jumpers. The Jazz are tanking for a better draft pick, and the Nuggets still struggled with getting physical.
Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray both had huge games for the Nuggets, and it bailed them out for the win in the clutch.
Can the Nuggets be what Scalabrine thought they could be?
Scal did think the Nuggets had a good shot at the start of the season to be a top-10 defense, and in 2023-24, they were. The Nuggets finished the season with a 112.3 defensive rating, good for 8th in the league. So they do have a pedigree to prove Scal's points, but it's missing now.
The Nuggets currently have a defensive rating of 116.2, 21st in the NBA, and that's a full point worse than their 21st-place finish last season. And in the last five games, all wins, it's an eye-watering 121.3.
It remains to be seen whether the Nuggets will find their "toughness" or "ruggedness" that they had under Malone, according to Scal again, but at least they've kicked their offense up a notch. Over those same five games, the Nuggets have an offensive rating of 128.7, the highest in the league.