Sometimes, the most-honest evaluations of a team come not from watching their own games, but from watching the teams that made it further. The Denver Nuggets walked into this season with championship aspirations and walked out of the first round in stunned silence. The Minnesota Timberwolves ended their playoff run earlier than anyone in Denver wanted to admit was possible. But the NBA Finals are now offering a sobering perspective on what Denver might have been chasing in the first place.
ADVERTISEMENT
On a Thursday edition of “Dover and Cecil” on 104.3 The Fan, Cecil Lammey watched Game 1 between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs with one question rolling around in his head. And the answer wasn’t kind to the Nuggets.
“I’m thinking like ‘Hey, what would the Nuggets be? Would the Nuggets be right there? Could the Nuggets hang with what the Knicks were bringing to the court? Could the Nuggets hang with what San Antonio was bringing to the court?’ My answer was no,” Lammey said.
It’s a brutally direct assessment, and one rooted in the eye test more than any single stat line. Both finalists displayed the kind of organizational structure, defensive cohesion and depth that separates true contenders from teams that simply have a great player. The Nuggets, despite having one of the best players on the planet in Nikola Jokic, have not consistently shown those same qualities. The gap, when watching it play out in real time on the biggest stage, looked wider than most in Denver wanted to believe.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lammey then expanded the lens to include Oklahoma City, the other juggernaut sitting in the Western Conference.
“If the Nuggets were to make the NBA Finals, I feel like they wouldn’t – well one, they’d have to get through San Antonio and even OKC, that’s not gonna happen. Not in this current iteration, not with their current injury situations,” he said.
That’s the hard truth. The path back to the Finals for any Western Conference team runs directly through both San Antonio and Oklahoma City, two franchises stacked with elite, ascending talent at the most premium positions in the sport.
Victor Wembanyama is rewriting what is possible from a big man. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just won back-to-back MVP awards. Chet Holmgren continues to develop. These aren’t teams Denver can scheme around. They are teams the rest of the conference will be chasing for the next half decade.
ADVERTISEMENT
Add in the injury concerns that have plagued the Nuggets’ core, and the math becomes harder to argue with. Jokic remains exceptional. The roster around him, in its current form, does not have the firepower or the structure to navigate that gauntlet.
The first-round exit was painful. Watching the Finals only confirms what Lammey already suspected. The Nuggets weren’t one bad series away from contention. They were further from the mountaintop than anyone wanted to admit. And that realization is the one Denver has to sit with as the offseason begins in earnest.