There are nine former MVPs in the league. One is expected to be traded from his current team any day now. Interestingly, another one of them has reportedly expressed an interest in playing with him. The first player is Russell Westbrook, and the second player is Nikola Jokic. The reigning triple-double leader and perhaps the guy with the most realistic shot at overtaking him. It’s tempting to wonder, though, if the Denver Nuggets would have benefited more from adding Westbrook last season instead.
Should The Nuggets Have Triple-Doubled Down Last Season?
By all accounts, it would be Jokic’s first foray into the theater of front-office finagling. Westbrook might seem like a peculiar choice, considering how things went for the master front office finagler himself when he attempted it. LeBron James‘ insistence on having the Los Angeles Lakers trade much of their post-championship core for Westbrook remains a constant sore point for fans of the purple and gold. Westbrook’s tenure with the Los Angeles Clippers went much better. Kawhi Leonard‘s injuries, albeit predictably, were perhaps the only reason Westbrook didn’t pick up a title with them. But could Westbrook himself have actually made the difference for the title chances of last season’s Nuggets?
How Denver’s Season Ended
It isn’t ludicrous to suggest that Westbrook could have made the difference in the Nuggets’ second-round, seven-game slugfest loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves last season. It isn’t ludicrous to suggest that a butterfly flapping its wings beside the stadium could have made the difference in such a bizarrely oscillating series. Some, however, (especially Lakers fans) will still scoff at the idea of post-prime Westbrook being a positive contributor. But when the Nuggets won Game 5 to go up 3-2 in the series, the pundit world expected the defending champions to prevail. What proved to be their downfall?
They ran out of players. The Nuggets won the championship in 2023 on the back of a tight rotation that trimmed out all the fat. They tried to replicate that dietary approach the following year, with just one problem: they’d lost two ligaments. The departures of Bruce Brown and Jeff Green meant the Nuggets effectively lost their backup point guard and center, respectively. Obviously, Aaron Gordon got most of the credit for being the nominal small ball five in bench line-ups and was certainly a key component. The guy actually defending the other team’s big, though, was typically Green.
How Could Westbrook Have Helped The Nuggets?
One of the young players the Nuggets had hoped to rely on instead was Peyton Watson. He wound up getting left out of the rotation in the Minnesota series. It’s conceivable that the same thing could have happened to Westbrook. His complete lack of shooting gravity and inconsistent rim finishing can make him an offensive liability at times. Watson is an already promising defender (with a nickname to match), that’s exactly why Swatson got benched. But Westbrook still gives you a couple of very valuable offensive commodities: pace and rim pressure. If you surround him with enough active rebounders, even some of those egregious-looking layup attempts can turn into positive overall possessions.
Of course, having Westbrook out there dominating the ball would turn Jokic into more of a play-finishing stretch-five type. That would clearly result in a less efficient offense in those minutes. Especially when you consider that Jokic’s three-ball was off all post-season, including a particularly ugly Game 7 against the Wolves. But that’s just the thing: with a ball-handler like Brown, the Nuggets were able to play Jokic in a less demanding role, which freed him up for late-game heroics down the stretch.
It would help too, of course, that Jokic and Westbrook’s minutes together for the Nuggets would be few and far between. Even if all Westbrook did was eat up minutes in the six previous outings and didn’t see a lick of playing time in game seven, that alone might have been enough to swing the series. Even eating minutes in the regular season and potentially sparing Jokic from the late hand injury that derailed his shooting might have been enough.
But last offseason, Westbrook was still looking to continue his lead ball-handler role with the Clippers. Could an appeal from Jokic have won him over, though? The Clippers could barely offer him any more than Denver would have been able to, eventually landing on two years for $7.8 million. But things went well for Westbrook in his first half-season back in the Staples Center… Crypto.com Arena, that is. Even if Jokic had tried to move his considerable weight around, it might not have been enough. It’s a shame, though, because at the veteran minimum, Westbrook would have been an ideal replacement for the Indiana Pacers-bound Bruce Brown.
But Will Westbrook Help the Nuggets This Year?
Denver’s trouble now is that they don’t just need to replace Brown anymore. Not even Brown and Green. Now they also need to replace starting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Judging by last postseason, they’ll need to somehow replace the super-star version of Jamal Murray‘s offensive output too. Westbrook doesn’t help the Nuggets with much of that.
The Nuggets are hoping that Christian Braun can slide into KCP’s spot in the starting line-up. Expect defenses to test his three-point shot by sending his man to congest the three-man game of Jokic, Murray, and Gordon. Meanwhile, Murray may have simply had a bad stretch at the wrong time. Fans hope that young guard Julian Strawther can take a leap this year. Jokic could astound us all again and somehow get even better (he does look especially trim playing for Serbia lately).
The Last Word
In a conference where the competition keeps getting better, the Nuggets seem to be getting further away from being the best version of themselves. Westbrook’s arrival in Denver looks inevitable at this point. It should help energize one of the consistently worst benches in the league. But will they be triple-doubling down too late to get back to the mountaintop?
