Nuggets Want To Manage Difficult Feat Of Fast Offense, Stingy Defense

Brian Shaw was going to change the Denver Nuggets. Considered a sideshow by the NBA right under predecessor George Karl for their breakneck pace, small-ball lineups, and general aversion to halfcourt play on either end of the floor, the Nuggets under Shaw were to utilize stringent offensive and defensive principles to finally rid themselves of first round playoff failure. Triangle offense, traditional big men, and fewer possessions were all buzzwords of Denver training camp last fall.

One year later, Shaw’s team still isn’t the one he envisioned when he was named head coach. And frankly, that’s a good thing. The Nuggets are ill-equipped to play a game based solely on precision, power, and post-ups, and Denver’s altitude means its team should always push tempo. Though reluctantly, Shaw realized all of that in 2013-2014. The Nuggets finished third in pace last season after abandoning their new identity for an amalgam including their old one, a development marked by the huge in-season strides made by Kenneth Faried.

Now that Denver has an offensive system that both befits Shaw’s natural id and the strengths his roster and city present, it’s time for similar growth on the other side of the ball. And according to Shaw, such improvement will be what is most notable about his team in 2014-2015.

The biggest question surrounding that optimism is whether or not the Nuggets can improve defensively while maintaining tempo, writes Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post:

The question, as it seemingly always has been for the Nuggets, is can they play fast and still play solid defense?

Early on in camp, Nuggets coach Brian Shaw predicted defense to be one of the areas his team will experience the most growth. “I think the biggest area of improvement that you’ll see is going to be on the defensive end,” Shaw said…

About a week ago, L.A. Clippers guard Chris Paul had this to say to the L.A. Times: “We’re trying to be a unique team that defends very well and plays at a very nice pace, up-tempo. That’s not something that usually goes together like that, so we’re trying to put all the pieces together and trying to keep that continuity going with both units. It’s an unbelievable combination if you can do both, and we’re going to try to be that team.”

It makes sense in theory. A faster-paced game means a more frenetic one, a death-knell for all modern NBA defenses, let alone those that lack upper-echelon personnel. The Indiana Pacers and Chicago Bulls aren’t just dominant defensively because they boast talents like Paul George and Roy Hibbert and Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson. It’s the unrelenting systems in which they play that help those players to such rare effectiveness, and getting halfcourt defense set is obviously key to implementing them.

Playing fast offense and good defense is indeed difficult. But it’s not impossible. Three teams managed to rank in the top-10 of both pace factor and defensive efficiency last season: The Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Doc Rivers’ Clippers.

Those teams have a lot in common, and it begins with an all-encompassing defensive fulcrum down low. But Timofey Mozgov and JaVale McGee will never be Andrew Bogut, Serge Ibaka, or DeAndre Jordan. Where as that esteemed triumvirate’s teammates could make mistakes and know they had back-line help to protect the rim, Denver’s perimeter players can’t. McGee is incredibly long and explosive but lacks the nuance necessary to dominate, while Mozgov is solid but hardly consistently intimidating on all parts of the floor.

Defense will be more of a team effort for the Nuggets. Even should they become wholly synergistic on that end, though, they need to ditch a long-held strength to reach the heights to which Shaw aspires.

Offensive rebounding. Only the Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls ranked top-10 in both defensive efficiency and offensive rebound rate last season, and each team played at an absolute snail’s pace. No team in basketball pulled-off the feat of pushing the pace, playing great defense, and crashing their own basket for boards. You basically need to sacrifice one for the other.

The question for Denver is if it can get better offensively while relying less on the offensive glass. Shaw’s team was fifth in offensive rebounding rate in 2013-2014 and just 16th in overall efficiency. That’s not a good sign. But progress to Faried’s halfcourt game and the additions of Danilo Gallinari and Arron Afflalo give the Nuggets far more talent on that end. A healthy Ty Lawson would obviously prove a boon, too.

Is fast offense and good defense realistic for Denver? Difficult, but definitely possible. Fast offense, good defense, and elite offensive rebounding? No way. Shaw will almost surely need to shed the latter in hopes to accomplish his overall goal of improving defensively. Here’s hoping better health and more playmakers mitigate the inevitable offensive dip of such a trade-off.