When training camps were just beginning last fall, the Denver Nuggets landed at the top of our preseason projections for the Western Conference. Lost in the kerfuffle was the real story: Five teams in the West had projected win totals less than four games from the top. The Nuggets' projection was only 0.1 wins higher than Oklahoma City's, and the Thunder had the better baseline. It was only after we fed those figures through our schedule simulator that the Nuggets nudged ahead of the Thunder.
In Denver's case, the projection really was pretty good, if its ordinal place in the standings was not. My latest run of simulations predicts that the Nuggets will finish with 53 wins, or about five fewer than forecast. It's the fifth-best total in the league. Unfortunately for Denver, three of the four teams ahead of it are in the West.
Denver's record could be even better if it had done better in close games. The definition of "close" is subjective, but the Nuggets are 1-3 in games decided by two points or less; 6-9 if we raise the bar to four points; and 8-10 if you go up to five points. As a kind of rhetorical shorthand, we often refer to close games as "coin-flip" games, suggesting they can break either way because of simple luck. Fortune plays a large role in close games no matter what league you're talking about, but this much is true: Good teams tend to win more close games than bad ones.
The Heat are 8-4 in games decided by five points or less. Oklahoma City is 4-6. The Kings are 8-3. Given a large enough sample, the relationship between good teams and close wins will emerge, but within one season, there is a lot of randomness to those numbers.
A more telling indicator of team strength is its record in blowouts. Bad teams seldom blow out good ones. The teams with the best record in blowouts (wins by 10 or more points) are the league's best teams: Oklahoma City (30-4), San Antonio (25-4), Miami (25-7) and the L.A. Clippers (28-8). The Nuggets rank sixth at 17-7.
Ah, those Nuggets. That's yet another indicator that puts them on the fringe of the championship discussion, but never really in the center of it. With the three power teams ahead of it in the West, Denver is generally, and understandably, left out of the conversation.
Denver's iffy record in tight games might be chalked up to the same reason the Nuggets' haughty preseason projection was so readily dismissed, which is their lack of an upper-tier star. If it were as simple as that, Oklahoma City, with Kevin Durant around to close games, would not be 4-6 in tight encounters. And the Lakers, with Kobe Bryant, would not be 7-7.
Yet as the season has played out, and the star-powered teams again have risen to the top, you can't help but wonder if it's futile for teams to try to win with a balanced roster, and the payroll structure that goes along with that approach. In other words, is a team that is filled with above-average players -- instead of two or three top players -- forever consigned to the league's second tier?
The historical evidence certainly suggests that's the case. During the 3-point era in the NBA, every championship team has featured at least one player who is either already in the Hall of Fame or will be some day. Dirk, LeBron, Kobe, Magic, MJ, Isiah, Kareem, Bird, Hakeem, Shaq, Moses -- the leaders of championship teams don't even require full names to be recognized. So far, it seems this NBA season is playing out like nearly all of those that came before it.
The Nuggets' core is young -- Danilo Gallinari is 24, Ty Lawson 25 and Kenneth Faried 23 -- so you don't know what's going to happen. However, as of now, there isn't a player on the Denver roster with a clear path to the Hall of Fame. There are just a lot of good, athletic players led by a likely Hall of Fame coach in George Karl.
Despite its solid record, Denver's top player in WARP has been Faried, at 5.2. He ranks 46th in the league. Gallinari, JaVale McGee, Lawson, Andre Iguodala and Kosta Koufos all rank in the top 100. With six such players, the Nuggets are tied with San Antonio for the most in the NBA. But the Spurs have Tony Parker at No. 6 and Tim Duncan at No. 8. The Thunder and Clippers also have two players in the top 10. The Heat have two players in the top 12 and the best overall in LeBron James. Those are the teams that dominate the championship conversation.
Our original forecast for Denver is easy to defend. The Nuggets had the point differential of a 48-win team last season, then added Iguodala, who projected to be an easy four-win upgrade on an individual basis over the player he replaced, Arron Afflalo. His impact on the overall team defense promised to squeeze out another few wins, and Denver's defense (14th in efficiency) has been even better than we forecast (19th). Nevertheless, the Nuggets' best-case scenario is probably a second-round playoff departure, if that.
As teams like the Nuggets crash up against a glass ceiling, we have to wonder what it all means. As we learned at the trade deadline, the new collective bargaining agreement dictates that teams are going to be run with cost efficiency at the forefront. Denver is strong in that regard, but to what end? Is the new NBA going to be a league in which only the teams fortunate enough to employ a top-15 star have any real hope of winning rings?
Because there aren't nearly enough elite stars to go around, it might be that many teams will logically structure their payrolls following the Denver model, one of balance in production and salary. In doing so, the hope is that because power teams will have to assign large portions of their payrolls to their top two players, the rest of the league will be able to eventually field stronger, deeper rosters as talent is redistributed. Call this the "James Harden Effect."
What would give NBA fans and general managers hope is if a team like Denver is able to leverage depth into a championship. In that regard, the Nuggets' approach to roster building marks them as the proverbial canary in the coal mine, one that has always been doomed to suffocate. It remains to be seen if that is going to change.