Even after a summer spent re-signing their own free agents, the Denver Nuggets are slowly but surely turning the team over to their young talent. Between Emmanuel Mudiay, Jusuf Nurkic, Joffrey Lauvergne and Nikola Jokic, the Nuggets have a foundation for the future, with experienced players like Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler brought back as well.
But with so many frontcourt players on the roster, there was always going to be a minutes crunch for new head coach Mike Malone to sort out. Nurkic will be injured to start the season, but once he returns, he’ll join Lauvergne, Jokic, Kenneth Faried, Darrell Arthur and J.J. Hickson in a crowded Denver frontcourt — especially since small-ball lineups with Gallo at the 4 are intriguing as well.
Luckily for Denver Nuggets fans, it appears that if anyone’s going to be getting the ax in the rotation, it will be the much-maligned Hickson.
If you were to judge J.J. Hickson solely by his statistical output, you’d think he was a perennial double-double machine and a Per 36 Minutes demigod. In his first season in Denver, he averaged 11.8 points and 9.2 rebounds in only 26.9 minutes per game and though his minutes shrank to 19.3 per game last year, he still put up 7.6 points and 6.2 rebounds a night.
It’s not like he was an inefficient scorer either, posting a field goal percentage of 50.8 in his first season and 47.5 percent last year. But as is the case with every player in the NBA, the raw numbers don’t tell the story. Unfortunately for Hickson, that’s especially true.
While it appears that Hickson has been a consistent source of output on the stat sheet, he very clearly fails the eye test. After all, it’s a lot easier to post great rebounding numbers when you’re constantly tracking them down to the point of fighting fellow teammates for loose boards.
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Seriously. A drinking game where everyone takes a pull whenever Hickson goes out of his way to snag a rebound from a teammate would be fun…if it weren’t so hazardous to one’s health.
Hickson is one of the biggest examples of a stat sheet stuffer that the NBA has to offer these days, and whether it’s intentional or not, that kind of individualistic approach is exactly what needs to be stamped out of Denver’s new basketball culture.
And that’s without even mentioning his flaws on the defensive end. It’s easy to get lost in the beauty of this Chris Paul-to-DeAndre Jordan alley-oop, but the more you re-watch the clip, the more you notice how blatantly out of position Hickson is on defense. It’s almost like he’s seen a ghost and decided he’d rather defend that bit of thin air than be in the correct help-side position with his man (Blake Griffin) slinking out to the perimeter:
Hickson’s defensive rating of 105.1 was actually in the team’s top half last season, but that’s only because the Nuggets were the league’s 26th ranked defense. Either way, that’s obviously not a mark Denver wants to be in its better half.
With such a young and promising frontcourt in need of playing time to develop, Nuggets fans everywhere were cringing at the thought of Hickson playing rotation minutes again in 2015-16. Luckily for them, it appears Malone is prepared to put an end to the J.J. Hickson experience.
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In four preseason appearances (of the team’s seven total) Hickson averaged only 2.3 points and 2.5 rebounds per game. But more importantly, he only played 10.5 minutes a night, the fourth lowest figure among the team’s 18 players who logged minutes in the preseason — ahead of only Oleksiy Pecherov, Matt Janning and Devin Sweetney.
Meanwhile, more intriguing frontcourt players like Lauvergne and Jokic flourished in expanded minutes. Preseason is preseason, but Lauvergne was a pleasant surprise, averaging 13.3 points and 8.8 rebounds in 25.2 minutes per game while shooting 59.3 percent from the floor and 50 percent from three-point range. In that way, he brought the kind of perimeter shooting that Hickson thinks he brings to the table.
As for Jokic, he was Mr. Efficiency for the Nuggets, averaging 11.7 points and 5.3 rebounds in 21.8 minutes per game while shooting an absurd 73.3 percent from the field. With Hickson on the very fringe of the rotation, it appears his regular season use — especially after Nurkic returns — will be limited to the role of understudy in the event of an injury.
I asked #Nuggets head coach Michael Malone about J.J. Hickson’s DNP-CD vs Suns, here is what he had to say: pic.twitter.com/j7pcteiRwE
— Timmons (@NateTimmonsCSG) October 17, 2015
Hickson began the preseason as a starter for the Nuggets, but a two-point, 1-for-7 performance in 17 minutes quickly demoted him to the bench. After that, he registered a grand total of 23 preseason minutes with three “DNP-CD”s (Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision).
Malone may be downplaying the situation, but there are only so many minutes to go around and if the preseason is any indication, the right player is getting phased out of the rotation.
With the Nuggets moving into a new era, centered around talented youngsters playing for a defensive-minded coach, J.J. Hickson appears to be the first, necessary casualty.
Next: NBA: The Big Question Facing Every Team In 2015-16
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