Denver is Already Thriving, Despite a Substantial Lack of Home Games
With every NBA team having now played 18-22 games in the 2022-2023 NBA season, we are currently watching the game-clock wind down on the 1st quarter of the year. The standings are beginning to separate the good teams from the bad teams and the Nuggets, unsurprisingly, are towards the top of the Western Conference. Denver’s 12-7 record trails only the Phoenix Suns who sit at the #1 seed with a 13-6 record. With that being said, the Nuggets have played a whopping 6 less home games than Phoenix.
On the year, Denver is a respectable 8-5 on the road and 4-2 at home. The 6 home games mark the fewest in the NBA this season, with no other team having played fewer than 8 home games to date. In fact 10 of the Nuggets’ last 13 games have all been on the road. A truly brutal start of the season, yet Denver has clearly made the most of their situation.
By January 23rd, The Nuggets Will Be the Clear #1 Seed
Since Jokic and company have already knocked out nearly 1/3 of their away games for the entire season, Ball Arena is about to get much more active in the upcoming months. Denver is looking forward to this upcoming stretch of games in which they will play 20/28 games at home in the altitude. Since the 2017-2018 season, the Nuggets are 143-59 in the Mile-High City for a 70.8% win-rate. This is elite compared to their 52.9% win-rate for road games in that same timeframe.
Adding even more reasons to be optimistic about Denver’s path moving forward, they are still leading the NBA in 3FG% (39.8) and are 2nd in overall FG% (49.3). Nikola Jokic has continued playing at an MVP level, Michael Porter Jr and Jamal Murray have both progressed nicely returning from injuries, and Aaron Gordon has been an absolute standout, putting together the best offensive season of his career. All four of these Core Four guys have missed a handful of games (Murray 4, Jokic 3, Porter Jr. 3, Gordon 3), but have been playing at a high-level when on the court.
Even when any of the Core Four miss games, in their absence, free agent acquisitions, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown have been playing lights out in Denver as well. KCP is shooting 49.4% from beyond the arc (2nd best in the NBA) and Bruce Brown recorded his first career triple-double earlier this week. If the Nuggets can stay relatively healthy, nothing should stand in their way of the #1 seed in the Wild West.
