The Nuggets’ rebounding issue is looking bigger than one player, and Jamal Murray sounded ready to say it out loud after Denver’s 118-110 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers at Ball Arena.
Yes, Nikola Jokic is still the center of everything the Nuggets do on the glass. He has averaged more than 9.5 defensive rebounds per game over the past three years, but that number is down to 7.5 through six games this season. And the rest of Denver hasn’t done nearly enough to pick up the slack.
That showed up in a rough night against Portland. The Trail Blazers finished with a 53-37 edge on the boards and piled up 21 offensive rebounds, including nine from Donovan Clingan alone. Denver escaped even worse damage because Portland turned those extra chances into just 12 second-chance points.
Afterward, Murray pointed straight at the problem.
"We got to help Jokic out. I think we just got accustomed to him grabbing so many boards against every single matchup every single night," Murray said in the press conference after the game.
That’s the heart of it. The Nuggets can’t keep waiting for Jokic to clean up every miss by himself, and they can’t keep getting beat to loose balls the way they were against Portland.
The early-season numbers are ugly, too. Denver was the NBA’s third-best defensive rebounding team last season, but through six games this year it has dropped all the way to 26th out of 30.
Some of that came down to bad bounces against the Blazers. Some of it also showed up in the loss to the undersized Golden State Warriors.
Either way, it’s starting to look like a pattern.
There are a few encouraging signs mixed in. Murray has been active on the perimeter, and his 4.5 defensive rebounds per game would be a career high. The Nuggets have also been better on the offensive glass, ranking 18th after finishing 26th last season, as part of an effort to slow opposing transition chances.
Still, this is a sharp drop from what Denver usually looks like on the boards. It’s early, and there’s time to clean it up, but for now it feels more like rust than a permanent shift. Jokic, Aaron Gordon and the rest of the group didn’t suddenly forget how to rebound.
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