Brian Windhorst and a team of ESPN's Insiders sort out life and the news from in and around the NBA world, including the Denver Nuggets' clutch gene, the next step for a young Brooklyn Nets star and the other issue impacting the Memphis Grizzlies' season.
With three minutes to play and up by six points Monday night, the Toronto Raptors were in great position to get a terrific victory.
But they had a problem, they were playing the Denver Nuggets at the end of a close game -- in Denver. That situation has been a torture chamber for Nuggets' opponents this season. And so it was again.
There is no team that can touch the devastating effectiveness of the Nuggets in the clutch this season and the Raptors couldn't either. Denver won the final minutes by a 15-4 margin -- though the end was marred by a controversial ejection for Raptors' forward Scottie Barnes -- and racked up another victim.
With big-market, star-laden teams behind them in the standings and losses before the conference finals in the last two seasons even as Nikola Jokic was winning Most Valuable Player Awards, the Nuggets are sometimes disrespected.
Even now, despite sitting in first place in the Western Conference for nearly the entire season and opening a seven-game lead on the Memphis Grizzlies to practically lock down the No. 1 seed, the Phoenix Suns have zoomed past Denver as favorites to win the West after trading for Kevin Durant, according to Caesars Sportsbook.
But the truth is the Nuggets are a victory machine, and especially so in clutch time. Defined as when the score is within five points in the last five minutes or in overtime, it's when the Nuggets dominate their opposition.
For every 100 possessions Denver has played in the clutch this season, it has outscored opponents by a ridiculous 24.5 points. If a team is in a close game with the Nuggets in Denver, it's just merciless, as they have smothered the other team by a preposterous 34.7 points per 100 possessions.
To put it in perspective, the Philadelphia 76ers are the second-best team in the clutch with Joel Embiid and James Harden developing a terrific chemistry, including an impressive clutch-time road win to end the Milwaukee Bucks' 16-game win streak on Saturday.
Philadelphia has been excellent, yet have outscored teams by "only" 15.2 points per 100 clutch possessions.
One of the knocks on the Nuggets' title chances is that their defense isn't elite -- to be fair, outside of the Grizzlies, none of the league's top defenses resides in the West -- and Denver does rank a pedestrian 12th in defensive rating.
But when they have to get stops in the clutch, when games slow down and half-court execution becomes paramount, the Nuggets zoom to No. 1, allowing 92.7 points per 100 possessions.
Two offseason acquisitions -- versatile defenders Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown -- seem to have made a huge difference for the Nuggets on this front when combined with Aaron Gordon, who has great size and the ability to switch on defense during those sometimes-chaotic end-of-game moments.
Led by an ever cool-tempered playmaker in Jokic, the Nuggets have the league's No. 2 offensive rating. This isn't a surprise at all. The Nuggets have the second-most prolific offense in the NBA and lead the league in 3-point percentage (39.0).
"They have a couple new players and have a couple players who have missed some time with injury, but overall they have a lot of continuity compared to a lot of the rest of us," a Western Conference coach told ESPN. "Jokic and [coach Michael] Malone have been together a long time, and when you play them you can feel their experience in those moments. I'm envious of it."
Jokic generates great shots non-stop for himself and his teammates -- and under pressure is where they've shined. Brown has shot 58.8% in the clutch this season and Gordon a whopping 63.0%. Michael Porter Jr. shoots 42.9% on clutch 3-pointers. Jokic shoots 54.3% overall in the clutch.
Jamal Murray, who puts up more average clutch numbers than his teammates, demonstrated his ability to make pressure plays the last time he was healthy for the postseason in 2020.
The thing is, clutch play during the regular season hasn't historically carried over to the playoffs. Last season, the 64-win Suns had one of the best clutch ratings (33.4) in the history of the league, and Chris Paul and Devin Booker obliterated teams down the stretch of games. In the playoffs, they faded and were shockingly sent out in a second round that included a Game 7 collapse to the Dallas Mavericks.
In 2020-21, the Portland Trail Blazers were the league's best clutch team, with a net rating (27.4) that resembled the Nuggets' this season. The Blazers lost in the first round. None of the other teams ranked in the top four in the clutch that season -- the Charlotte Hornets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers -- made it any further.
In 2019-20's COVID-altered season, it was the Oklahoma City Thunder. They were also sent home in the first round.
In 2018-19, the scrappy LA Clippers pre-Kawhi Leonard and Paul George willed themselves to the playoffs by assembling 48 wins. Owner Steve Ballmer was a fixture bouncing in his courtside seat as Lou Williams brought home numerous games as a closer off the bench -- only to be beaten in the ... you guessed it... first round.
There are reasons behind this trend.
Opponents are better prepared during playoff series than for one-off regular-season contests. Clutch scenarios often succumb to a level of randomness. There's also a belief that the NBA's elite teams don't worry about clutch-time performance because they end games long before then.
Then there's the playoff pressure. The 2021-22 Golden State Warriors were a middling team in the clutch during the regular season and then a monster in the playoffs, outscoring opponents by 21 points per 100 possessions. When the lights were brightest, so were the four-time champs.
The Nuggets certainly have all the ingredients to keep it going beyond the regular season, starting with a potential three-time MVP, to make it happen. If they're going to make the first Finals in team history, they're surely going to need to stay clutch.
Here's NBA reporter Tim Bontemps on a star in the making who has hit another gear since joining the Nets:
To Brooklyn's benefit, Bridges is gaining 'ultra-confidence' by the game
Before Mikal Bridges made his Nets debut last month, coach Jacque Vaughn said the small forward did some things he "didn't know [Bridges] had in him" for the Phoenix Suns with Devin Booker sidelined in the weeks leading up to the blockbuster Kevin Durant trade deadline. It would've been easy -- and understandable -- to write off what Vaughn said as coachspeak.
In the weeks since the trade, Bridges has proven it wasn't a fluke.
"It's great, man," Bridges told ESPN after scoring 38 points in Friday's road win against the Boston Celtics, when asked about the way Vaughn and the Nets have encouraged him to expand his game. "My teammates and coaches always give me confidence to go out there and be aggressive. I trust my work, but they give me that ultra-confidence. Just trust it, and go out there and perform."
Over the course of the 365 games he played with the Suns in his first four-and-a-half NBA seasons, he scored 30 points twice.
In his first nine games with the Nets, he has eclipsed that total points four times -- including a career-high 45 last month against the Miami Heat and going for more than 30 twice in three days over the weekend in victories over Boston and the Hornets.
To at least one of his teammates, though, Bridges' success comes as no surprise.
"Man, he's worked on this stuff every single day, nonstop -- summer, spring, winter, fall -- for the past four years," Cameron Johnson, who spent those past four seasons playing alongside Bridges in Phoenix, said after Friday's win.
"When I got to Phoenix that first week of summer league [in 2019], we were working out together. And the strides he's made in his game since then, it's unbelievable. ...
"There's so much work behind the scenes that you guys don't see, hours put in in the weight room, on the court. And there's a mental aspect to it, too, understanding this is the way that you're gonna play and execute it, and it takes a lot of guts to step up and play like that, and so he's been showing that, he's been showing that all year."
Among the league's group of elite wings, many of them -- such as Leonard, George and Khris Middleton -- started in traditional "3-and-D" roles before graduating to All-Star status.
Bridges said he has specifically studied George and Middleton.
"When I look at myself, who I just want to try to be offensively, I like how those guys operate and just how efficient they are and how they get to their spots and they handle and shoot and create and everything," Bridges said.
In the wake of the Durant trade, Brooklyn has a dire need for shot creation. Bridges is going to get every chance to explore that role.
The early returns are exciting for the Nets.
NBA reporter Jamal Collier adds some clarity to a question many Milwaukee Bucks fans have been asking about a familiar face:
For the Bucks, Khris Middleton being a starter or reserve not of great importance
When the three-time All-Star returned to the court in late January, Middleton began coming off the bench, doing so regularly for the first time since his second season with the Bucks in 2014-15.
Injuries to his knee and wrist limited Middleton, now in his 10th season in Milwaukee, to seven games since the first round of the playoffs last April, so when he returned on Jan. 23, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said the team wanted to use him as a reserve to ease him into action.
More than one month later, Middleton is still running with the reserves, and the conversation has shifted from questions about when Middleton might play again -- he missed the first 20 games of the season -- to what his role with the Bucks looks like from here.
"I thought he'd be back in the [starting] lineup by now," Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams said before a game in Milwaukee last week.
In 14 games coming off the bench since returning from injury, Middleton is averaging 14.3 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists while playing 20.5 minutes. There are games when he looks like himself, (22-5-3 against the Lakers on Feb. 9) and games in which he's not all the way there yet (6 points on 2-of-8 shooting against the Sixers on Saturday).
But whether a starter or a reserve, when Middleton plays, the Bucks elevate to a new level.
The Bucks are 17-4 when Middleton plays in a game this season. Milwaukee's 16-game winning streak, which was snapped Saturday by the 76ers, began the day Middleton returned from injury.
"He's not just a 20-point scorer, he's a champion, All-Star, gold medalist coming off the bench," Williams said. "Not many people can say that."
Middleton's minutes have increased from 15 in his first game back to 27 minutes and on the floor with the closing lineup in his most recent game. However, Budenholzer said the Bucks plan to keep him from playing back-to-back games. The last time Middleton played more than 25 minutes in three consecutive games, during a stretch from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9, he was shut down a week later with right knee soreness and missed the next 18 games.
So, neither the Bucks nor Middleton feel the need to add him to the starting lineup right now. The team just completed the longest winning streak this season in the NBA. But come playoff time, Milwaukee could insert Middleton back into the starting lineup or keep him coming off the bench as a sixth man.
"Right now, we're just being very diligent," Budenholzer said. "Being very conscious of how he responds each day and how he's improving. ... Khris is in a good place, him coming off the bench. So, we'll just see, together with medical, how we feel about his overall minutes per game and where that is. If and when we need to adjust, we'll address it then."
For more news out of Memphis, NBA senior writer Kevin Pelton offers this take:
Beyond Morant and Brooks, this Grizzlies players' absence makes an impact, too
When news broke Saturday that Ja Morant was away from the Grizzlies for at least two games, as well as fellow starter Dillon Brooks' one-game suspension for accumulation of technical fouls, it was easy to miss another bit of Memphis news. Backup big man Brandon Clarke was lost for the season with an Achilles tendon rupture suffered in Friday's loss to the Nuggets.
Clarke's injury further weakens a Grizzlies' frontcourt that had already struggled to replace injured starting center Steven Adams. Since Adams went out of the lineup with a PCL sprain in late January, Memphis has gone 7-10 to fall out of the race for the top spot in the West standings.
Although Adams should return soon, Clarke's absence leaves an important hole in the Grizzlies' playoff rotation. Remember, it was Clarke who played the majority of the minutes next to Jaren Jackson Jr. in the Memphis frontcourt when Adams was dropped from the rotation in its first-round win against the Minnesota Timberwolves last season. Clarke was key to the six-game series victory, averaging 16.5 points and 9.0 rebounds per game.
Certainly, Clarke wouldn't be that important or effective in every matchup. He played a smaller role in the second round as the Grizzlies lost to the champion Warriors. But aside from Jackson, Clarke was both Memphis' best scoring threat up front (averaging 18.4 points per 36 minutes, fourth on the team behind Morant, Desmond Bane and Jackson) and its most capable switch defender.
Clarke had switched 19% of the on-ball screens he defended this season, a higher rate than any other Grizzlies' big man, according to Second Spectrum tracking. By contrast, Adams has switched 7% of screens he has defended, giving Memphis fewer options in the playoffs.
Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins will have the next month to figure out how to handle Clarke's absence in the playoffs. One possibility is responding with more smallball, sliding Brooks (6-foot-7) to power forward in situations where he would have defended a frontcourt player anyway. That would compromise Memphis' defensive rebounding with the benefit of more shooting.
For now, Morant's uncertain timetable for returning to the Grizzlies is the biggest question the team must answer. By the late spring, however, Clarke's injury could have major ramifications in its own right.