Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone is already in the midseason process. After the Nuggets’ 118-114 preseason loss to the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night, Malone didn’t mince words when talking about his team’s struggle.
“I played with that starting unit the entire third quarter to try to push their limits a little bit,” Malone said. “That was probably a little difficult for some of those guys. In practice I think we can go up and down more. I think very often as coaches and in today’s NBA, the league has become very soft. The whole world is afraid to condition and run. Well, we have to do it.”
Malone had Nikola Jokic, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Russell Westbrook play all 12 minutes of the third quarter. Jamal Murray did not play a game in the second half because he has been dealing with a knee issue, so Malone had Christian Braun and Julian Swather take advantage of the opportunity as the fifth starter. When it was just a preseason tournament, Malone is trying to instill in his players the value of conditioning now for when games really start to come into play in April and May, especially with the way the extreme season ended.
Last season we saw the Nuggets fuel up the second round of the NBA playoffs against a Minnesota Timberwolves team that outscored them in seven games. The Timberwolves went up 2-0 in that order before the Nuggets came back to even things up and took a 3-2 order supremacy. Minnesota pushed for a Game 7, and in the second half of that tournament, the Wolves looked like the better-coached team I’m sick down the stretch, as Anthony Edwards was still running on a full tank of gas.
The Nuggets’ defense of the name ended sooner than many expected, but Denver enters this season as one of the few championship contenders. They lost another centerpiece of their 2023 run in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to Encanto, but they regained enough in their rotation to still be considered among the most efficient in the league, especially with Jokic, the three-time MVP, at the center of it all this. But if sinister behavior is already being created that will apply throughout the preseason, the closest thing to that would leak into the regular season and the playoffs.
Malone, though, is trying to nip that in the bud, and Porter Jr. is taking him to center as the regular season approaches.
“The better conditioned you are, the more opportunities you’ll find because you’re always on the go,” said Porter Jr. “That’s a big goal for me this year.”
With Malone publicly calling out his players, will we see a more conditioned Denver team this season, which should be a scary thought for other teams in the Western Convention?
