Why Denver Nuggets Rotation is VERY difficult to Predict in 2025-26

Why Denver Nuggets Rotation is VERY difficult to Predict in 2025-26

[Music] All right, Nuggets fans. Welcome into Pickax and Roll brought to you by our good friends here at Mile High Sports. I am your host, Ryan Blackburn at NBA Blackburn on Twitter, part of the Mile High Sports podcast network. I am here. I am ready. I am excited to talk about the Denver Nuggets rotation a little bit. Uh going to be uh probably a shorter episode than what I usually do. I’m recording this on uh late Wednesday night, way too late on Wednesday night for an offseason podcast, but wanted to get this one out. Going up on a trip over this weekend to a cabin in the woods. I’m sure I’ll be it’ll be peachy. It’ll be great. Uh but very excited to get away for a little bit. Before I do that though, I put together a little chart as I am uh known to do, a little table that has some projections that has some rotation minutes projections based off of the current Denver Nuggets 14-man rotation uh or roster, excuse me. Not all of those guys will play every night. Injuries will happen. There’s a lot of things that will sort of change that up and make it so that it’s a little bit like this is not going to be right. I can guarantee that. Uh but from this perspective, this is a conservative projection that I wanted to put out there for the folks. Uh for those that are viewing on the YouTube side of things, I’ll have an associated graphic. Uh, for those that are listening on the audio side of things, I’ll try to take you through my thought process on this thing and make it as clear and concise as possible. The premise of this show, I think the Denver Nuggets got a lot deeper. I think that their rotation will be affected as a result and the spots towards the back end of the rotation are going to get a lot more time than they have in previous seasons, especially with the way that Denver is now uh built out from a a veteran standpoint. They’ve got both veterans and young guys that they have to play at the same time. So, they’re going to have to figure out how they do that. Might even get fewer minutes for the starters. Lo and behold, that’s the the goal of the entire thing. But without further ado, let’s get into it. This is the chart if you are watching along. Basically, that is the total minutes that each player within the Nuggets rotation played on the left side and on the right side is the associated spot within the rotation filled out and who I have it projected as. That might change during the season, but this is kind of where I see it initially. And what that’s going to look like is like, okay, how many minutes are each of those guys going to play for this upcoming 2025 2026 season? On the left side, let’s focus on that just for a second. Jamal Murray played 2,418 minutes last season. That was actually a lot. Pretty sure that was a careerhigh for Jamal. I have that going down in 202526. Christian Brown played 2675 minutes, the most minutes on the Denver Nuggets. I have that going down as well, but mostly because I don’t expect him to average 35 minutes per game or whatever he averaged for basically 82 games. He’s going to get some time off. He’s not going to be able to handle the same thing from a physical perspective. And nor should the Nuggets want to. they should want to uh keep them fresh and ready to go for the playoffs and I think that they will do as such. Uh but if you’re looking along on the YouTube side, you’ll see that there are some associated arrows for both of those guys. Murray I have going from 2418 minutes to 2,200 minutes in the 202526 season. So that number goes down. that number trends down for Christian Brown. Same thing about 275 fewer minutes for him. Denver’s gonna have to make up that number somewhere. And so I have them making that up with the addition of a variety of different guys. What you will notice if you look at this thing is that yeah, Michael Porter played a lot of minutes, too. 2593. I only have Cameron Johnson playing 2,000. Like that’s a that is a a massive drop off from a comparison standpoint. And Cam Johnson, his career high is 1,800 minutes. So this would actually be a careerhigh in minutes that I have projected for him in this particular season. That may not happen. Um but to counteract that, obviously I’ve got Aaron Gordon playing a few more minutes. He was at 1447 minutes this past year. Played 51 games, only started 42. He averaged about 28.4 minutes per game. How I came to the conclusion that he would be projected for about 2,000 total minutes is I took that 28.4 four minutes per game that he averaged in the regular season in 2024 25 and I just multiplied it by 70 and said all right what’s the nearest round number they kind of get to for that um but the long and short of this and I I’ll keep going through it of course but the long and short of this is that as you can see on the right side of the screen I have Jamal Murray Christian Brown uh or basically we’ll go by slot the starting point guard, the starting shooting guard, the starting small forward, the starting center, the sixth man, and the seventh man. All playing fewer minutes than they did during the 2024,25 season. That’s a big deal. That is a really, really big deal. And here’s why. Denver, if you recall, went into the 2024 25 season with Calvin Booth saying, “I think we have nine real guys on our roster.” Immediately that went wrong because of those nine real guys, uh, the players that you would expect in the rotation on a consistent basis, you already didn’t have Don Holmes from a health standpoint for the entire season. So you kind of you knew you weren’t going to get anything there. And then Dario Sarich got injured or not not injured, he just he was bad. Black Chancar got injured. They tried Hunter Tyson. That didn’t really work. Every minute that Hunter Tyson was out there, the Nuggets were really struggling. They they could not win those minutes, especially with the bench lineups. Zeke Naji when he was at the power forward spot was pretty good. He was at the center spot, he was really bad. Jaylen Picket, when he was replacing one of Russell Westbrook or Jamal Murray, he was actually pretty good. Uh, but there’s only so much that a third point guard can play, especially when you’ve got Jamal Murray out there setting a careerhigh in total minutes and you’ve got Russell Westbrook who played over 2,000. So, like there just wasn’t a lot of time. Uh, the way to think about this is that for a any one position across a an NBA regular season, assuming that there are zero overtimes, you have 3,936 minutes that you have to fill at any one position. Point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center. That is 48 minutes times 82 games. And so you know that you’re going to get up to about 3,900 with the combination of each of these guys. So like Jamal Murray, Russell Westbrook, they combined for over 4,500. They played together a fair chunk of that. Uh Jamal also missed some time. Russ also missed less time, but uh fewer games, but he still missed some games as well. Christian Brown and Julian Strawther. Yes, they shared the floor together, but they basically accounted for all of the shooting guard minutes except for the times when Jamal and Russ were sharing the floor together or Jamal and Jaylen were sharing the floor together. So, you can see where Denver was a little bit like overtaxed, especially with their starters, especially with their top guys. what I have now and where I will point everybody out to is the kind of ninth man spot, the tenth man spot. Like I have Jonas Valenunis as the eighth man playing 1400 minutes per game or 1400 minutes total, excuse me. Julian Strawther during the last season was the eighth man for Denver. He played 1,384 minutes. So only 16 total fewer than what I have Jonas Valenunis projected for. So that’s not really where Denver’s getting better. It’s the fact that they I have Tim Hardaway Jr. playing 400 more than DeAndre Jordan was able to play last year as the ninth man. I have Julian Strawther playing 450 more than Jaylen Picket played last year as the 11th man. Obviously Aaron Gordon I have bouncing back and getting healthy. So that’s where you’re kind of making up some of those minutes gaps. And guys like Jaylen Picket, Don Holmes, I have projected for 450 total minutes. That’s low. Uh currently that’s the 13th man on the roster. But I also think that there’s at least a possibility that those numbers go higher at least in general. So we’ll see what ultimately happens. Denver also has a fifth sp a 15th spot that they have to fill out as well. But what I am really seeing here from a roster building standpoint is that Denver’s got depth at each of these positions in the guard spots. They have Tim Hardway Jr., Julian Strawler, Bruce Brown coming off the bench. Uh Payton Watson is their main forward. If there is a weakness for Denver, it’s probably that they don’t have a versatile group of forwards. Like Zeke Naji, Don Holmes, those guys certainly can’t play the three. Playing them at the three, I think, would be ludicrous. So, you’re probably going small in those cases. And you’re playing a lot of those guards together. But, I do think that that’s like how the modern NBA is trending anyway. So, it’s not really that big of a deal. But, it’s something to think about if you’re looking to fill out that that last roster spot. We’ve talked about wanting a point guard, but I don’t know, like Jamal Murray, Bruce Brown, Jaylen Picket is a pretty reasonable point guarding group overall. Uh, so again, Denver will probably wait to fill that spot until they need to. Right now, I have it projected for zero minutes, but that might change based off of who they get or when they get that person. But just in general, like it does feel like Denver’s overall minutes will be changed. Like Jamal Murray playing 2,200 minutes versus 2,418 minutes. If you think about it from a games perspective, that is at least six games worth, probably closer to seven games worth of time that he gets less. Um, and the hope there is that it comes from the points per or from the minute per game average. Uh, people like especially when talking about Nicole, I understand talking about his burden, 36.7 minutes per game is way too high. But Jamal Murray averaged 36.1. Christian Brown averaged 33.9, nearly 34 for 79 games. Michael Porter averaged 33.7 for 77 games. just in the modern NBA those numbers are very high and expecting guys to play that many minutes on a consistent basis I think is a ludicrous thing. Um just going to the total minutes played leaders Christian Brown was 11th in total minutes played. Um there were like Sha Shay Gil just Alexander was the only guy on OKC who actually played in the top 20 in total minutes and he won MVP. Uh as everybody here knows the next highest player on OKC and the the reason why I do this is you want a deep team. You want a team that plays or that has enough depth, has enough talent that it doesn’t have to overt tax its guys. Christian Brown played the 11th most minutes in the NBA. Michael Porter played 19th. Nicole Joic played the 21st most in the NBA. Jamal Murray played the 34th most minutes in the NBA. I know a lot of people talk about the conditioning and the injury proness. He was not last year. Like 60 actually. So he played 67 games, but to play 2,418 minutes in that stretch is wild. um total minutes per game, he was 10th in the entire NBA. So, the actual burden that he carries or at least carried this past year was higher than I think people realize. Um I think Denver needs to lower the burden on their starting unit. It is it’s going to be a great unit. You’re going to want to play it. Totally understand that. Especially if you’re David Adam, that’s going to be a crutch. It just is like it’s going to be really hard to get away from one of the best starting units in the entire NBA. But Denver has to. It’s a requirement that they do so. If they don’t do it, then they are going to suffer the same fate that they did in each of the past two years. Uh playing those excess minutes, playing those high number of minutes from a a starting lineup standpoint. Uh I remember in the 2023 24 season two seasons ago that the top two lineups that Denver played were a grand total of at least 500 minutes more than the next highest two lineups on any other team in the NBA. So like it was the starting lineup and it was the lineup of the four starters plus Reggie Jackson like replacing Jamal Murray in that unit. So like there’s a lot of burden there that those starters have carried over the course of these past few years. And so now if you are Jokic get to play fewer minutes because Valenunis is there. If you’re Gordon you’re going to play more minutes but you’re not going to play more per game. You’re certain you’re probably going to play about the same from a per game standpoint or at least that would be the goal depending on what Denver does from a kind of backup power forward standpoint. Um, if you’re Jamal Murray, you got to reduce that point per or the minute per game threshold. If you’re Christian Brown, doesn’t need to play 34 minutes per game. Just doesn’t like you’ve got good players behind them. There’s a there’s a reason why Denver added the depth that they did. They’ll be able to get those guys rest from game to game when they can, but they should also be trying to play those guys fewer minutes overall. So, we’ll see whether that can actually happen. But let’s take a break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about who gets cut from this rotation and is this going to make the Nuggets a better team or not. We’ll be right back here on Pickax and Roll. All right, we are back. Pickax and roll. Ryan Blackburn here. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. Hit that like button. Hit that subscribe button. Would really, really appreciate it, folks. Okay, who’s getting cut from this rotation? Let me put this back up on screen. Uh, basically what I have put here is that uh the starters are the starters. You’ve got Murray, Brown, Johnson, Gordon, Joic, and then you have Bruce Brown as the sixth man. You have Payton Watson as the seventh man. You have Jonas Valentinis as the eighth man. You have Tim Hardaway and Julian Strawther tying for that ninth and tenth man spot uh from a total minutes standpoint. But behind them, Zeke Naji is at 500 minutes. Jaylen Picket’s at 450. Don Holmes is also tied with Jaylen Picket for like the 12th man spot. Given what I just talked about with Aaron Gordon, it would not surprise me if one of Julian Strawther or Tim Hardaway Jr. had their minutes dropped a little bit. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Jonas Valenunis had his minutes dropped a little bit. And you think about, let’s just do the math here. 1,400 minutes divided by 70. So that’s an average of 20 per game. Like that’s a lot. So let’s do 1400 minutes divided by 80 total games. That’s 17.5 minutes per game because Joic and Valenunis are a little bit more position locked. I probably overestimated Valenunis a little bit too much here. It’s probably closer to 1,200, maybe 1300 what Nuggets fans should actually expect from him on a consistent basis. Uh, but think about that from a perspective like DeAndre Jordan played 700 and Darius Sarge played 210. So you combine those two and you’re still getting like over 300 more at that point than uh with Yonas Valenunis. And I think for Yokic, he would be very happy about that. So between like the center minutes between like it it wouldn’t surprise me let’s say Jonas Vunis plays closer to 1200 and then you bump up to Ron Holmes about 200 more minutes to uh be that traditional kind of 11th man within this rotation kind of outpacing Zeke Naji uh just to try to become the power forward more consistently. But I do think that the consistent lineup that Denver’s going to throw out there, or at least the consistent rotation will be Bruce Brown at the one, Tim Hardaway at the two, Julian Strawther at the three, Pton Watson at the four, Jonas Valenunis at the five. You’re playing four guards and wings, maybe a a forward if you count Payton Watson as a forward around the big behemoth that is Jonas Valenunis. And that is kind of where you go. That’s just the consistent option that you’re going to. I think that if Denver’s trying to win games on a consistent basis, like especially like if they’re in a stretch of their season in January where it’s like actually January is a tough one, December, if they’re in a stretch of games in December where they’re like, “All right, you know what? We have to really lock in here. Momentum needs to be back on our side. We’ve been kind of going back and forth maybe winning two games, losing one, winning two games, losing one. Really want to start locking in and getting a fivegame win streak or so. Denver probably goes to a nine-man rotation and you’re looking at the five starters plus Bruce Brown, Pton Watson, Jonas Valunis, and one of Tim Hardaway Jr. or Julian Strawther. And then you go with a nineman rotation and you’re really focusing then. Uh but then there will be times where guys are out. As I mentioned, there will be times where uh Denver needs a little bit more size. Maybe Jonas Valenunis is not necessarily keeping up from a speed standpoint with a certain bench uh of whatever team. It’s certainly not a traditional Western Conference team. It’s more of a uh let’s say it’s a Boston and you have to like I was I was talking with Matt Moore tonight on locked and basically saying yeah like you’re going to play Jonas Valenunis in a deep drop. Well, can you do that with Payton Pritchard? Can you do that with Derek White? Can you do that with Jaylen Brown? It’s not necessarily a like an ideal situation, but can you do that on a consistent basis against those guys? Maybe if you’re punishing them on the other end. If you’re not, maybe that’s where Don Holmes plays a little bit more backup five or you slide over Zeke Naji and you’re going more perimeter oriented or something. But even then, like I kind of think Denver’s just going to keep Valenunis out there. So, he’s going to get minutes. he’s going to get the opportunity. There will also be some times where Joic doesn’t play and Valenunis actually rather than it being just a consistent 17 minute per game average or 15 minute per game average, he then plays 30 minutes in a game because he moves over to the starting spot. So, there will be plenty of those. There will be plenty of those opportunities where those minutes are manipulated a little bit, but I’m going to guess that on a consistent basis, the four names that are not playing in this rotation are Zeke Naji, Jaylen Picket, Don Holmes, and Hunter Tyson. There will be opportunities for Don to play. Of course, I’m not advocating for him not to. If anything, I actually think that Denver should go with more of a 10-man or 11man rotation on a consistent basis. But just knowing David Adelman, knowing what he likes, what he desires to do, I don’t necessarily think that that’s going to be his MO. Especially when the team needs some wins, especially when they need to develop consistency. You want to give your players longer runs. You want them to feel like they have a runway enough where they could actually make mistakes, play through some things, and then iron some stuff out and get better. That’s the hope. That’s what the regular season is for. So, we’ll see if that’s something that they actually do or not. But final thing, will it make the Nuggets a great team? Is this kind of setup something that makes Denver better? I I think the answer is yes. Personally, I think that this is the deepest team that the Nuggets have had since about like really since before the bubble where you’ve got the 2020 bubble team where you’ve got Murray, Gary Harris, Will Barton, Paul Milsap, Nicole Joic. That’s your main starting five, but Will Barton doesn’t make it into the bubble. Gary Harris is hurt for that time. Michael Porter eventually transitions in, but he’s he’s a guy that you can count on. You had did you have Trey Lyles at that point? No, you didn’t. You had Jeremy Grant for that particular team. Um, you had Tory Craig, of course. You had Monte Morris, of course. Malik Beasley was not on that team. He was traded by that point. Uh, so a little bit less depth when you get into the bubble. But before that, like in the season before where they had Mason Plumbley and Trey Lyles and Monte Morris and Malik Beasley and that whole mix, like it’s the kind of mix that of young guys and and some vets that like I think Denver’s pretty close to now. I think that they have like Jonas Valenunis where he is right now I think is pretty comparable to who Mason Plumbley was at that point for Denver. a pretty positive backup center, somebody who could run a lot of the same things that Jokic is running from a schematic standpoint. Now it’s more of a traditional post up, pick and pop, run some things through the elbow, through the post as a passer, things like that. Before it was just, hey, can you pass like Jokic? Can you run DHO’s? Can you run pick and roll? Things like that. Uh Joic was not the scorer that he is now. and Yonas has to replicate that a little bit. But I do think that going through this process and playing a deeper rotation and trying different things like that’s to me that’s the most important thing that Denver lost over the course of these past couple years with the the way that the team was constructed. There was so much pressure on each individual element to get right that Denver was not able to pick and choose what they were trying to develop at any particular time. They w they were not playing the game within the game if that makes sense. There are so many things that they did back in 2023 especially after they found out okay we are good enough. They figured that out in January of 2023. There was a run. So they they had like Jamal Murray had that big gamewinner on December 8th of 2022 back during that championship season. And after that basically Denver took off. They had different elements that they were looking at but they figured out they could win with defense. They figured out they could win with transition. They figured out they could win with offense. They they had a whole bunch of buttons that they could push. And whether it was Joic just pushing the Jokic button, whether it was the twoman game, whether it was Michael Porter getting involved, whether it was Aaron Gordon just dominating from the dunker, running in transition, Bruce Brown making chaos, things like that. They had so many different things that were actually like value ads that they pushed at throughout that entire regular season, especially that stretch in December, January, February. Denver hasn’t had that over the course of the last two seasons. They are always putting out fires. They’re always trying to make up for injury absences, defensive mishaps and confusion, uh guys not feeling it. Like mostly it’s about the defense and mostly is about the communication this past year. But if you believe that those things are going to be taken care of and Denver is a more professional like they they were a professional obviously but just even more so even more kind of put together. If you believe that they are going to provide that approach this season, then you worry about the game within the game and that is like let’s let’s figure out how Christian Brown can handle these playmaking duties. Let’s figure out how Don Holmes can play as a switch everything center against the Golden State Warriors. Let’s figure out how uh Yonas Valenunis operates when he’s playing next to Nicole Joic. Is that a viable thing that they can try? And you just start trying things. You just start playing around with your food a little bit because winning is easy because you have the baseline skills necessary in order to make it easy. What’s difficult is finding different ways to win. Denver in this past season, they had one way that they could win. That was using fullback dive, driving it straight down the opponent’s throat and going to the paint and outscoring the opposing team because they weren’t going to play any defense on the other end. This time, they have to find ways to play defense. They have to be better in transition on both ends of the floor. They have to win from the perimeter just as much as they are from driving to the paint. And they’ve got to be more tactical. They they stopped being tactical this past year. They were just a win-win one for the gipper kind of team and hope that Nicole Joic can carry you through. It’s got to be better than that. And they can be. I really do think that they can. So, will playing a whole bunch of rotation minutes for these other guys, will that make them better? Yes, it will. Uh they will, I think, force each other to be better. It’s a more competitive environment. Uh, if I put it back up on the screen here, Julian Strather like goes from being the eighth man to the tenth man in this particular setup. He could even be the 11th man in certain circumstances. Like I don’t I have him currently playing more than one of Zeke Naji or Don Holmes, but couldn’t he play less because he’s not a power forward? Like Denver kind of needs a power forward. They need somebody that can connect those spots a little bit. Julian Strawther’s got to bring it. If he wants to play, if Tim Hardaway wants to play, if Payton Watson wants to play, he’ll he’ll probably have more of a spot guaranteed because of his skill set. But like there is a world where Denver’s best lineup off the bench is Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Julian Strather, Don Holmes, Jonas Valunis. That’s a world that’s a pretty straightforward thing to think about. Like Dron Holmes providing that secondary rim protection, extra size, extra rebounding, a little bit better spacing. Like Pton Watson’s got some pressure on him. So, got to be good. Got to bring your agame if you want to be in the Nuggets rotation. Now, it is not a guarantee. It is a hope. And so that would be the desire I think for the Nuggets is that competition breeds at least a little bit more excellence for the team. Uh excellence was lost a little bit. It’s time for them to get back to it. They should be better. It should be more put together. I really do believe that this team is set up to win about 55 to 60 games. It’s going to be fun. Like I I do think this is going to be an enjoyable experience. And when you go through and project the minutes and really try to expect what guys are going to do, it’ll probably be different from my projections. But if it’s relatively similar, it’s going to be going to be competitive, going to be a a group that is really fighting to get on the court. And that’s what you want. You want a team that wants to be out there, that has a lot of guys that deserve to be out there and are capable of winning basketball games. Okay everybody, that is going to do it for this episode of Pickax and Roll Brought to our good friends here at Mile High Sports. I’m going to be gone for the rest of the weekend. If there’s anything that pops up, sorry, I’m off the board. I will be back on either Monday or Tuesday. Try to get some things in order as we transition fully into the deep off season. Expect some guests. I’m going to be talking to Jeff Morton here relatively soon. Very excited to do that. Thank you so much folks for tuning into this episode of Pickax and Roll.

On the latest Pickaxe and Roll, Ryan Blackburn puts together a minutes projection for the Denver Nuggets in 2025-26 that looks WAY more appealing than this past season. He also discusses who might get cut from the rotation and whether it will make the Nuggets a better team.

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