Russell Westbrook essentially didn’t do it change Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on the Denver Nuggets. Technically they don’t even play games in the same place. One of them earns almost $23 million this season. The alternative is to earn the minimum. But since the Oklahoma Town Thunder defeated the Nuggets 102-87 on their home court on Thursday, it was hard to think about anything else, but still “the Nuggets look like a team that replaced Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with Russell Westbrook.”
Most of Denver’s season-ending problems continued until the opening night loss. Many have been exacerbated. Denver attempted a league-low 31.2 three-pointers since the game’s season finale. They shot 7 of 39 from deep on Thursday. They ranked 29th in free throw attempts with 19.9 per game. They attempted just 14 against the Thunder.
Westbrook was rarely the sole culprit on those fronts, but his presence was a striking reminder of the step backwards the Nuggets, who are just two seasons removed from an NBA championship, took when Let Caldwell-Pope progress. Caldwell-Pope shot over 40% on 3-pointers a season ago. Westbrook is probably the worst high-volume shooter in NBA history, finishing with just six points while going 2-for-10 from the floor and 1-for-6 from deep in the opener. Having Caldwell-Pope all over the field helped create benefits for drivers like the rim. The Thunder didn’t bother protecting Westbrook as he hung on the perimeter. They trusted those excess resources to cover the paint without having to make mistakes. Caldwell-Pope’s perimeter defense would have been a huge help against reigning MVP runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored 28 for Oklahoma Town in the win.
This all used to be a bit predictable. Westbrook is on his sixth team in seven years in large part because of those flaws, but introducing him to a roster that already shared some of those problems only served to amplify them all. Bench minutes had already been an emergency for Denver since the start of Nikola Jokic month. In fairly positive terms, the Nuggets lost Westbrook’s 21 minutes by 24 points total.
The first number is as notable as the second. Denver’s incorrect conservation played as many minutes as Westbrook. Not defensive ace Peyton Watson, who might have been willing to bother Gilgeous-Alexander a little more if he had the chance. Neither did Julian Strawther, who made 22 of his 48 3-point shots in the Summer League and preseason combined. At least both will get rotation minutes this time around. Nuggets maestro Michael Malone is notoriously slow to consider children and erratically aging them a thing of the past.
Letting Caldwell-Pope progress was largely a financial solution, and defensible in light of the second deck and the extensions they gave Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon later. It was also said to have been a message from Denver’s front office to Malone: Honor the youth, as you will no longer have the same caliber of veteran at your disposal. It’s hard to think that Thursday is exactly what they had in mind.
It is a game, for which you never need to panic. That is very true in the case of his opponent. The Thunder were simply the youngest bug. 1 seed in NBA history. They have a chance of running a traditionally dominant defense and then replacing Josh Giddey with Alex Caruso and signing free agent Isaiah Hartenstein (who didn’t play in games Thursday).
Capturing variation is a tough mistress. The Nuggets aren’t going to give up as many visible appearances as they did against the Thunder each night. However, there are techniques to create these paintings. Westbrook, for all his weaknesses, still has purposes on an NBA roster. But his fit on this roster remains iffy at best, and the lack of one of the few important role players in the NBA who could do many of the things Denver has been missing recently made it more obvious.
Westbrook did not become a ready-made champion, as the Nuggets were before the departures of Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green. He didn’t even reach a status similar to the Clippers team he signed with in 2023. That team was at least shooting level and hoped to maximize him as a transition risk and secondary ball handler.
This one, although he is still immensely gifted with the four center backs of that 2023 champion, is as wrong as a season ago in which he was eliminated from the second round by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Their biggest offseason departure was adding a player with the same flaws and a few new ones.
The end result was more or less what we should have anticipated. The Nuggets were a bad shooting team to end the game and a worse shooting team on Thursday. They had problems with bench lineups late in the season and had problems again against the Thunder when the man charged with solving them had as many give-ups as goals in the outfield.
There are still enough opportunities to address all of this, but it will require a more proactive solution than replacing a celebrity player with a declining Hall of Famer who might not have even made sense with Denver in his prime.
