The Denver Nuggets were one of last year’s biggest surprises, going from the last team out of the playoffs in 2018 to the second seed in the loaded Western Conference. While there were plenty that thought the Nuggets could break through to reach the postseason, few if any projected an eight win increase and the team becoming one of the league’s best.
It was a dramatic improvement that occurred almost completely due to the internal development of players already on the roster, rather than any major additions in free agency or via trade. Of the 12 players that averaged 15 or more minutes per game last year for the Nuggets, only one was a new addition — Isaiah Thomas, who appeared in 12 games for 15.1 minutes per game, the fewest of all of those players. The top 11 players on the Denver roster were all there the year before, and simply managed to take the proverbial leap together, a testament to the development program in Denver
For the past three years, Denver’s player development department has been headed up by John Beckett, who was promoted from player development director to an assistant coach this summer. A longtime video coordinator for the Atlanta Hawks, Beckett joined the Nuggets in 2014, and has been the one tasked with putting together the development programs for the Nuggets young roster along with Stephen Graham and Ognjen Stojakovic, who moved into the director role this season. The job of that group, in correlation with the rest of the coaching staff and front office, has yielded some of the most impressive internal growth in the NBA in recent years.
Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are the poster boys for the Nuggets player development program as a young budding star tandem in a league that’s now filled with star duos. Jokic has emerged as an All-NBA talent, while Murray has become a dynamic offensive guard, inking a max extension this summer to stay in Denver long-term. With Jokic and Murray locked up for the foreseeable future, the Nuggets are banking on the ability of this staff to get the most out of the rest of the roster to continue to take steps forward.
For Beckett, who has worked closely with Murray while Stojakovic has worked with Jokic, the most impressive thing about both of the Nuggets young stars has been the ownership they’ve taken as players for putting in the work and being honest with what they need to work on.
“You always hear about the really good teams — they coach themselves, they police themselves,” Beckett said at Summer League in Las Vegas. “I think when guys are young we stay on them about staying with your routine, whether it’s coming in early and doing your rehab work, getting on the court and doing your stuff, and now I think the difference with them is they know what their routine is. They know what kind of shots they’re going to get in the game. So, sometimes, we’ll get on the court and I’m there with Jamal and I’ll say, ‘Let’s work on this,’ and he’ll say, ‘Nah, nah, I’m struggling with my pull-up three, let’s really maybe work on my pull-up three a little more.’ Or I’m like, ‘Let’s work on your floater,’ and he’ll say, ‘Uh, maybe let’s work on finishes through contact, I’ve been struggling finishing through the contact the last few games.’ So, the main growth that I’ve seen in terms of player development with those guys is their consistency in work habits and knowing what they need to work on.”
While those two are the biggest names, the real story of Denver’s success has been the depth they’ve created with the improvement of players throughout the roster. Gary Harris, Malik Beasley, Monte Morris, and Torrey Craig have all been homegrown successes, and Beckett noted it always starts with the players taking it upon themselves to put in the work necessary and buying into the plan. Last season the leaps those four took were as vital as the improvement of Jokic and Murray, as turning that group into quality role players was critical in Denver’s run to the conference semis.
For the development staff, the focus is keeping it simple. It starts with a constant dialogue between them, the coaching staff, and the front office, ensuring that what they’re working on is something the staff wants to see on the floor. Sometimes it’s direct, with head coach Mike Malone asking for specifics with guys during games or practices. Other times, Beckett simply listens. If he hears Malone lamenting someone’s inability to make a left-handed pass, for example, he’ll make sure they focus on off-handed passing with that player.
Game reps are always the most important part of players making what they work on a habit, and Beckett credits Malone with being willing to let players get those important minutes and make mistakes, knowing the development staff will make sure those areas go to the top of the priority list. Player development goes beyond skill work, and can be used to help hammer down the finer points of what the Nuggets want to do schematically on both ends of the floor.
“Coach Malone is really big on defense, so a lot of times when guys play and let’s say they might mess up a scheme or not know a coverage, we’ll work on those defensive schemes,” Beckett says. “We’ll work on low-man awareness on a pick-and-roll, you know I’m tagging then I’m going over there to close out. I’m making sure I’m reminding them, OK this guy’s a run-off. A run-off is a guy who’s a really good shooter and you want to run him off instead of closing out short and giving him an opportunity to shoot the three ball.
Then on offense it’s understanding our spacing. It’s knowing in transition you don’t stop over by the break, he wants you to get deep in the corner because it’s important so we can open up driving angles and stuff like that. That’s huge. So all of that goes into it. The spacing, the transition, running every time hard. You coming off maybe a pick-and-roll, making the right read, the extra pass. Let’s say someone drives and they close out to you, instead of maybe like shooting that shot, it’s not a bad shot, but maybe you give up a good shot for a great shot. All of that goes into the player development.”
The process internally for Denver is about identifying where a player fits in their system, what he’s struggling with on the court, and what he can expand his role into and working on those things in a straightforward manner. Beckett gets a laugh out of Instagram workout videos full of cones and pool noodles and other props, and says the Nuggets opt for a more simple approach. They’ll use the crash pads to simulate contact and make players work on finishing over length by placing the shooting gun in front of the basket, but other than that, there’s not much they add.
The creativity in development comes from the players and crafting a plan to get the most out of each of their unique skill sets, and there’s no one that’s more true with than Jokic. He’s as unique a big man as there is in the NBA, and the Nuggets make sure they lean into that in development, even when that sometimes means working on things that would be ill-advised with most any other player.
“He’s super unique,” Beckett says of Jokic. “Ognjen does a lot of the work with him, but Nikola is unique in terms of the types of shots you would not work on with anybody else. Ogie does a great job of working on shots with him, maybe off one foot, or off the right-right [a right handed shot jumping off the right foot]. His touch is special. Like, you can just expand and be more creative with him.”
Jokic isn’t the only Nugget with unique skills, but the success they’ve seen with him has helped the team develop their plan for other players.
“A lot of these guys, like Nikola and Jamal, when they come to us they’re already super skilled,” Beckett says. “What we’re trying to do is just refine it. Know when to use it. Recognize time and score. When is the right time for that. With those types of guys like that, we’re just trying to polish it and clean it up just a little bit.”
It’s a simple approach, but also a holistic one. They work on schemes as much as skills, game situations as much as drills, and try to instill a commitment to the routine in all of their guys. The result has been one of the NBA’s deepest rosters, filled with very few highly touted NBA prospects that have worked themselves into prominent roles on a contender.
Michael Porter Jr. is one of those few highly touted prospects, but served as a unique challenge for the development staff who had to try and get him NBA ready, all while he was still rehabbing from a back injury that caused him to drop to the end of the lottery two years ago. Porter Jr. could be one of the biggest possible additions to this Denver rotation this fall, and to get him ready to contribute to a contender, the staff focused heavily on game simulation work last season.
“What we try to do is as many game simulations as we can. What I mean by that is we do a lot of read and react stuff,” Beckett said of their program with MPJ last year. “So, I’m the defender, we’ll have Stephen Graham be the big down low. We’ll kick it out to you in the corner, now you gotta read me. Am I closing out to the left? Am I closing out to the right? Am I closing out short? So you gotta read it. Do I shoot it? When I drive and the weakside defense comes over, do I have the floater? Do I have time to go strong enough for a dunk? Is the guy pretty long, do I need to do a reverse layup? Same thing, we’ll do it with dribble-handoffs, transition, pick-and-roll. Pick-and-roll will be the same thing. We’ll swing the ball to him and one of the coaches will run into a pick-and-roll and you have to make a read. If I go over the top then you can get to the basket, get to the basket. If I go over the top and the big is there and you have a little pocket, then you make the pocket pass. So a lot of the stuff we do with them is game simulation stuff.”
The experience with Porter has given them a blueprint for the process they’ll look to replicate with Bol Bol when he’s with the main club on his two-way deal. Bol is another high-upside gamble in the draft, albeit with a second round pick this time, as Denver hopes he can recover from a foot injury that scared teams off of him to reach the potential of his prodigious offensive skill.
With a roster with established depth but a cap sheet that won’t offer many opportunities for significant upgrades in free agency for the next few years, this is how the Nuggets have to improve. They’re banking on their culture and commitment to development to continue seeing strides by the players they’ve signed long-term, and also will take big swings in the draft to continue to add talent with the hope that their culture and plan put those players in the best place to maximize their potential.
It’s the best bet for sustained success in a market like Denver, and the progress they’ve had thus far has given them the foundation of one of the West’s best young teams.
