The Denver Nuggets’ internal angst was on display in opening-night loss to Thunder

DENVER — By the time the Denver Nuggets locker room was opened to the media on Thursday night, Jamal Murray was gone.

There was no chance to ask him about his 4-of-13 shooting night in the Nuggets’ 102-87 loss to Oklahoma City, or the assertion from his coach, Michael Malone, that the pairing of Murray and newcomer Russell Westbrook had all sorts of potential to be productive. Never mind that Westbrook had just finished a 2-of-10 evening from the field in which he wasted no time living up to his reputation as a historically bad shooter who, nonetheless, just keeps firing away.

His air-balled 3 at the 3:45 mark of the first quarter — with no defender within 5 feet, no less — was as inauspicious a beginning to this pairing as one could possibly imagine on this night in which he missed five of six attempts from beyond the arc. By the end, with the Thunder outclassing the Nuggets throughout and Denver missing 31 of 38 3s in all, the most disconcerting moment of truth for Denver came from the most important man in the Ball Arena building, Nikola Jokić.

“We are not a good shooting team, I think, except probably (Michael Porter Jr.) and Jamal (Murray),” said Jokiċ, who had a triple-double (16 points, 13 assists and 12 rebounds) and hit 6 of 12 shots (1-of-3 from 3). “All of us are kind of streaky. Not streaky, you know, but just average shooters.”

In this Nuggets environment where the longstanding tension between Malone and Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth is the worst-kept secret in the Association these days, it was quite a thing for Jokić to decide to say the quiet part out loud like that. That’s an unflattering statement about the team’s personnel, which inevitably points the finger at the front office during a time when Booth and his staff are trying their best to encourage synergy from top to bottom as a way to return these Nuggets to title contender status.

But make no mistake, the not-so-subtle references to the changes that have taken place since Denver’s title in 2023 are a reflection of the internal angst that these Nuggets are trying to navigate. In the interest of fairness, it should be remembered that the Kroenke family who owns the team is making all of the final financial decisions with this group. And Malone’s curious postgame decision to remind the masses that Denver lost Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to Orlando in free agency, for example, was as good a sign as any that the Nuggets are struggling to maximize their present while reconciling their past.

“I don’t think there’s any need for panic,” Malone said. “Going into the season, shooting is a concern of mine. You know, you lose a guy like KCP, who was a 40 percent 3-point shooter, you know what I mean? And I thought Christian Braun was great tonight. Again, Christian Braun is not going to be KCP, so I think we all have to understand that, which I think we do, and embrace CB for who he is. I thought he played really good defense, competed, ran the floor. …No, there’s no panic.”

Nope, nothing to see here at all. It’s just a tough start to a season that resumes against Westbrook’s old LA Clippers team on Saturday at home. The need to win that game, and quell all this uncomfortableness in the process, is about as great as it gets for this time of year.

The Shai and Chet Show

Of course Thunder coach Mark Daigneault watched the Olympic semifinal in which Jokić’s Serbian team nearly stunned Team USA in the Olympics. Everyone in the basketball community was glued to their televisions for that game (and some of us were lucky enough to witness it in person).

But when I asked Daigneault about Jokić’s greatness at shootaround on Thursday morning, while noting how the Thunder have an MVP-caliber player of their own in Shai-Gilgeous Alexander who certainly held his own in the Games, his response about Oklahoma City’s superstar inventory was quite telling.

“We might have more than one,” he said.

Hello, Chet Holmgren.

The second-year big man had about as impressive an opener as anyone could imagine, finishing with 25 points (11-of-18 shooting), 14 rebounds, five assists, four blocks and two steals. Considering the context here, how the 22-year-old had to sit out his rookie season because of the Lisfranc injury in his right foot, it’s quite remarkable that a coach of Daigneault’s repute is so willing to raise the notion that Holmgren might be as much of a franchise centerpiece as Gilgeous-Alexander. But judging by the Thunder’s debut — this one-sided rout in which Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 28 points, eight assists and seven rebounds — the high praise is warranted.

Holmgren, and the Thunder by proxy, are very much for real.

Past is prologue for OKC-Denver

It’s so cliche to say the West is wild. But as so many of my colleagues chronicled recently, parity is the new way of the NBA.

Within that, there is the indisputable fact that no team in the West should feel safe. The Thunder are the heavy front-runners, to be sure, but Daigneault detailed why the notion of overlooking the Nuggets — or anyone else, for that matter — is a fool’s errand.

“Our job as a team is for the whole to be better than the sum of the parts,” said Daigneault, whose Thunder beat the Nuggets three times in four tries last season. “And that can sometimes work in weird ways. You can look down on paper and say, well, they lost this guy. They didn’t replace it with x, y or z. But all that matters in a team is that the whole is greater than the sum. And there’s been great examples of teams that have done that well.

“I thought we were a team that did that very well last year. I thought we were better because we were collective than we were with the individual parts. And that’s (the Nuggets’) challenge. It’s our challenge, and it’s 28 other teams’ challenge. But we certainly don’t take them lightly, because they have continuity at the top of the roster. They really have a system that they know how to play to and will come to play. They also are hungry right now. I think you can get a sense from them, just from listening to them and watching them from a distance, that there’s a hunger coming off of the championship last season, (and) with how the season went and how it ended, and a hunger specific to us.”

All true statements by Daigneault, to be sure. But the Thunder, in the end, were the ones who would do the fine dining.

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(Photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)