Old Unreliable is back.
It’s like they never left — the cold, lonely, unnerving non-Nikola Jokic minutes.
They haven’t been as much of an existential crisis as usual throughout this season. In fact, the Nuggets persevered through a full month of non-Jokic minutes to great effect in January. But just as Jokic is starting to feel like himself again, the second unit that plays behind him is nosediving.
“My body feels really good,” Jokic said Sunday. “I think I’m in shape. I think I’m back (like) before the injury, in that kind of shape. I feel really good out there.”
The Nuggets outscored Oklahoma City and Minnesota by a combined 19 points when he was on the court in a pair of pivotal games this weekend. They were outscored by 34 combined points in the 17 minutes he spent on the bench.
Just like old times.
“It’s just something that we have to learn from,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said, lamenting a 9-0 Minnesota run that swung the momentum Sunday. “I have to find a unit that will actually do it, compete at a higher level. Because to me, that was the game. Then I had to extend minutes, and I’m playing guys into the ground. I can’t do that. Especially with the way the schedule has been very dense.”
A frustrated Adelman hinted at changes to his primary non-Jokic lineup after Denver’s 117-108 loss to the Timberwolves. Its most recent iteration has consisted of Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Cam Johnson, Spencer Jones and Jonas Valanciunas, with Johnson staggering as the lone starter. (Jones was replaced by Zeke Nnaji while dealing with a shoulder injury Sunday.)
Jokic typically plays the entire first quarter and the entire third, with his breaks at the start of the second and fourth. The barometer for Adelman’s confidence in the second unit is all about whether Jamal Murray occupies those rest minutes or whether Denver is playing well enough to kill time without both star players.
“I will say this: Throughout the season, we’ve been really good doing that,” Adelman said. Obviously, Cam’s ankle was really hurting him tonight. And throughout the early part of the season, we ran our offense through Cam and Tim. It was really successful. Right now, there’s not a lot of flow to it.”
Bruce Brown (11) defends Anthony Edwards (5) of the Minnesota Timberwolves during the third quarter at Ball Arena in Denver on Sunday, March 1, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)Anchored by a veteran duo
Hardaway and Brown have been the glue of that unit — a backcourt duo that Adelman has intentionally kept out of the starting lineup, preferring to pair them off the bench even when injuries created openings. Julian Strawther and Jalen Pickett have started over them in several games, not because they’re higher in Denver’s pecking order but because Hardaway and Brown are. “Tim and Bruce, I wanted them to play together as much as possible,” Adelman explained in Oklahoma City. “Don’t break them up. Keep a rhythm. … Two vets who understood what I was trying to do when we had that conversation early on.”
In more than 1,000 minutes together this season, Hardaway and Brown have a minus-1.4 net rating. Below zero sounds bad, but it’s not in this context. They’ve mostly prevented the catastrophic runs that have defined the non-Jokic minutes at their worst over the years.
Valanciunas has anchored the second unit as Jokic’s backup center, but Adelman insinuated before the game Sunday that when Denver is fully healthy, he might prefer to use starting power forward Aaron Gordon at the five for certain matchups. Valanciunas, who isn’t fleet of foot, struggled when Oklahoma City went small on Friday.
“It’s a good learning lesson. Against that team, we may have to change up who plays when,” Adelman said. “The way I’d like to play if we’re going to change our rotation isn’t available to us right now, to play (OKC) in that style of basketball, unless you go dramatically small. So it was trying to stick with what we’ve been doing (in Friday’s game). Obviously, it didn’t go well.”
Peyton Watson (8) of the Denver Nuggets celebrates making a 3-pointer against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the first quarter at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado on Sunday, February 1, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)What happens when Watson returns?
When asked to elaborate on the way he’d like to play, Adelman confirmed that it involves both Gordon and Peyton Watson, who are ramping up to return from injuries. The last time Gordon came back from a hamstring strain in January, Adelman wanted to avoid immediately using him at the five due to the more physically taxing responsibilities of that position. The dynamic could be similar when he returns to the court this time, especially because the Nuggets are wary of Gordon’s overall durability going into what they hope will be a deep playoff run. Still, their tendency over the years has been to lean on him as a backup center when the stakes are highest.
Once upon a time this season, before Watson was forced to become the Nuggets’ second scoring option, he was also an everyday cog in the bench lineup. The four-man combination of him, Brown, Hardaway and Valanciunas has posted an immaculate net rating of 10.4 in a relatively small sample size of 124 minutes. Once Watson and Gordon are both back, Watson will probably be coming off the bench for the first time since mid-November, unless Adelman wants to make a more dramatic change by demoting someone from his starting lineup.
More likely is that Watson returns to his bench role but becomes more of a centerpiece in the second unit’s offense. After all, the more he plays with Jokic and Murray, the less he and the Nuggets will be able to build on his emergence as an efficient ball-in-hand player. In the non-Jokic minutes, Denver can assume a different play style. Watson can seize more opportunities to create his own shot in isolation.
If Brown, Hardaway, Watson and a center are all part of the unit, then who’s the fifth player? This is perhaps the most important variable for Adelman to figure out before the regular season ends. All-bench lineups are rare in the NBA, especially in the playoffs. The Nuggets are like most teams in that they want to stagger at least one other starter during the minutes when their best player is out.
Former coach Michael Malone’s mindset was that he needed one of Jokic or Murray on the court at all times to engineer a functional offense. Adelman’s philosophy differs. He prefers to maximize their minutes together, enabling them to play off each other as much as possible. The domino effect is that Denver has to survive nightly for a few minutes without both.
Adelman felt that his hand was forced this weekend, he said, after the loss to Minnesota. He called a timeout during a Thunder run on Friday to get Murray on the floor for the remainder of Jokic’s breather, alongside Johnson. Then after another terrible stint to start the second quarter Sunday, Adelman switched around his rotation in the fourth, playing Murray instead of Johnson.
“I’m gonna have to force-feed (Jokic and Murray) minutes until we get full again, (when) there’s more options to bring guys off the bench,” the first-year head coach said. “It’s not what I want to do. I like them to play together. I don’t like when I’m taking minutes away from them (as a duo), not being on the court together. But if we have to do it, then we’ll do it. Because this can’t happen.”
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Johnson’s first five games resembled the month of solid overall play after his knee injury. He shot efficiently, defended steadily. Then came two matchups against division rivals that Denver might see in the playoffs. Physical teams that have bothered the Nuggets in past series. Johnson wasn’t part of those seven-game showdowns. He’s four years removed from his last playoff experience. It showed in a pair of playoff-caliber games.
Which leads to Sunday, when the non-Jokic minutes haunted Ball Arena anew and left Adelman vowing to search for answers. A configuration that had worked months earlier had suddenly imploded in one weekend. The Nuggets were climbing out of the wreckage in fifth place in the West.
“It’s happened two games in a row, and it’s cost us big time,” Adelman said. “Quick 12-0, 12-2, 11-2, 11-0, whatever it is. It can’t happen in this high-level of a game. So we’ll have to talk about it. And I will explore. … We’ll try to find a group that will compete and play at a higher level.”
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