The Nuggets won the game

And, I predict, will lose the series

If you didn’t see the end of Nuggets-Clippers Game 4, I’m sorry. LUKE HALES/GETTY IMAGES

As a fan, there’s nothing not to love about Aaron Gordon’s buzzer beating dunk of a Nikola Jokić missed 3. A back-and-forth pulse-pounding thrill-ride of a game makes that series, as promised by David Thorpe after Game 2, the one to watch.

It’s tempting, after all that, to see the Nuggets as the favorites in the series.

Then I got an email from TrueHoop reader Dave:

Watching [interim Nuggets coach David] Adelman not give any rest to his starters even while up 20 in the fourth, I had the same feeling you had watching Zach Edey in the national championship game. If the Nuggets had put in their worst five scrubs (or picked five random guys over 6-2 from the stands) for four minutes, it couldn’t have gone worse than it went with their gassed starters. And at least then they could’ve brought rested starters back into the game. Pissing away the lead with starters who had no legs left was the worst combination and they were saved only by Jokic’s brilliance and a few hundredths of a second with Aaron Gordon’s hand.

It seems like a long time ago now, but maybe you remember when Zach Edey, then at Purdue, faced UConn in the NCAA championships game. Edey barely rested all tournament. By the title game, he got so tired he could barely jump, as I wrote about in some detail at the time. Edey airballed a free throw, didn’t run the floor, and–despite being the biggest and most hyped rim protector in the land–ended up being targeted by a procession of UConn dunkers. It blew my mind that his very capable backup, Caleb Furst, stayed glued to the bench as Edey melted. Stubbornness from Purdue coach Matt Painter was, to me, UConn’s greatest advantage. Only Purdue could make Edey a bad player.

It’s easy to make the case that a similar approach dang-near cost the Nuggets this game. The Nuggets starters are one of the most effective units in the league. And all they had to do was hang on to a massive lead. But the did so with the odd approach of using almost no bench players at all in the second half.

A half of basketball is 120 minutes of playing time. Nuggets bench players Peyton Watson, DeAndre Jordan, Vlatko Cancar, and Jalen Pickett saw under eight minutes combined. Dario Saric, Zeke Nnaji, Hunter Tyson, and Julian Strawther have combined for 23 minutes all playoffs and didn’t play at all in Game 4.

We know those Denver starters were in fatigue-induced decline because they are among the best players in the world when rested and they were terrible. Conceding an 18-4 run early in the fourth quarter wasn’t enough; they followed it up by letting the Clippers reel of a dozen straight. Ty Lue’s Clippers, meanwhile, played bench players like a normal team–for 26 minutes of the second half. The super-fresh Bogdan Bogdanovic balled for the entire fourth quarter, as the Clippers outscored the Nuggets by 18.

By Sunday, these are the whole league’s four top leaders in both total playoff minutes, and playoff minutes per game:

1. Nikola Jokić

2. Jamal Murray

3. Christian Braun

4. Aaron Gordon

All Nuggets. The last three games of this series are scheduled to be every-other day, Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, with flights between each.

Now we know two things about Denver: the key Nuggets will be more tired than the Clippers, and the bench players, if they play, know that Coach Adelman doesn’t believe in them much. David Thorpe says leadership is breathing spirit into others–over time, saying “we need you” and giving people the ball makes them play better. The regular season is an amazing time to build that. This feels like the opposite.

Because of all that, I’m feeling the Clippers are the favorites now, despite losing that heartbreaker.

Did the Nuggets know, at the trade deadline, that they lacked even a half teaspoon of belief in their bench? If so, why in the hell didn’t they dole out a few Kroenke bucks on real help? We’ve written a lot about how sad and doomed Giannis is in Milwaukee–an MVP who’s not about to win another title. Peak Jokić years are also a dreadful thing to waste.

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