It has been quite a while since being a Denver Nuggets fan truly made me want to retreat slowly into a dark place to hide. It’s been a while since I’ve been so embarrassed, that I actually want to avoid talking about the NBA so I don’t have to be reminded of just how bad the Nuggets are.
When the Nuggets were down 50-34 to the Utah Jazz (who are 22-35 this season) at HALF during last Friday’s game at the Pepsi Center, that feeling of embarrassment officially set in after this grueling and challenging season. I was embarrassed to watch. The team has made it clear, through their play on the court, that they don’t believe they have a chance to beat anyone.
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Heck, the Nuggets look like they don’t even believe they can make a shot these days – let alone win a game. As I referenced in the “how low will they go” piece from last week – the team is shooting a league-worst 40.2 percent from the floor since Jan. 15 (before Sunday’s game). In the month of February, the Nuggets shot a league worst 39.6 percent from the floor. Their shooting is so bad it can only be described as a joke and an embarrassment for an NBA team.
However, shooting like a division II college team appears to just be the start of embarrassment. On Sunday, Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post reported that the team broke a huddle in the loss to the Jazz with, “One, two, three — six weeks!”
The team was referencing their summer vacation, during a game against a division rival, at home in front of a Friday night crowd that was far bigger than what the Nuggets deserved. With six weeks and 22 games remaining before the team’s last game against the Golden State Warriors (uh, oh) on Apr. 15, the team has already given up on winning on a daily basis.
It’s a low the Nuggets haven’t seen in quite awhile. It’s no fun having a team that’s lost it’s competitive nature – a team that’s lost their desire to win because winning feels good, and this has to be rock bottom. It’s enough to make everyone wearing Nuggets gear retreat into that dark closet and cross their fingers hoping a miracle arrives in the draft lottery.
Even without the lottery miracle, the Nuggets have to get better from here. I really can’t imagine that somehow this isn’t rock bottom. With rock bottom here, Brian Shaw needs to find a way to instill a desire to win in the Nuggets by the end of the season or he should be fired immediately.
Also, if general manager Tim Connelly can identify who exactly started the “six week chant” on the player side – they should be shipped out via trade immediately, even if it was Ty Lawson.
As the Nuggets are starting from scratch, it’s imperative that the team builds a locker room that demands, earns, and wants winning streaks – no matter the standings. If the Nuggets can’t instill that, the team’s youth will develop with a complacency that will scar the team (and leave us all in hiding) for years.
Of course, not all seasons will go in the right direction. But even as bad as the New York Knicks have been this season, there have been no public reports of how the Knicks are planning mid-game for their summer trip, or Deadspin headlines like “Sounds like the Nuggets have given up.”
The start of a true turnaround is only possible when the team has a locker room culture that instills the desire to win in its players night in, and night out. Even without hope for the playoffs, a team that is poised for a rebuild will continue to fight. A team that is poised for a rebuild will show up against their division rivals for personal pride, and to avoid being labeled as a “pushover.”
With the Nuggets a public pushover now, the rebuilding process just got a lot more complicated than “adding as much young talent as possible through the draft.” In the meantime – you can find me hiding in the darkness, hoping for a miracle turnaround next season.
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