Nuggets went back to basics with rebounding drills during rare practice time: “Throwback to middle school”

The Nuggets tackled their awkwardly long gap in the schedule this week by traveling back in time.

How far? Depends on who you ask.

Michael Malone felt the team’s recent rebounding woes warranted a rewind to the preseason. But Julian Strawther was thinking in years, not months.

“It was like a little throwback to middle school,” Strawther said after Denver’s 120-98 win over the Clippers. “Go find your guy. Box out. But I mean, it’s what we needed.”

At the one-quarter mark of their regular season, the Nuggets needed to hammer home some fundamentals.

“We’ve been doing rebounding drills in practice,” Malone said. “It’s like we’ve been having, like, ‘Back to Bataan.’ Like, let’s have a training camp practice. So the guys bought into it.”

Whatever obscure reference Malone was attempting to make, seemingly from the 1945 John Wayne film “Back to Bataan,” there’s no chance any of his players are old enough to understand it. But they all understand the language of rudimentary basketball drills. They simply needed a reminder. With four days off between games this week, they got one.

“Go find somebody. Hit somebody. Stop ball-watching,” the 10th-year coach said. “… The ball will be flying around, a coach will shoot it, and you’ve gotta find a guy that’s crashing to the glass. And just try to build that muscle memory of hitting somebody. Turning and finding and hitting somebody.”

The response was a 46-31 rebounding advantage over the Clippers. The Nuggets only allowed five offensive boards Friday.

It wasn’t merely that Denver (13-10) had allowed 34 combined offensive rebounds in its last two games. (That may have been a breaking point for Malone, though.) Seizing defensive rebounds in particular has been a deeper problem, one that’s impacting the math of every game.

In their previous 16 contests before Friday, the Nuggets were averaging 88 field goal attempts but allowing 94. They only out-attempted their opponent in two of those 16 games — by two shots each time. In the other 14, they were out-attempted by 10 or more shots in five games.

“We’re trying to play good defense. So to finish that off with a rebound is important because if not, teams are getting dagger 3s on us,” Michael Porter Jr. said. “Getting a lot of second-chance points.”

Indeed, the Nuggets also rank fifth-worst in the NBA at allowing second-chance points (15 per game). They are 21st in defensive rebounding rate. This is all in spite of a starting center who’s the second-best rebounder in the league statistically.

So, back to basics, then. Porter said he hadn’t ever done rebounding drills in December of an NBA season before this, “but I think that’s going to be important for us.” Peyton Watson described the scene in practice as “intense.” To him, it was one example of a collective display of accountability that Denver needed in practice.

“We definitely had a hard week of just self-reflection,” he said, “looking at ourselves and asking, ‘What can we do better to be a better ball club?'”

Starting better would help, everyone agreed. The Nuggets are 8-0 this season when they lead after the first quarter, including Friday, but the fact that they’ve only led eight times is the most notable part of that stat. Sluggishness before being incentivized to play hard by a double-digit deficit has been a trend all season, one that players and coaches testify comes down to effort.

“I can tell when we’re going through warmups,” Porter said. “I can’t really tell too much going through walk-through, or the vibe in the locker room. But I can tell sometimes when we get out there and we’re warming up how guys’ energy feels, if we’re excited to play a game or not. I think that’s when I can tell.”

Rock bottom was last Saturday in Washington, where the Wizards ended their 16-game losing streak against Denver by leading the entire game.

Rebounding, of course, often is a matter of effort as well. After that loss, a seething Malone criticized his team for not anticipating long rebounds on long shots. That was a lesson he had learned while playing Catholic Youth Organization basketball.

As the Nuggets learned a few days later, they’ll never be too old to require a return to their youth in the practice gym every once in a while.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about basketball and how can you win games,” Strawther said. “And back in the day, you’ve gotta do some rebounding drills if you’re not rebounding well. Same thing applies here.”