This season has been absolutely excruciating to experience as a Nuggets fan. On one hand, we see a young, promising team posting a decent record of 7-10 en route to a mid level lottery pick. On the other hand, we see recurring, tragic fourth quarter collapses from a team that should be at the worst 9-8 with hopes of snatching up the coveted 8th seed in the Western Conference.

Let’s quickly re-live (sorry) some of the most notable collapses from this season.

10/29- Portland 115, Denver 113 (OT)

The Nuggets had an 8 point lead with with 0:50 left in the 4th quarter. How is it even possible to lose this game? Here is a recap of the events that occurred in the last 50 seconds of regulation:

Lillard 3PT FG (Den +5, 0:45)

Gallinari isolation- missed contested deep 2PTA (Den +5, 0:23)

CJ Mccollum AND 1, fouled by Mudiay on the layup (Den +2, 0:15)

Barton fouled, first in last 2 minutes (Den +2, 0:13)

Faried inbounds-bad pass, TO (Den +2, 0:12)

Mudiay steals ball from Lillard (Den +2, 0:07)

Pause for a second here. Okay, so Denver has the ball in the open court with a 2 point lead with only 6 seconds remaining. Their odds of winning must be >99%. Also, shoutout Mudiay for a super clutch and impressive defensive play.

Wilson Chandler fouled (Den +2, 0:04)

Chandler misses 2 FTs, Portland DREB (Den +2, 0:03)

Lillard curls open for wide open alley-oop layup off inbounds play (Tie, 0:02)

In overtime, Portland barely outplays Denver behind exceptional play from Lillard and Mccollum and wins the game on a Lillard game-winner. The tragedy of this loss of course comes in the end-of-regulation collapse.

Main takeaway: in last minute, clutch possessions, Nuggets ended up with a turnover, Gallo contested, isolation deep 2 point attempt, and finally with 2 missed free throws. The Blazers, on the other hand, end up with Lillard 3PTM, Mccollum AND-1, turnover, and Lillard driving layup. What’s the difference? Portland was able to rely on their two best players to convert 75% of the last minute possessions, while the Nuggets convert on 0% of the same opportunities. Yes, I blame Gallo, Chandler, and Faried, but at what point is it a personnel problem?

11/8- Denver 107, Memphis 108

I generally chalk up seemingly unbalanced refereeing to chance and hope that it all balances out in the end. This time, however, I could not get myself to move past such an egregious mistake. In this unique ending, (I mean truly unique, not sure if this has ever happened before) the referees got an out of bounds call wrong AFTER replay review. Yes, after an extensive replay review aided by the replay center in Secaucus, the call was made incorrectly. How do I know? Oh yeah the League admitted to their mistake and issued an apology. Great. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, the Nuggets absolutely should not have allowed the game to deteriorate to the point to which one incorrect out-of-bounds call could impact the outcome of the game. Here is a recap of the events that occurred in the last 50 seconds of regulation:

James Ennis 3PT FG (Den -1, 2:20)

Now, somewhat remarkably, neither team scores until there is only 7 seconds remaining in the game. This is extremely unusual. Over this time, the Nuggets had four (4!) possessions in which they had the chance to take the lead. These four possessions resulted in the following:

Mudiay missed 3PT Gary Harris missed 2PT FG Gary Harris TO Mudiay TO

Absolutely devastating. We only needed to convert one of these possessions to win this game. Thanks to the incompetence of the Grizzlies, the Nuggets luckily came out of this horrendous stretch of basketball still down by merely 1 point.

Mudiay and Harris trap Conley against sideline and come up with steal! (Den -1, 0:10)

What a miracle! Harris comes up with a huge steal before intentionally fouling as Memphis was attempting to ice the game. If Harris doesn’t come up with this steal, we must foul and the game is likely over. Okay, Denver ball with 10 seconds to go.

Mudiay made 2PT FG (Den +1, 0:07)

James Ennis inbound TO (Den +1. 0:07)

So now the Nuggets have the ball yet again with a one point lead with only 7 seconds remaining.

Mike Miller (?) inbound TO (Den +1, 0.7 s)

This is where the refs made the incorrect call. Nuggets should have had possession with 0.7 seconds remaining and a one point lead. Instead, Memphis inbounds from under their own basket and this happens:

Absolutely devastating.

Main takeaway: Mudiay and Harris (and unfortunately the entire team) cannot seem to handle these late game situations with poise. Ultimately, despite the atrocious shooting down the stretch, the 3 consecutive turnovers (Mudiay, Harris, Miller) led to the ultimate demise of the Nuggets. Also, Grizzlies were really bad down the stretch, but when it came down to it, their guy (Mark Gasol) came through. Same cannot be said for the Nuggets. Denver losing a game due to turnovers… sound familiar? 😦

11/25- OKC 132, Denver 129 (OT)

I almost expected a disastrous finish to this game. Nuggets are probably a better overall team than the Thunder, but of course, Westbrook would come up with some late game heroics to send the Nuggets to yet another heart-breaking defeat. That’s exactly what happened.

So, the Nuggets played a gem of a game and had a 10 point lead with under 4 minutes to go. This is where things start to go wrong…

Wilson Chandler TO (DEN +10, 3:25)

Westbrook 3 PM (Den +7, 3:06)

Jameer Nelson TO (Den +7, 2:50)

Alonzo Gee STL (Den +7, 2:47)

Alonzo Gee missed 3PA (Den +7, 2:31)

Murray fouls Westbrook on a 3, makes all 3 FTs (Den +4, 2:23)

Jameer Nelson missed 3PA (Den +4, 2:04)

Westbrook makes driving layup (Den +2, 1:58)

Jameer Nelson 3PM! (Den +5, 1:36)

Okay pause here. Five point lead with 1.5 minutes remaining. Easy, right? Nope.

Oladipo mid-range (Den +3, 1:19)

Jokic TO (Den +3, 1:06)

Oladipo driving layup (Den +1, 1:02)

Jameer Nelson missed mid-range (Den +1, 0:45)

Westbrook mid-range (Den -1, 0:35)

Jameer Nelson missed mid-range (Den -1, 0:23)

Westbrook fouled, makes 2 FTs (Den -3, 0:17)

Alright ultimately, the catastrophically blew a 10 point lead with under 4 minutes to go. There are, however, 2 positive things to come from this horror:

1. Jamal Murray is clutch and he knows it. Taking and making 3 straight free throws to tie the game as time ticked away was absolutely stunning and Afflalo v. Kings (see below) esque.

2. Kenneth Faried had super clutch block on Westbrook on the last posession. It was absolutely amazing!

Main takeaway: I guess there isn’t too much to say about this game that hasn’t been said about the Portland game. One thing is that Mike Malone closed the game with Alonzo Gee instead of Emmanuel Mudiay who was actually having a great game up against Westbrook. Coaching is certainly one of the main drivers of the Nuggets monumental collapses.

In addition to these tragedies, it is obvious that this team has issues in the clutch even outside of these most notable failures. More often than not, the Nuggets will allow long, slow come-backs throughout the end of the 3rd and 4th quarters. Despite sometimes large mid-3rd quarter leads, the Nuggets frequently find themselves in “clutch” situations (defined as game situations with <5 minutes left to play and deficit/lead <=5 points). In fact, 11/17 of the Nuggets games have featured at least some “clutch” minutes. In these games, Denver has a record of 4-7. Ugh.

In these 48 clutch minutes (7th most in the league), Denver’s offensive rating plummets from a decent 102.5 to an abysmal 86.8 while their AST/TO ratio drops from 1.34 to 1. This confirms my general observations above that the Nuggets offense becomes desperate with tons of turnovers in clutch situations.

So this is obviously a problem. What is the solution?

The way I see it, the quickest way to fix these problems would be a major personnel change. I mean MAJOR. The other, more realistic way of fixing this problem is a slight change in rotation/coaching strategy.

1. Personnel

The teams that are most successful in clutch situations (categorized by Net Rating) are the Warriors, Spurs, Cavaliers, Grizzlies, and Celtics. What does these teams have in common? All of these teams have exceptional duos of all-star talent that have proven themselves in the clutch. This leads to more efficient isolation plays where the defense is unable to key in on one player because there is a fellow all-star on the other side of the court.

Currently, the Nuggets have exactly 0 players on their roster at this level. Let’s take a look at a few examples around the league and see who these players are and where they reside.

Steph Curry, Kevin Durant- Warriors

Kawaii Leonard, Lamarcus Aldridge- Spurs

Lebron James, Kyrie Irving- Cavaliers

Mike Conley, Mark Gasol- Grizzlies

Chris Paul, Blake Griffin- Clippers

The list goes on and on. The point is, the Nuggets have ~0.01% chance of landing one of these guys in free agency. Additionally, I do not believe the Nuggets have a good chance of trading for the most scarce commodity in the league any time soon. They really do need a star player or two like the ones listed above to put an end to their 4th quarter woes and become an actually good playoff team in the West.

2. Strategy

Because they Nuggets likely don’t have the moveable assets or the motive to trade for one of these super valuable players, they must change their late game strategies. This starts with a reliable rotation and closing lineup. From my observations (I don’t have Synergy so it’s hard for me to get stats to back this up) I believe that the best closing lineup is as follows:

PG: Emmanuel Mudiay

SG: Jamal Murray (while Garris and Barton are out)

SF: Wilson Chandler

PF: Danilo Gallinari

C: Nikola Jokic

I understand the idea of riding the hot hand, but I really don’t see any scenarios where Nelson or Gee are finishing games. I can, however, see Harris/Barton or Nurkic or even potentially Faried slotting into this closing lineup if they are having a good game or the opponent is dictating a small lineup etc. The bottom line: don’t play Jameer Nelson or Alonzo Gee in ‘clutch’ minutes.

Outside of rotation, the Nuggets desperately need some more coaching in these late game situations. Danilo Gallinari isolations no longer work for this, so we are going to have to figure something else out. I am not suggesting that I have better basketball play strategies than Coach Malone, so I will refrain from making suggestions. I just hope that Coach Malone will call more timeouts and instruct the team more down the stretch instead of letting them play it out and continuously take contested mid-range jumpers and turn the ball over. Thanks coach!

– Mike

Hit me up on twitter: @09anthonycarter