The Hardest Thing to Do in the NBA

And how the Denver Nuggets do it so damn well

Last weekend, I was listening to The Ringer NBA Show (shouts to the Real Ones) and heard the great Howard Beck make a couple of observations that I appreciated.

First, he noted how much basketball commentators like to declare something The Hardest Thing to Do in the NBA. It’s a longer list than you’d think, given the lead-in.

The Hardest Thing to Do in the NBA Is…

• Getting a superstar;

• Finding a co-star to pair with that superstar;

• Finding a third guy who can compliment the two stars;

• Keeping a competitive team together, managing both finances and egos (famously referred to by Pat Riley as the Disease of More);¹

That’s Beck’s shortlist that I just paraphrased, and there’s always more I could add. How about building through the draft? That’s hard. Or, here’s one: keeping your superstar happy if you do well enough to find one at all. That’s pretty hard too. Everybody’s so ready to jump ship these days. And how about keeping them healthy? That seems pretty tough lately.

Beck’s answer, which I take to be true, was simple. Be patient. It’s really, really hard to be patient. In all pro sports leagues, but maybe especially in basketball, manufactured urgency is part of the environment.

All too often, running it back with the same or similar core is interpreted as a concession. Standing pat is bad. Then you’re not trying. You’re sitting on your hands while everybody else is out there improving their roster. You’re falling behind! Quick! Trade for Bradley Beal!

Much of this stems from the star-chasing era of basketball we’re living in, and have been for a decade-plus now. Patience doesn’t jive with that outlook. LeBron, for all his countless virtues, has never been all that patient. Quite the opposite. There’s context there — paging Dan Gilbert — but he hasn’t. Spade = spade.

And hey! For the most part, that’s worked out for him. But that brings me to my point, which is sort of a derivation on Beck’s. The object of his praise, the exemplars of patience in the NBA right now, are the Denver Nuggets.

They’ve done a masterful job of building around their two stars, both of whom they drafted, and who happen to fit together almost preternaturally well. The Jokic-Murray two-man game deserves all the praise it gets. They’re inevitable.

Denver’s front office has done an equally impressive job of building around them with the perfect supporting cast, taking a risk on drafting Michael Porter, Jr. and deftly trading for Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to round out one of the best starting fives I’ve ever seen.

They’re just about perfect. The only thing they’re missing is elite rim protection, and they get by on a combination of Jokic’s sheer size, Gordon’s strength and mobility, and MPJ and KCP’s length. They score so much that their defense need only be competent, and they are.

So, good on Denver. They were patient. But, like anything else, patience only looks good when it pays off. I’m not trying to detract from Denver’s accomplishment in roster-building here, but in order to end up looking this smart, they needed a lot of things that were outside of their control to go right too. I’m reminded of Joe Lacob’s “light years ahead” remark.

To end up looking this smart, the Nuggets were Toranaga-caliber patient, yes. They were also exceedingly lucky. The trick — and no, I don’t know that it’s all that replicable for any other front office — is seeing and believing that all those stars really could align if they just waited. And wait they have.

Let’s review how this has worked out.

Shall I Count The Ways?

First off, there’s Jokic. I think it’s fair to say that him going 41st in the 2014 draft suggests he was not a can’t-miss prospect. We don’t need to dwell on that, but that’s amazing. He is credibly the greatest draft steal of all time.

He’s also been shockingly healthy for a man his size. The old adage has always suggested 7-footers are lower-body injuries waiting to happen. It certainly helps that Jokic plays such a ground-bound beautiful game, but still. He’s never missed meaningful time, nor been greatly hampered in the playoffs. Ask this year’s Bucks, Pelicans, Clippers or Heat whether availability matters.

Now, it’s not like they’ve been purely fortunate. They got highly unlucky with the timing of Jamal Murray’s injury a few years ago. This team might have a fuller trophy cabinet were it not for him missing both the 2021 and 2022 playoffs.

And that’s where the patience really came in. They waited. They waited for him to come back. That was the point, as Beck explained, when the pressure to trade Murray — for yes, Bradley Beal, or Paul George, or Kyrie Irving, or whoever really — got the loudest.

They waited because they believed two things. Murray would make it back, and he’d be great when he did. That was the discipline. I’m sure they took calls on those guys and many more, but they waited.

You know what helped make that possible? Jokic never grumbled. I’m not in those rooms, but from everything I can glean about Jokic, he loves Murray. I’m led to believe that he not only didn’t try to force the front office to make a panic move, he gave them the cover to stay the course.

How many guys in the league do that? To put a finer point on it — how many guys in the league have we seen do the exact opposite of that? Again, this isn’t a pure "that’s bad, and this is good” thing. But I’d make the case that Jokic’s chill disposition, much like a frequent comp of his, Tim Duncan, makes a lot of this that much easier.

There’s been more luck. Michael Porter, Jr. has largely delivered on the potential that was far from certain with his medicals coming in. People forget now, but I remember his lost year at Mizzou. He was considered at worst the #2 prospect in the country coming out of high school.

Without that chronic back injury, from which he’s ably returned — much like Murray, by the way — the Nuggets never get him at #14. Key, too, is that the ride hasn’t been all smooth. MPJ hasn’t been so good or so healthy that some other team gave him a giant offer. Denver has benefited immensely from his unique trajectory, as well as his own patience with his present role.

As for the other two? Same. KCP and Gordon were available, man. Anyone could have had them. KCP had already been a title-winning role player when L.A. sent him out of town in a horrific panic trade for Russell Westbrook — another player the Nuggets wisely avoided going after — but Gordon was less than obvious as a key cog in a great team. He’d only ever been an overmatched top scorer in Orlando, asked to do more than he could well. The Nuggets saw something else, and he’s given them another level of athleticism without needing the ball.

Gordon had to humble himself to play this role. He was the guy on the Magic. And he was drafted #4 overall, so you have to imagine that’s what he saw for himself coming into the league.²

Thanks to all of those ingredients coming together in the way they have, Denver has given themselves the gift of continuity, never interrupted by a coaching change either. Michael Malone has been there since 2015 without losing the locker room, a relative rarity in today’s game. Again, give Jokic and Murray some credit there. All it takes is one leader getting prickly.

They even play patient. Even when they’re down 20, they rarely feel like they lose control. It’s very unusual to see them press, so they tend to keep their mistakes to a minimum. It’s a superpower of sorts, to be that intentional in all they do.

This has all been a longwinded of getting ahead of myself. The Nuggets haven’t won the title. They’ve got a ways to go before they raise another one, if indeed they do. The Timberwolves — by virtue of their size, defensive intensity, and the singular dynamism of Anthony Edwards — could give them a whole lot more trouble than the Lakers just did, closing the tight games that L.A. couldn’t. I wouldn’t call you crazy if you picked Minnesota to win.

Then there’s the Thunder, or the Mavs/Clippers, both of whom are somewhat threatening too. And all the while, Boston looms in the East, so there’s a ways to go yet.

For now, then, I’ll take a page out of Denver’s book and try to be patient. It’s the hardest thing to do in NBA commentary, but I’ll see what I can do.

Also, This

🐃 <<< this is a water buffalo, but I did try. Is a bison technically closer? I’m not sure. Anyways, I’ve also tried to keep Laura (who you’ll all remember from the North Brooklyn Baddies volleyball squad) apprised of the Buffalo Bills’ draft class. Her evaluation system is a little different than mine, but she has confirmed that DeWayne Carter — the DT out of Duke who the Bills picked in the third round — looks nice. Agreed! He really does. She’s also voiced strong support for new WR Keon Coleman, he of the Macy’s puffer jacket. Big-time stuff.

🐉 The entire UAB Blazers football team — a program that briefly ceased to exist not so long ago, heralding something else about the state of college sports — publicly joined a players’ association this week at the urging of their coach, former NFL QB Trent Dilfer. They signed up for Athletes.org, one of several groups looking to organize athletes for potential discussions over revenue sharing in the near future. The drumbeat continues.

🏠 College sports leaders, including the NCAA, are reportedly considering settling the House case that we covered extensively in The Option, a massive antitrust case pertaining to NIL restrictions, to the tune of $2.7 billion. Sound like a lot? They wouldn’t think of settling if they thought it wouldn’t be more if they lost. You could say we were a little ahead of the curve on this news, so while Ep. 6 isn’t quite dated yet, it’s certainly timely. Go listen if you haven’t:

🏒 I’m not a good hockey fan. I’ll cop to that. But even I’ve noticed the Rangers looking the part here in the first round of the playoffs. Juan Soto is also looking the part in pinstripes, the Knicks are advancing. Don’t look now — they hate that — but we’re dangerously close to a New York sports moment.

🏟️ The Chiefs’ stadium stand-off continues getting spicier, as their owner now says — pointedly, wouldn’t you say? — that Arrowhead isn’t the only option on the table. It’d be a real shame if Missouri’s lone remaining pro football team started playing their home games across the state line in Kansas.

1. Now that you’ve read the rest, this isn’t a spoiler anymore! I first came across the term “Disease of More” by way of Beck’s new boss, Bill Simmons, way back when he was still writing for ESPN. I found the article, too. Check out this passage:

“Once you get caught up in everything that comes with winning, you stop winning. Rarely does a team avoid pettiness, acrimony and self-flagellation to stay focused enough to repeat. You need a great coach and a greater star to keep everyone in line, and you need character guys up and down the roster.”

Sound like anyone you know?

2. It’s worth noting the collective pedigree in this starting five. Jokic may have gone 41st, but a healthy MPJ could’ve easily gone 1st in 2018, while Murray went 7th in 2016, Gordon went 4th in 2014, and KCP went 8th in 2013. Lottery guys to a man, some of them high-end. So how’d the Nuggets get that collection of talent on one team? They won some bets, they bought low, and they waited. Patience, y’all.