Denver Nuggets: 3 Reactions to Monday’s Media Day
Denver will be creative in getting Lyles minutes.
The Nuggets frontcourt is an embarrassment of riches, probably. Nikola Jokic, Mason Plumlee, Paul Millsap, Trey Lyles, Tyler Lydon, Juancho, Jarred Vanderbilt are all on the roster as possible power forwards. Thomas Welsh and DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell are on two-way contracts.
There is a logjam at the 4/5 and it’s going to be tough to carve out minutes for many of these players. This is the world Trey Lyles and the Nuggets coaches are trying to navigate.
One solution, proposed by Malone, is to give Lyles minutes at the small forward. He has a good three-point shot and with Denver declaring themselves a non-traditional defensive team, a 6’10” small forward makes sense. Particularly when Denver wants to use a big lineup to defend the three-point line. Better sometimes to have Lyles on Kevin Durant than Will Barton. It’s an interesting thought and will be an interesting experiment.
Denver Nuggets
What it indicates is that the staff is interested in being creative to give Lyles minutes. What we saw last year from Lyles was a higher ceiling than we anticipated but also more inconsistent play. The Kentucky star, like all the Nuggets, spent his summer working on the hard parts of his game.
Clearly, Lyles work has paid off as the Nuggets brass were very complimentary and intent on getting Trey on the floor.
It’s fantastic news for giddy Nuggets fans, there are certainly worse problems to have than trying to find minutes for all of your great players. There are good, solid, talented NBA players on Denver’s bench that will struggle to get floor time. That’s how deep this Denver team is.
Looking at them on paper, I can’t help but let my mind drift to questions like “What are the Warriors going to do about Denver’s depth?” Our starters have shown an ability to compete with Golden State, our bench is substantially better. On any given night, that matters, in a seven-game series, not so much.
Denver is putting the NBA on notice, the fact that they have to get creative to find time for a player of Lyles’ caliber should be scary for opponents.