DeAndre Jordan assesses Nuggets’ first quarter of season: “We haven’t splintered”

For two years, going on three, DeAndre Jordan has been almost an unofficial team captain of the Nuggets, an often-unfiltered but consistently wise voice at the end of the bench to help compensate for the team’s quieter, less English-savvy superstar.

The first quarter of the 2024-25 season might represent the most adversity Denver has faced since Jordan joined the roster in part to fill that exact role.

That’s not saying much. The Nuggets have been a top-two seed each of the last two years. But this is the first time they’ve gone a month without winning consecutive games since 2021-22, the season before they won the NBA championship.

As Jordan stepped in to do an interview scrum Thursday, coach Michael Malone shouted from the practice court, “Pearls of wisdom.” So how are the Nuggets handling the adversity, in Jordan’s assessment?

“Both good and bad,” the 36-year-old said. “It’s a game of runs. It’s a roller coaster out there. We’re handling it OK. We haven’t splintered. It hasn’t become a blame game. When you get to that point, I think the team is done. And we’re not there. … Just try to string together a few wins here. Because once you win, that’s all that matters.”

The Nuggets (12-10) did go into their current four-day break with a win, meaning they have a chance to make it back-to-back victories when they host the Clippers on Friday (7 p.m.). But the fact remains that their roster is not accustomed to a prolonged stretch of anything close to failure like this one — they’ve lost seven of their last 12, including an ego-bruiser to the 3-19 Wizards last Saturday.

“I’m a lot older now, so I try not to let that (crap) ruin my day or my season. You’re going to lose games. The Wizards were going to beat somebody,” Jordan said. “They were not going to lose 60 games in a row. Should it have been us? Absolutely not. But we did not come out ready to play that night. … We came out (after that). We played against Atlanta. We had a really good showing. … We’ve gotta be able to come out with the same sense of urgency.”

That has been the message shared by Malone and the entire roster the last couple of weeks. Denver remains third-worst in the league in first-half defensive rating (117.9), but sixth-best in second-half defensive rating (109.1). That, to the players, is proven evidence of what they’re capable of. It’s why Jordan highlighted effort when asked Thursday about top priorities for the second quarter of the season.

“We shouldn’t be talking about effort and focus,” he said. “Especially with this team. That is sometimes what we talk about. And we’ve talked about that as a collective. Players, not coaches. It’s something that we have to be better at. We have to hold each other a little bit more accountable and know that the league has gotten a lot better. And also, we’ve gone through some injuries we’ve had, so that’s been unfortunate. But nobody feels sorry for us.”

Those injuries include the current hamstring pain that has sidelined Jamal Murray each of the last two games. Before that, Aaron Gordon missed a month with a calf strain. The full complement of Murray, Gordon, Nikola Jokic, Michael Porter Jr. and Christian Braun has a dominant 12.5 net rating, but the lineup has appeared together in only eight of the first 22 games.

Boston’s starting five (featuring Al Horford) is the only lineup in the NBA that has registered a higher net rating and played more minutes.

In other words, the quarterly status report on the Nuggets doesn’t indicate any less potential. But the revolving door of injuries has left more of a crippling effect on the second unit, which was already uninspiring.

They have been unable to mitigate the damage when Jokic is on the bench. The team’s difference in net rating with and without Jokic on the floor is a colossal 27.7 entering Friday’s game.

For the second quarter of the season, solving that will be Malone’s top task.

“It’s one thing to say, yeah, we’re taking out a good player,” he said Thursday. “But literally, that guy’s the best player in the world. In the galaxy. Let’s go even further. Let’s go even further. In the Milky Way. … That’s always been man’s search for meaning. Our search for meaning. When Nikola goes out, how do we kind of handle those minutes and survive? And we’re not talking about going on a 20-5 run. But how can we just take him out and find ways to hold water? And I think depending on the year, it’s different things for every (Nuggets) team. I think this year, he’s up the ante because he’s even playing better than he ever has.

“And now when you don’t have Aaron for a bunch of games, you don’t have Jamal for a bunch of games, you’re playing a bunch of young players and some new players. You throw all that (in), that becomes a lot to handle sometimes. And there’s a reason Nikola’s minutes are the highest they’ve ever been, to this point in the season.”