Can the Nuggets UPSET the Thunder?

Can the Nuggets UPSET the Thunder?

Yo, what’s going on y’all? It’s Conan. Today we’re breaking down Thunder versus Nuggets. We finally have a second round series set in stone out west and it’s going to be a pretty fun one. Shay versus Jokic, the top two MVP vote getters. And it’s the first time that the top two MVP contenders have played against each other in a playoff series that same season since Russ and Harden back in 2017, which speaking of Russ, we’re going to go ahead and get to see Russ play a road playoff series in Oklahoma City for the first time in his entire career because obviously he played against them in the bubble, but that’s in Disney. That’s not in Oklahoma City. You’ve got one of the best defenses we’ve seen in a while with the Thunder multiple alldefensive candidates. This high octane Nuggets offense that can just blitz you at times with Jokic and Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. It’s going to be really entertaining. I’m super excited for this one. I am a Thunder fan. Going to go ahead and say that now. But this is a match up that I think just from a basketball fan perspective is going to be super super exciting. And I want to go ahead and break it all down. But first, let’s talk about how we got here. The Thunder have been waiting for this matchup for a while. It’s I think going to be nine total days of rest going into Monday when game one is. Uh and that’s because the Thunder swept the Memphis Grizzlies. Uh headlined by a 51point win in game one. Uh huge comeback in game three. One of the biggest playoff comebacks ever. Of course, John does get hurt in game three and misses game four following that. And some people think it would have made a difference, but I personally don’t think it was going to change that much. The Thunder were pretty clearly the better team and it felt like they even played a bit below their usual standard in that matchup and managed to get out of there without a single L. Meanwhile, for the Nuggets, they played a really good Clippers team and it was an extremely hard-fought series. Uh they were picked against by most people, I included, picked the Clippers to win in seven. It goes to seven, but Denver annihilates the Clippers in that final game in Denver. Yogic has had some monster outings so far in the playoffs. Jamal Murray had some of those big Jamal Murray games. Aaron Gordon was great. Russell Westbrook was electric in that revenge series. Shot insanely well from three, making so many winning plays. The squad as a whole showcased some of that energy, that juice that you saw back in 2023 when they went on the title run. In terms of the season series, it was split 2-2 down the middle. Thunder won the first game of the season pretty convincingly in Denver against the Nuggets. Uh then the Nuggets won a close one to give the Thunder their first L of the season. Then the Thunder won in blowout fashion. Then the Nuggets won in blowout fashion. both those games on back-to-back nights, which was just really weird schedule making. A very weird back and forth season series between these two teams and a lot of injuries on both sides with the Thunder not having Hartinstein to open the season and then the Nuggets not having Jamal Murray at certain points. Uh yeah, a lot of weirdness between these two teams, these inner division rivals, but in the end, the Thunder do come into the series as a pretty heavy favorite according to Vegas, which brings us to the keys to the matchup. And the big thing I think everybody’s going to think about is this Thunder defense versus this Nuggets offense. The Thunder, like I said earlier, were one of the better defenses we’ve seen in a long time. There are so many alldefensive caliber players on this team. Ludor and Jaylen Williams are likely to both make all defense. Uh Chad Holgren probably would have been on there if he played enough games. I say Hartinstein had a chance to make it on there if he played enough games. And that is an elite double big duo. We’re really seeing the double big lineup come into style here in this regular season in these playoffs. Kase Wallace is elite. Alex Caruso probably would have been an alldefensive lock if you played enough games. Then you’ve got Shay. Like the the weak links on this team defensively are Isaiah Jones and Aaron Wiggins. And both of them are not really bad defenders. They’re just not as good as the stack defensive guys ahead of them on the depth chart. It’s a very difficult unit to score on. But the Nuggets are a very highpowered offense and did find some success in the regular season against the Thunder. In their four matchups, they scored 102, 124, 103, and 140. Clearly the two games that they won, they really went ahead and turned up the Jets. They’re going to have to do that. They’re going to have to have big offensive explosions against this defense to go ahead and pull out wins. And specifically, they shot really well from three in both those games. 42.1% on 38 attempts in game one. And they were 18 of 32 from three for 56.3% in the second one they had over OKC this season. With OKC having Cet and Iheart, who are both amazing defensive bigs and so many guys who can poke the ball away from you on drives, getting those three-point looks and knocking them down is extremely critical. And they did hit threes against the Clippers in their series. They shot 38.9% which is the third best mark out of any team in the first round. The only thing that’s worrying on that front is they shot just 29 three-point attempts per game which was the fewest out of anybody to open up the playoffs. That number is going to have to come up and OKC is going to give some guys chances. The Thunder, as a Thunder fan, I’ll tell you this, are willing to concede threes to guys that they’re not super worried about. That is a concession they’re more than willing to make. And Joic shot 45.2% from three. MPJ shot 44.1%. Jamal Murray shot 40.4%. Those are great shooters. If you give them those looks, they’re going to knock them down. The Thunder are going to key in on those guys. The key for the Nuggets is the other guys. Russell Westbrook, Pton Watson, Christian Brown, Aaron Goran, those guys are going to have to hit shots when they get them. And in the first round, Russ specifically hit them 41.9% from deep, which I believe I saw a stat is the best three-point percentage Russell Westbrook has ever had in a playoff series. He’s not going to have to shoot that well probably, but he’s going to have to shoot something close. Christian Brown shot just 32%. That number has to come up. Aaron Gordon 29.2%. Also needs to come up. Payton Watson shot 50%, but on four total three-point attempts across the seven games. That’s not something he’s looking to do. And if he’s out there, the Thunder are going to basically just give him the Ben Simmons treatment and let him take those shots. Those Nuggets role players are going to have to hit their outside shots if they want any chance of competing with the Thunder in this series. Joic is going to get some pressure. He’s going to kick the ball to Russell Westbrook, Christian Brown, Aaron Gordon, Pton Watson, whoever. Can they make the Thunder pay? That’s a big reason why the Mavericks won last year against OKC is because the Thunder shooters weren’t hitting that much. But more specifically, like PJ Washington, I still have nightmares about the way that he shot the basketball in that series. We left him open a lot of times because we sent a lot of help and he made the Thunder pay pretty much every single time. The Nuggets don’t need someone to have like a PJ Washington series or maybe they do, but at the very minimum, they’ve got to have guys hit those outside shots. If they don’t, there’s no way they keep up with the Thunder whatsoever. On the Jokic front, the Thunder did a pretty good job limiting him as a score in the regular season. Just 24 and a half points per game on 52.6% shooting, 27.8% from three. Still not bad. And he put up almost 16 boards a game, 11 and a half assists. Like, it’s the Joker. He’s always going to put up absurd numbers. He’s going to be incredibly impactful. But scoring wise, the Thunder limited him pretty well. And that’s why the other guys are so important because OKC has shown an ability to make him a little bit uncomfortable or at least get the ball out of his hands. Again, it’s Jokic. You’re never going to fully stop him. I’m sure he’s going to have a few monster games in the series, but if you’re able to at least get him away from being like this dominant 30 point per game hyperefficient score and force the ball into the other guy’s hands, I think that’s a win for the Thunder. Another big thing is Jamal Murray. He’s got to keep up this pace. He was so good in round one against great defenders with Los Angeles. But this is now another step up defensively. It’s Lou Dord. It’s Kase Walls. It’s Alex Caruso Shay at times. Jaylen Williams. Again, so many unbelievable defenders specifically for a scoring guard like him on this Thunder roster. They need Jamal Murray to be good. They need him to be great to go ahead and match up with this Thunder team. And he’s going to have his hands full against those guys. It’s going to be up to David Adelman to try and scheme him some easier looks, maybe get some of those switches. Although against this Thunder defense, not really anybody you can consistently target. Another big thing, the Nuggets are going to have to take care of the ball. They had 13.9 turnovers per game against the Clippers in the first round, which was the sixth highest mark in the playoff field, which isn’t a great stat to have when you’re going up against this Thunder defense, which forces turnovers at a historic rate. They’re one of the greatest turnover forcing teams in the history of the sport. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. You saw it in the first round series against the Grizzlies who averaged 19.3 turnovers per night. That’s an absurd number. Meanwhile, the Thunder turn the ball over just 10.5 times. That’s a big reason why the Thunder are so hard to beat. They control the possession game at an elite level. They force you into a million turnovers. They don’t give you the ball back. They’re better now as an offensive rebounding team, so they don’t give you that many opportunities on that end. Fast break points are so easy to come by with all the weapons the Thunder have. They get easy buckets. It is an incredible attack. You cannot give them more opportunities with those turnovers. The Nuggets have to take care of the ball. They’ve got to have their role players knock down those outside shots. Those in of themselves are maybe the two biggest things that the Nuggets have to go ahead and manage if they want to go ahead and compete with the Thunder in this matchup. Meanwhile, on the other end, you’ve got the question of if the Nuggets defense can keep up with this Thunder offense because the Nuggets were not a good defensive team this season. That was the big concern for me and part of the reason why I picked the Clippers in that series was because the Clippers looked amazing at the end of the season offensively and Denver has just not been good this season on the defensive end of the ball. But they had some solid outings against the Clippers specifically game seven. They held the Clippers to 29.6% shooting from deep, forced 14 turnovers and held them to just 101 points. They still have the ability to turn up the notch at times. Now the issue is they’re going to have to do that for 48 minutes a game against the Stunner team. They have to be playing incredible defense like they played in that game seven consistently because while the Thunder’s defense was the big talking point throughout the season, they were also one of the three best offenses in the entire sport, too. Through the first round, the Thunder put up an offensive rating of 117.4, which is tied with Boston for the third best in the field. And that’s despite Sheay not having a good series and the team shooting just 31.3% from the outside. Now, if both those trends continue, then things can definitely get scary for Oklahoma City. But Sheay has been one of the most consistent scorers in the entire world for three straight seasons now. And he was really good in the playoffs last year. And this team was six best in three-point percentage in the regular season on the 10th most attempts. That indicates they’re a really good volume shooting team. I don’t think Shay is going to struggle the way that he did that first run series. I don’t think the Thunder are going to shoot as poorly as they did against Memphis. I think both those things are going to bounce back in a big way. And that is a little bit scary for Denver. They’re going to have to try and make those trends more so continue than be completely erased in this matchup. And one thing that also plays a big factor in this is the Thunder have now gotten 9 days of rest. We talked about that in the intro. That’s a really long time. Meanwhile, the Nuggets are going to have a 48 hour turnaround going from playing in Denver against the Clippers in a game seven to now playing the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City. That is really fast to go ahead and switch those gears. And it leads to a little bit of a rust versus rest debate. Maybe the Thunder are rusty and the Nuggets can take game one or game two in OKC and that would be huge. I think the Nuggets literally have to do that. If they don’t, I think the series is pretty much dead in the water. They’ve got to catch the Thunder sleeping a little bit. But also, the Thunder showed what they could do off rest. They had way more rest than the Grizzlies going into game one of that series. And the Thunder won by 51 points. Meanwhile, also for the Nuggets defensively, they’re going to need Christian Brown to be really good in the point of attack. AG is going to have to step up. Russ is going to have to be great on that end. Jamal Murray and Nicole Joic have to hold up. Specifically, Joic as the last line of defense against Sha Alexander, who is one of the best rim attacking guards the position has ever seen. Jada loves to get downhill. They love getting it to guys in the dunker spot. Cadet is going to attack Joic off the dribble. Hartenstein is going to go ahead and try and back him down, shoot that floater. Joic is going to be put in a lot of actions. The Thunder are going to go at him. And he had a pretty good defensive series. He deserves a lot of credit for the way he played on that end at times against Los Angeles, but now he’s been through that series. He’s not going to get any time to rest. And the Thunder are very dynamic. Specifically, Jdub and Chet are big X factors to the series. They’re both exceptional against the Grizzlies. Cadet had a number of monstrous quarters was shooting really well from the outside. Dub was so good in transition. He was probably the Thunder’s best overall player in that first round match up against Memphis. And I said it before, I’m a believer that Dub is in for a massive playoff run. And he showcased what he could do in that first series against Memphis. The Nuggets have to find a way to slow both those guys down in addition to Shay because it’s reached a point where last year the team really didn’t have the juice to step up alongside Shay if he was struggling. Now if he’s struggling the team can do enough to elevate until he’s ready to take over in moments and the Thunder can shut the door. Now all that being said, I think Shay is probably in for a big series here. I just don’t think the defenders on the Nuggets have what it takes to slow him down consistently. Uh maybe then that just means okay well if Shay’s going to beat us, let’s just try and shut everybody else off. It’s going to be a little bit of a trial and error type game against this Thunder offense to figure out what works for Denver. And the question is, can you find a solution quick enough before it just becomes too late. Part of that is also you’ve got to try and slow down the transition attack. The Thunder led the first round with points in transition. If you can’t stop them there, there’s just really no hope. And that comes off the million turnovers they force. On the other side, the Nuggets also love to score in transition, too. They were top five in transition, points per game in the regular season, and they were tied for second in points per possession on transition opportunities. Meanwhile, the Thunder were the best at stopping opponents from scoring in the fast break. That in and of itself, that transition battle on both ends is going to be a major turning point for this series. The Nuggets are really going to need all hands on deck defensively to slow this unit down. And a lot of that is going to come down to the depth, guys. For the Nuggets, can Russell Westbrook give you the type of production he gave you against the Clippers? Christian Brown, can he be a bit better from three? And can he be a really good POA guy? If he’s guarding Shay, can he slow him down at all? He had some great defense on James Harden. This is a whole new challenge. Aaron Gordon, whether he’s guarding Jada, if he has possessions on Shay, whoever he’s out there going up against, if it’s Chad Homegrren, because it’s the double big, how can he hold up in all those versatile situations? Michael Porter Jr. had some big ups and downs. They need him to be a lot more consistent. Pton Watson, what’s he going to do out there? Is he just unplayable because of the offense? DeAndre Jordan, can they hold up in the non-JIC minutes? Because that continues to be a massive concern. And against a team this good with Oklahoma City, you cannot afford to just suddenly give up like a 100 run, which the Thunder led the league in this season when Nicole Yic leaves the court and he’s forced to play like 43, 44 minutes a night. That’s just not sustainable. And then for the Thunder, you know, Case Wallace, can he knock down shots? Can he be the high level defender that we’ve seen him be for a while now? Alex Caruso, is that three-point shot going to be hitting? And can he make a similar just completely destructive impact like he did against the Grizzlies specifically in that game three comeback? Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Joe, can they give a shot creating punch like we’ve seen all throughout the year? And can that three-point shot be up to the level that we saw it at in the regular season from both those guys? Can they hold up defensively? Because again, those are two of the weaker defensive links. And even when it comes to Jaylen Williams and Chad Holgrren, I know everybody came into the playoffs and the question mark was Shay is the guy, but who is going to step up as the number two? Likely Jada, but he did great round one. Can he carry that over? Are there going to be some residual struggles like we saw in round two last year from him? and Chad, can he carry over the high level defense going up now against Nicole Joic, one of the toughest guards possible? And with all that in mind, it’s time to go ahead and make a prediction. Again, I think this is going to be a really fun battle between two of the best players in the sport. It’s cool to see Russ back in Oklahoma City in the playoffs for the first time. As a Thunder fan, I’m really excited to see what the reception looks like and how he performs in that environment. Uh, and Denver is not a pushover. I know the Thunder are heavily favored, but when you have a player as good as Nicole Yokic, you have the pedigree that they have. You’ve got Jamal Murray who’s capable of those pop offs, it’s not a team that you can take lightly. The Thunder need to lock in from the get-go. They cannot have any rust. They’ve got to be ready and on their agame from the beginning. They need to play better than they played against the Grizzlies in round one to make this even a semi comfortable series. But in the end, I’m going with the Oklahoma City Thunder to win this series. Uh they’ve just been the better team on both ends throughout this season. They’ve got great personnel to throw at anybody that the Nuggets are trying to have score the basketball. It is an unbelievable defense that is very now well-rested. It’s a Thunder team that thrives on flying around creating chaos. Nine days of rest, I think, is a massive luxury for them. Well, meanwhile, again, the Nuggets are coming off a hard-fought sevename series, immediately turning around to play Oklahoma City. And I think that in addition to the overall just bad defensive structure of this team, could lead to some massive scoring outings for the Thunder. Shay is really going to get going in my opinion in this series. and the Thunder are just deeper. They’re very well coached. I just feel a lot more comfortable with the Thunder slowing down Denver’s offense and ripping apart that Denver defense than vice versa for the Nuggets. I do think the Nuggets could take one of like the first three games and maybe catch the Thunder out sleeping. But overall, I think the Thunder do get it done. I’ll go Thunder and six. I’ve been between five and six, but out of respect for what Nicole Joic is capable of and of course the explosions that Jamal Murray is very capable of, I’ll go ahead and give the Nuggets two games to the Thunders four. But the Thunder do go ahead and win this series to move on to their first Western Conference finals in around a decade. But for the moment, uh, those are my thoughts on this series. I appreciate you all watching. Leave like and subscribe if you enjoyed. Hit the notification bell so you don’t miss out on future videos. Let me know down below in the comments who you have winning this series, how many games, what are your biggest X factors, keys to the matchup, things that I didn’t mention that you think could be really important. I appreciate you all. I’ll see you all later. Rewind say back.

The Denver Nuggets have advanced in the NBA Playoffs past the Los Angeles Clippers in game seven to face the Oklahoma City Thunder in round two as big time underdogs. The Thunder led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, and Jalen Williams swept the Memphis Grizzlies and have been waiting for a matchup for over a week, while Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr, Aaron Gordon, and Russell Westbrook finished a hard fought series against James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, and the Los Angeles Clippers. It sets up a battle between the top two MVP contenders in the league with a chance to advance to the Western Conference Finals. Can the Nuggets pull off the upset? Let’s talk about it.

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0:00 – How we got here
1:59 – The season series
2:35 – Can the Thunder defense slow the Nuggets offense?
6:00 – Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray need to be great
7:17 – The turnover battle
8:21 – Can the Nuggets stop the Thunder offense?
9:54 – The rest advantage is huge
10:38 – Nuggets defenders have to step up
12:19 – The transition battle
12:51 – Which depth guys will step up?
14:27 – The Prediction
16:13 – Outro