Back up the tanker, Denver Nuggets. With the news that forward Wilson Chandler will be missing the entire 2015-16 campaign due to season-ending hip surgery, an already tough season just got that much more brutal.
As first reported by Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski Wednesday night, a labral tear in Chandler’s hip that he sustained during the preseason will force him to have surgery and undergo a six-month rehabilitation process. He’s expected to make a full recovery, but this is quite a blow to the Nuggets on both ends of the floor.
The timing couldn’t be worse either, with the franchise signing Chandler to a four-year, $46.5 million contract over the past summer.
Along with Danilo Gallinari‘s two-year, $34 million extension, the Nuggets were counting on Chandler and Gallo to be their guiding force in transitioning this team from the Masai Ujiri/George Karl era and into the Michael Malone/Emmanuel Mudiay era. Now, it looks like a few other Nuggets will have to step up in his place.
The downgrade from Wilson Chandler to Will Barton in the Nuggets starting lineup is enormous.
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) November 7, 2015
In the absence of such a useful 3-and-D player like Chandler, Will Barton has been the main beneficiary of those available minutes on the wing. Barton is averaging 12.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 24.3 minutes per game while shooting 45.5 percent from the field and 30 percent from three-point range.
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Without the Nuggets’ best two-way player, Barton will bear more responsibility on the offensive end over the full 82-game season, which is encouraging for the 24-year-old shooting guard but perhaps not as encouraging for the defense a fan base that was already expecting its team to struggle with a rookie point guard at the helm.
Mudiay has shown glimpses of future brilliance, averaging 13.1 points and 6.3 assists per game, but he’ll now have to bear the added pressure of creating offense with one less wing shooter — which, to be fair, has been the case all season so far with Chandler sidelined — and also cutting down on his 4.4 turnovers per game.
Gary Harris has already replaced Randy Foye in the rotation, but without the threat of Chandler’s three-point shot on the wing, Harris will be expected to continue converting at an efficient clip from three-point range. In an admittedly small sample size, Harris has knocked down 47.4 percent of his looks from downtown. That number is unsustainable, but Denver will need efficiency all the same.
But most of all, the Nuggets will need Danilo Gallinari to shake off his early season shooting slump and start providing fans with a legitimate reason to watch this team play aside from their promising rookie point guard. After the All-Star break last season, Gallo was sensational, averaging 18.6 points and 4.8 rebounds per game on .443/.404/.891 shooting splits.
At EuroBasket, Gallinari put up 17.9 points per game on absurd .569/.400/.879 shooting splits and had everyone thinking he was ready for a fully resurgent season in 2015-16. So far this year, he’s averaging 17.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per game, but he’s shooting just 40 percent from the floor and 34.4 percent from deep.
If it weren’t for his 90.6 percent shooting from the foul line on a team-high 6.6 attempts per game, his slow start would have drawn a lot more attention.
Luckily, Denver is only eight games into the season and boasts a surprisingly decent 4-4 record With the knowledge that Chandler will be sidelined for the entire season, perhaps Gallo will be able to find his shooting stroke once again.
But it’s disheartening to have Chandler lost for the whole season all the same, even if expectations for the Nuggets are low in 2015-16. It’s also slightly worrisome for a 28-year-old to be having his second hip procedure, since Chandler had another hip surgery back in May of 2012.
Even if Gallo, Barton and Harris all step up in the absence of Chandler, the only good news that will stem from this injury is that the Nuggets are likely heading toward an even better lottery pick next summer.