Not that they had much choice, due to the NBA’s ridiculously punitive salary cap, but the Denver Nuggets begin the new NBA season with a projected starting lineup that’s a carbon copy of last year, and a bench made up of a few leftovers and other team’s discarded parts.
Oh, and head coach David Adelman returns after having a rookie season that included a bunch of rookie mistakes.
We were told that Adelman taking over for NBA champion Michael Malone with just six games left in the 2024-25 regular season provided a measure of relief within the walls of Ball Arena. Malone had been too intense, too demanding and the players had tuned him out, they said. At the time, Adelman was not yet 44 years old, had never been a head coach, and had a résumé far less impressive than, say, basketball Hall-of-Famer Becky Hammon, who had just as much, if not more NBA coaching experience than Adelman did at the time. (And Hammon has won multiple WNBA titles as a head coach).
Adelman took the reins, and the Nuggets – hobbled by injuries – made it to the second round of the NBA Western Conference playoffs before falling in Game 7 to the eventual NBA champs in Oklahoma City.
Then, last year – in Adelman’s first full season in the lead chair and free of Malone’s iron fist – the Nuggets won 54 regular season games… before getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs.
What folks remember most is that substantial failure.
As this season’s training camp began, Adelman – falling back on his analytics and highlighting everything that went well during an injury-riddled 2025-26 season – didn’t give much time to the postseason failings, instead pushing folks to focus on what a great regular season Denver had last year, all things considered.
It was the wrong message, and it highlighted the second-year head coach’s shortcomings: An overreliance on analytics and his team’s “rankings” on offense and defense. An on-court personality that comes off as robotic, and an inflexibility that doomed his team against Minnesota in last year’s playoff flop when he insisted on playing “small ball” against a Timberwolves team that had a pair of bigs on the floor together for almost every minute of the series. The Timberwolves easily overpowered the smaller and suddenly soft Nuggets.
Rookie mistakes or stubbornness? We’ll find out soon enough.
Regardless, last year was last year, and the focus is now on what this year’s team can do, as opposed to falling back on defending what last year’s team did (and didn’t) accomplish.
In order for this year’s Nuggets to do better than last year’s squad, Adelman has to do a lot better. Some flexibility and ability to adapt of the offensive end – perhaps less of the vaunted (and predictable) “two-man game” featuring Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray (which the rest of the NBA has since figured out) and even less reliance on endless amounts of dribbling at the expense of quicker ball movement. Perhaps moving Murray out of the point guard role at least some of the time, and into a shooting-guard role he’s better suited for? Perhaps playing newly acquired Marvin Bagley Jr. alongside Jokic for periods of time (especially when Aaron Gordon needs rest) and doing some old fashioned “bully ball” now and again – especially against Minnesota?
What it all comes down to is Adelman using his eyes more and his iPad less. Maybe the front office should snatch his tablet and hide it, forcing the young head coach to develop some old-fashioned gut instinct? Trusting what everyone can see instead of being a slave to his stats is going to be a must for him if he hopes to become really good at the job.
Strike 3: Nuggets improvement rests on Adelman trusting his eyes, not his iPad Mile High Sports.
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