Throughout the season and postseason, we're checking in on which big NBA topics are real.
In this edition: Could the Denver Nuggets' star duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray actually be better than the Portland Trail Blazers' backcourt of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum?
Buy or sell: The Nuggets have a better star duo than the Blazers
Lillard quietly turned in an MVP-caliber season to lead the Blazers to the third seed in the West. Similarly, Jokic turned in an unheralded MVP-caliber season to lead the Nuggets to the second seed.
Murray, Jokic's second-in-command, appears to be a star on the rise at age 22. And McCollum, Lillard's lieutenant, is also a potential All-Star, though he'll turn 28 before next season.
Which of these powerful duos is better? Which makes a bigger impact on its team's fortunes? Which is more likely to be the centerpiece of a potential champion?
Driving the Trail Blazers
Lillard and McCollum are the closest thing to a Splash Brothers-style backcourt outside of Oakland. Since the start of 2016-17, only two backcourts have two players each averaging more than 20 points per game and combining to hit more than five 3s per game: Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson for Golden State, and Lillard and McCollum.
The Blazers' backcourt led the team to the fourth-best offensive efficiency in the NBA (111.4 points per 100 possessions). Lillard is the focal point of the offense, third in the entire NBA with an offensive real plus-minus (ORPM) of 5.70, while McCollum is seventh best among shooting guards with a 2.09 ORPM.
The Portland stars put a ton of pressure on opposing defenses off the dribble. Per Second Spectrum, Lillard has produced 1.11 points per direct pick on more than 2,000 picks, by far the top mark in the NBA among 156 ball handlers with at least 200 direct picks. McCollum has been strong as well, producing 0.99 points per direct pick. He uses picks to set up his own shot, with his 0.69 field goal attempts per direct pick the eighth most in the NBA. Lillard has been more balanced in his attack, with 0.59 field goal attempts per direct pick and 0.16 assists per direct pick.
Lillard and McCollum are among the best volume shot-makers in the NBA. Per Second Spectrum, Lillard is tied for 18th among volume scorers (minimum: 1,000 shots) with a +3.6 quantified shooter impact (qSI), indicating that he made the shots that he took with a 3.6 percent higher effective field goal percentage than the average shooter. McCollum looks even better in this metric, with a +4.8 qSI that ranked 15th. The only sets of teammates to finish higher are Curry (+10.8), Thompson (+6.6) and Kevin Durant (+10.3), and Kawhi Leonard (+6.7) and Pascal Siakam (+5.2).
Through a unique combination of creation and shot-making, Lillard and McCollum make the Blazers' offense both strong and robust, and are carrying it in the postseason.
Leading the Nuggets
Jokic leads all centers with a +3.67 ORPM and Murray ranks 12th among point guards at +2.18, leading the Nuggets' top-10 offense (109.8 points per 100 possessions, ninth in NBA). But the way they get there is unique in today's NBA.
The Nuggets run their offense through Jokic, with Murray in a secondary, still-high-volume role in a unit predicated on ball movement. Per Second Spectrum, Jokic has thrown by far the most passes this season with 6,619. Philadelphia's Ben Simmons is second, more than 800 passes behind, while Jokic also leads with 116.0 passes per 100 possessions. Murray ranks sixth in total passes with 4,746.
Jokic operates largely out of the low and high post, ranking fifth with 661 post-ups this season. Murray, meanwhile, is the primary ball handler in the half court, as evidenced by his 1,745 picks utilized (22nd in NBA). With this duo at the helm, the Nuggets ranked second to only the Warriors with 27.4 assists per game.
All of this passing leads to open 3-pointers for the Nuggets -- each of their top-seven players in playing time put up at least 0.8 3-point attempts per game. Murray led the team in 3-pointers made, and Jokic averaged 1.3 3-pointers made per game over the past two seasons, on 35.3 percent shooting. In conjunction with his ability to run the Nuggets' offense from the high post, Jokic's shooting stretches the floor and creates many spacing and penetrating lanes for his teammates.
Jokic also ranked 10th in the NBA with 228 offensive rebounds, leading the Nuggets to a tie for the NBA lead with a 26.6 percent offensive rebounding rate. (The Blazers actually tied with the Nuggets for that top mark, though Lillard and McCollum had very little direct impact on that measure.)
Finally, Jokic has been able to contribute materially to the Nuggets' 11th-ranked defense (106.8 points allowed per 100 possessions), with a defensive real plus-minus (DRPM) of +2.46 (that is 28th in the NBA, second on Nuggets behind Paul Millsap). Jokic is not known as a defensive stalwart, but his size and rebounding ability help the Nuggets control the defensive paint, with Millsap anchoring the unit.
Jokic is the only of the four players considered here to have a positive DRPM, which makes sense because as a center, he's able to exert a much larger influence on the defense than most perimeter players.
Bottom line
Each pair of stars exerts a similar impact on its team's scoring margin, as measured by their overall RPM scores. The Blazers' duo makes a larger impact on offense, while some of Jokic's contributions come on defense.
Another difference: Because Lillard and McCollum operate at such heavy volumes, the other Blazers need to be finishers who don't require the ball in their hands. But because Jokic is such a gifted passer from the center position, the Nuggets can surround him with scorers and creators without any redundancy in skill set. Thus, the Nuggets' offense has more potential to scale up with improved personnel, while the Blazers would start to face diminishing returns with additional creators.
This speaks to the positional value of Jokic's unique dominance. There just aren't many big men in NBA history with Jokic's combination of passing and shooting talent, and bigs with this skill set are high-impact offensive players. When you factor in his improved defense, his ability to help control the paint and the glass, and the scalability of the teams that can be built around Jokic, I do buy that the Nuggets' star pairing is likely to be slightly more valuable than the Blazers' duo in the long run.
That said, playoff series are often dictated by matchups and individual stars shining brightly. Though the Nuggets may have won Game 1, and have a duo that they can more easily build around, the Blazers still have every opportunity to ride the hot hands of Lillard and McCollum right into the Western Conference finals.