The Nuggets are changing what an NBA championship contender is supposed to look like

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The NBA superteams all went bust. The steady Nuggets keep on rolling.

Hours before the Eastern Conference’s Game 7, as the Denver Nuggets were finally going to learn if they would be facing Boston or Miami in the NBA Finals, Nuggets head coach Michael Malone sat down for a sanguine pre-Finals presser.

He talked about how Denver had occupied themselves in their week off since sweeping the Lakers. He recalled his third season coaching the Nuggets, when the team won 46 games but lost a shot at making the playoffs in overtime against the Timberwolves, and how much his twin stars of Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic had grown since then. He talked about the development of some of Denver’s key role-players, like Michael Porter Jr. and Christian Braun. The underlying current of his calm, concise answers, most of which came across like free-flowing meditation instead of a Q&A, was patience.

Even on the eve of the biggest stage the Nuggets will find themselves on in franchise history, Malone’s big picture approach and penchant for patience remains front and center — and with good reason. It’s why Denver’s here in the first place.

While superteams formed and flamed out in spectacular fashion, and franchise owners bankrupted team futures by giving up lottery picks for interim superstars, the Nuggets were quietly working. Under Malone, the Nuggets have knocked on postseason door for five out of his eight seasons, each time waylaid by teams a little more technically ready, or with more playoff experience. Murray’s ACL injury in April 2021 and subsequent recovery made Denver’s course more circuitous still, but where other front offices may have balked at the lost time (and former Nuggets President Tim Connelly reportedly did), Nuggets ownership doubled down on their trust in Malone.

“You have let something take root. Let it grow,” Malone said of the Nuggets steady trajectory in the team’s first Finals availably, “Go with the growing pains.”

The onus on slow growth in a league growing more accelerant by the season should be reason alone to label the Nuggets as a compelling team and story, contrary to some of the commentary that this group is not as interesting as perennial contenders like, say, the Lakers or Warriors. Despite Denver’s perceived remoteness — boxed in by the Rockies and being a “small market” in a conference that hosts its own array of immovable competitive mountains — there’s no reason beyond convenient visibility, that is, what games the league’s broadcast partners decide are exciting enough to nationally air, that more people aren’t as familiar with the team and its people.

The unlikely but devastating duo of Murray and Jokic go back all the way to 2014, when the two played together for the first time at the Nike Hoop Summit. On his own, Murray is one of the league’s best shooters, combining a decisive ability to pull up from anywhere and never looking rushed in his spots. Alongside Jokic, two-time MVP and a stoic, calculating bulwark on both ends of the floor, Murray finds veritable bucolic valleys of space to score from. A lot, too much, is made of the way Jokic appears, an anomaly in terms of traditional form (more should be made of his hangdog love for his harness racing horses), but when someone that big is able to move that lightly, a hurricane on a dancer’s legs, it shouldn’t matter how he looks, only that we get to see it. The pair’s only real self-detraction from stardom, or the general public’s broader recognition of it, is in their quietude, their disinterest in the flashier trappings of the superstar title. Jokic hightails it home to Serbia each summer as soon as he can, and Murray, off the floor, has none of the bravado of his showier peers. Both share a healthy detachment from the media machine of the NBA and as such, are harder to blindly aggregate.

The other athletes on Denver’s roster share that same sensibility.

Michael Porter Jr., no stranger to the necessary, if not difficult patience that comes with injury, underwent three back surgeries in five years. After each, he carefully and incrementally returned to training and the team. Steadiness, unselfishness, and a firm belief in the longterm are guiding principals of the Nuggets under Malone, and Porter Jr. has flourished as the team’s clutch pressure valve. An elite shooter that gives countless more outlets to Jokic and Murray in transition. After showing that he could do a little bit of everything with the Nets, but overshadowed by the ego implosion in Brooklyn, Bruce Brown hit free agency in 2022. He revealed recently that contrary to reports, no team wanted him, and it only made him want to prove himself. He’s done that in Denver. Brown’s putting up the most points of his career to date, with robust rebounding and assists to round it all out. Like Brown, Aaron Gordon’s had a career revitalization with the Nuggets. In Denver’s collaborative environment Gordon’s overall assists are up while his shooting accuracy is the highest its ever been, with a field goal percentage at 56.4 percent.

Other veterans, like DeAndre Jordan, Jeff Green, Reggie Jackson and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope have similarly retooled well-honed skills to chip in where it counts, while young players like Thomas Bryant and Christian Braun have flourished with the added experience layered into Denver’s steady system.

“I hear from a lot of people saying, ‘We want to be like the Denver Nuggets,’” Malone said of how Denver’s process has resonated across the league, “‘We want to draft well, we want to have our players develop, add the right pieces around them, be patient and see where it goes.’”

Whether he’s heard those things begrudgingly or enthusiastically from other front offices, the truth is that regardless of whether the Nuggets come away with the title, this team has changed what we can expect from championship contenders going forward. Superteams have proven too unwieldy, whether in clashing personalities or massive salaries, to any longer be a surefire path to title contention. The strategy of pairing stars has led to hollow construction, where the backbone of role players — like Denver and Miami have in spades — was overlooked or forfeited altogether. What we’re seeing in these Finals is a glimpse of the NBA to come, where the teams that come out of each conference are going to need to look like the Nuggets, or the Heat, in order to even compete. Raw talent is increasing season over season and the franchises that will be best suited to gain from it in the long term and with staying power will be those that focus on development and future-casting in their drafting. Unicorns will still come and go, but the winning strategy of relying on them alone isn’t feasible for smaller market or middle city teams, lest they face more, and longer, competitive droughts.

The result, perhaps to the chagrin of those who claim to not find these Nuggets interesting, is going to be a more compelling league overall. Where high- to mid-tier stars don’t feel as much of a gravitational pull toward the headliner teams in either conference, but land in middle cities, like Denver, where they’ll play alongside well-rounded players (by virtue of development, competent drafting, and other strategies these teams need to employ to win) and be able to make names for themselves without having to compete against a storied franchise’s history to do it. Long-term, the benefits of bigger roles across more teams for more players means longer, and healthier, careers.

Non-conventional teams and surprising title contenders only stay that way for a couple seasons, until the rest of the league follows suit. In a league propelled, often, by narrative, having more stories we don’t already know by heart is a good thing. So is proving that patience can be a virtue even in the title or bust ideology of the modern NBA.