Have you ever found yourself in a place where you have to make a tough gut call at your job? The uncertainty of such a decision can be unnerving. There’s nothing worse than seemingly winging it on the fly with something that puts food on the table.
Unfortunately for Denver Nuggets interim head coach David Adelman, I don’t think he has the luxury of avoiding the first tough gut call of his coaching career. As his Nuggets try to take a firm control of their first-round playoff series against the L.A. Clippers, the specter of the limited Michael Porter Jr. and the chaotic Russell Westbrook means Adelman is facing a rotational predicament that he will likely have to decide on on a nightly basis.
Who will Adelman close with in the clutch time of tense Nuggets playoff games?
The question is simple. The answer is more complicated.
During Saturday’s dramatic Game 1 overtime win over the Clippers, Adelman rode with Westbrook down the stretch. In a tight game, the Nuggets needed to buckle down and make hustle plays. Few players can accomplish that better than the always-intense Westbrook, especially when he’s being used like a roaming free safety or centerfielder. However, this also means living with Westbrook’s penchant for unmitigated mayhem.
Similarly, few players can cause as much disorder for both the opponent and their own team as Westbrook.
Below is a short tale of the tape for Westbrook’s final closing plays during Game 1:
- Offensive rebound putback with 3:37 left in the fourth quarter
- Missed transition layup that leads to Clippers free throws on the other end (3:06 left)
- Wide open layup off well-timed cut into the paint (2:52 left)
- Lead-taking corner 3-pointer (24 seconds left)
- Discombulated final possession of regulation without getting shot off
- Missed layup at rim that turns into Nuggets free throws (10.2 seconds in overtime)
- Forced turnover on in-bounding play on James Harden (9.1 OT seconds left)
This was a classic example of the up-and-down ride that is the Westbrook Experience. Sometimes, it comes back to bite you. However, because he flies around and understands the game so well, his penchant for impact plays remains so valuable. Westbrook described his role in such situations best after Denver’s win.
“My job is to be able to be the low man and find ways to, um, excuse my language, but [expletive] shit up.”
That’s all well and good, but the rub here is that the Nuggets still need Porter, who was basically invisible in Game 1.
Denver’s third-leading scorer only got four total shots up, with his only points of the entire afternoon coming in the opening minute. Porter’s limitations as a finesse, spot-up 3-point shooter who is (sometimes) a massive liability on defense meant that if he wasn’t actually taking and making shots, he was having zero influence on the game. Porter’s general ineffectiveness directly led to Westbrook closing.
Without context, if I had told you Porter didn’t even play in Game 1, you might have believed me.
The Clippers won’t let Westbrook victimize them when it’s winning time all series. That’s not what the playoffs are about. Eventually, they’ll count on Westbrook missing wide-open corner 3s that they’ll willingly concede to him. Taking it a step further, they’ll use his lack of consistent outside shooting ability to try to earnestly collapse Denver’s clutch-time offense centered around Nikola Jokić’s and Jamal Murray’s dynamic two-man game. It is in these situations that Porter will have to be more engaged, ready to close, and, at the very least, stand in the corner to keep Clippers defenders honest, so that Jokić and Murray have more room to operate.
That’s his main job on this Denver team. It always has been.
In a Sunday press conference, Adelman maintained he knows the Nuggets will need Porter to show up moving forward. He clearly understands the value that Porter’s spacing can provide Denver if he’s locked in:
The good news for Adelman is that none of this closing dynamic between Porter and a volatile guard is particularly new for these Nuggets.
When the Nuggets won the 2023 NBA title, former head coach Michael Malone often had the versatile Bruce Brown close over Porter during their playoff run, depending on the situation and who played better on any given night.
Because both skill sets were needed. Westbrook is much more frenetic than Brown. But he essentially plays the same role as a defensive playmaker and a welcome tertiary ball handler on the floor alongside Murray and Jokić.
Porter, more or less, remains the same sometimes-elite sharpshooter who sometimes doesn’t contribute much else.
Two years later, Adelman is facing the same night-to-night predicament as his ex-long-time boss Malone. And he’ll have to do it almost entirely off a hunch. Whoever Adelman chooses to close with from here on out will likely determine whether the Nuggets’ weird season continues beyond the first round. Gulp.