Denver Nuggets: Season Grades for the 2018-19 Players

We’re going to start a series rating Denver Nuggets players for their performance over the 2018-19 season. We’ll start with a quintet that saw limited time.

The Denver Nuggets finished 54-28, second in the West and first in the Northwest Division. The 2018-19 season was arguably their finest and certainly their best since the 2009 campaign ended in the Western Conference Finals.

A seven-game first round series with the San Antonio Spurs provided much needed playoff experience. Playing a Gregg Popovich-coached Spurs squad is about as good as it gets for that experience. Denver followed the huge game-7 win with another entertaining series against The Portland Trailblazers. This time bowing in game-7, the Nuggets identified some heroic playoff performers and endured some curious playoff declines but the rise to within one game of the Western Conference Finals drug Nuggets fans through the gamut of emotions.

There were incredible highs, none higher than the game-7 victory at Pepsi Center over the Spurs. There were disheartening lows, letting Portland off-the-hook in game six, in Portland. In future playoffs, that game may serve as motivation, much the same way the season-ending loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves to end the ’17-18 season served as motivation for Denver’s run this season.

In future installments of this series, we’ll explore the backcourt as a unit as well as the frontcourt.  Two players, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic stood out above the rest and will get their own, in-depth analysis. Each article will look at how the players trended throughout the season and a projection for where they might be headed. We’ll also take a look at the front office, ownership and coaching.

To kick things off, let’s look at players that didn’t get much opportunity to make an impact this season, for various reasons: