Why the Nuggets Offense Looks Unstoppable Right Now

We break down a 3–1 start with quick-hit game reviews, a full-throated salute to a locked-in Jamal Murray, and why Denver’s offense feels inevitable. The bench steadies, Cam Johnson’s shot will come, and we make a bold Halloween streak prediction before sharing fan resources we love.

• lightning reviews of Warriors, Suns, T-Wolves, Pelicans
• Jamal Murray’s early-season surge and impact
• why the offense flows and feels sustainable
• Aaron Gordon’s shooting threat and vertical game
• bench stability with Valanciunas and smarter staggers
• patience on Cam Johnson’s shooting and fit
• nine-game streak call and LA nightlife trap
• correcting a Chauncey Billups take amid reports
• three resources to level up your fandom

Please tell a friend. That is the best way for us to grow our audience, and we want to reach out to more basketball fans

Chapters

• 0:00 Tipoff And Quick Game Reviews
• 0:41 Jamal Murray’s Fast Start
• 2:02 Offense Firing On All Cylinders
• 3:14 Cam Johnson’s Slow Shot, Good Fit
• 4:13 Halloween Predictions And Streak Talk
• 5:05 Owning A Mistake About Chauncey
• 6:04 How To Be A Better Fan
• 12:58 Closing And Listener Ask

Transcript

Brian: 0:03

Alright, everyone. Welcome back to Fandom from Afar. The season has started. It has been great for the Nuggets so far. Lots of fun storylines all around the NBA. And it's just fun to have the real game starting now. The preseason was fun, but uh it has definitely been awesome to watch real basketball. And we'll talk a lot about it today. Now, I'm gonna get started with some game reviews. Just a reminder, there are so many podcasts out there that do such a good job of breaking down the games and really getting into the X's and O's and details of each game. That is not me. I'm gonna do a quick review of each game, maybe one to two sentences, and then we'll kind of talk bigger picture about what it's looked like for the Nuggets. So, jumping into the very first game, season opener against the Warriors, AG scored 50, but Steph is amazing. Game two, the Suns. The Nuggets have seven guys in double figures. It was a great team win, and the Suns are bad at basketball. The T-Wolves, no Ant-Man, that's okay. We have Jamal Murray, he went wild, and we will take a win against the T-Wolves any way we can get it. Pelicans? The Nuggets blew out the Pelicans twice. We blew a lead and then blew them out again. So we are three and one so far on the season. Very easily, could be four and oh, as I mentioned, if not for the great Steph Curry. So let's look at some trends since the last episode. Obviously, this being our first episode of the regular season, the trends are gonna be for the season in general, but let's see what we got as far as how the nuggets are looking and maybe any takeaways we can get out of these first four games. So the one, the top takeaway, we talked about it in the preseason. We gave him such a hard time over the last two years, but Jamal Murray is the big takeaway so far. What he is doing is exactly what we had hoped for the last couple years and really all of his career. Jamal is starting the season on a tear, he's taking it seriously, he looks focused, he looks quick, like he looks like playoff Jamal Murray already, and it's it's all we could have asked for. He he makes our team go to another level. Obviously, Jokic and AG, Christian Brown, they're all very steady. We never knew what we were gonna get from Jamal, and at the beginning of the season, it was pretty rough pretty much every year of his career, and that put extra stress on the other guys. It made Jokic carry the load until Jamal started playing. And this year he has shown up. He has been amazing, and it it really has us thinking, what can the Nuggets do? Like, how many games can they win? Because when Jamal is on, the Nuggets offense looks amazing. We are talented, we got guys that can score, and with Jamal kind of running the show, it's beautiful, it's beautiful basketball. So I have to say, as hard of a time as I've given Jamal Murray over the last couple years, I want to give him his flowers now because this is exactly what we were hoping for Jamal, not only this season, but hopefully continuing on throughout the season. I hope if he keeps playing like this, I hope he is an all-star. I hope he makes all pro. I hope he leads us to another championship. Jamal Murray is that talented. We've all known it, we've wanted to see it, and he is giving it to us. So thank you, Jamal. Second trend I've seen is the offense is unstoppable. Now, part of that is Jamal Murray, but the starters fit so well together. Obviously, Jokic is the best in the world, and Aaron Gordon, he started out hot with that 50-point performance in Golden State, 10 of 11 on three-pointers. Now, we don't expect that every single game. It would be nice, but we don't expect it. But he has turned himself into a legit jump shooter and a threat from the outside, and of course, he is still an amazing athlete who can play that dunker role so well, as demonstrated by his 360 alley oop he had in, I believe it was the Suns game, the second game of the season. So Aaron Gordon, amazing. Christian Brown, steady as always. He's got his big new contract now, so hopefully, some stress of any putting up big points should be taken off of him. But he is always a key cog in the starters. And then Cam Johnson, while he's struggling, we're going to talk about that in the third takeaway, but he is fitting in nicely as far as keeping the ball moving. The Nuggets have scored 120 points in all four games. The starters are looking amazing. The bench is looking amazing as well. Now, if you've been a Nuggets fan for any time over the last couple years, you've known that what happens is the Nuggets starters build a big lead and then the bench gives it away immediately. That's not happening this year. This year, as we have stolen the nickname from DNVR, Val's Pals, with big Jonas Valanchunas being the key to our bench, Val's Pals are coming in and extending the lead. And this is fun. It's nice not having a heart attack anytime the bench comes in. It's great for the starters who don't have to rest for two minutes and then come back in just because the team is completely falling apart. Jokic in particular, he has never had a backup center like this that can help orchestrate the team and not all the pressures on Big Jokic. So he's cruising. He really has not had to try yet this season. He kind of looks maybe like he's putting in about 20% effort, 30% if you're generous. And yet the offense has been incredible. He is getting a triple-double in every game this season so far. And I feel like he's only scratching the surface. I think he's excited about what this team can offer, not only because of the talent, not only because they're winning games, but I think he's going to be as rested as he ever has been if this keeps up going into the playoffs. And so I think Jokic loves it. This is the type of basketball he loves to play. He is scoring closer to 20 than 30 last year. He's getting 13, 14 rebounds a game. He's getting 12, 13 assists per game. And I think that's exactly what he loves. He doesn't want to have to do all the scoring. He would rather gobble up those rebounds, pass to the open guys, and then get back on defense. So everything on offense is working out beautifully. I love what I'm seeing. They may be historically good this year. We'll hopefully keep seeing that as the games move on. But yeah, the offense, unstoppable. As I mentioned, Cam Johnson does have to be kind of separated out into his own takeaway. I think people are freaking out a little bit just because he has not been as good as we had hoped. We were hoping it would be kind of a seamless transition for Cam that he would just jump right in for Michael Porter Jr. and be the shooter that Michael was, along with all the other intangibles that Cam can do. And while, like I said, he has been a key cog in the offense. He makes the right plays, he's cutting, he's really doing a good job. It's just that he's not hitting shots, and that's okay. I am completely confident that he will be fine, he will hit these open shots, he will continue to get more comfortable with Jokic and the rest of the starters, and I really think he'll be a key part in maybe the stagger unit of being the starter that plays with the bench guys as well. So I think a lot of Nuggets Twitter is freaking out. It's only been four games, and I promise you Cam Johnson will be just fine. So those are my three big trends I've seen so far. Let's look at some predictions for the upcoming games. Now, as I'm recording this, we are very close to Halloween, so these predictions will be our Halloween edition. I looked it up, and my friend Google says that there are nine total movies in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Nine movies where Freddy Krueger is chasing people around, I think, in their dreams and in real life. But the way this relates to the Nuggets is the next time I record, I predict that the Nuggets will be on a nine-game winning streak as they head into the scariest opponent of them all, the LA Nightlife. Now, the LA Nightlife has taken down many, many teams over the years, and my prediction is the Nuggets will fall as well. I think the LA Nightlife will get them and they will lose to the Clippers, which will continue the streak of the Nuggets never having a 10-game winning streak in the Jokic era. Scary. Alright. Now our next Our next section is going to be what was I wrong about? If we're going to be doing predictions, there's going to be plenty of things I'm wrong about. So I think this will be the easiest section to complete in the podcast this season. So what have I been wrong about so far? Well, in my last series, the how does every team relate to the Nuggets season preview under the Portland Trailblazers? I didn't really have an exact reason why the Trailblazers related to the Nuggets. All I said was Chauncey Bills is the man. I've always loved him. Yikes. If you haven't heard, some news has come out recently that Chauncey Billps was arrested in an FBI investigation where he not only was giving inside information to betters, but also helping the mafia scam people at some underground poker games. If all these allegations are true, it sounds like he may not be the best dude, and we may have to maybe change our love for Chauncey. So that's what I was wrong about. Alright, on lighter news, let's move on to ways to be a better fan. I was thinking this year, I want to try and include resources and just suggestions on things that I've enjoyed or I think you would enjoy as a basketball fan, and I want to just kind of give them a shout-out at the end of each episode. So since this is the first one, I actually have three today. Now, the first one is you should watch the D and VR documentary that the team did from training camp out in San Diego. It is really well done. Those guys do a great job of covering the team. And if you haven't seen it, it's called The Next Chapter. And if you just look up the next chapter, D and VR, you'll be able to find it easily on YouTube. So that is the first recommendation. My next one is a new basketball book just came out called Expensive Basketball. This is by one of my favorite writers. His name is Shay Serrano. I think he's hilarious. He is a true basketball fan, and I've read a couple of his books in the past, and they were always super entertaining. So while I haven't read this one yet, I am confident enough in Shay that this book will also be amazing. And my last recommendation is set up a second TV in your living room. Now, this will require you to have a very understanding, significant other who appreciates your craziness and maybe has accepted the fact that you're a giant dork that's obsessed with sports. In my case, I have a wife that does fall into that category, and she let me set up a second TV, although temporarily, in the living room, and it has allowed me to watch the World Series and the Nuggets at the same time, and it really has been wonderful. So thank you to my beautiful wife. All right. Well, thank you everyone. This has been such a fun episode. Like I said, I'm excited that the Nuggets are back, the NBA is back. We'll cover maybe a little bit more stories from around the league next episode. And as always, we will definitely talk about the Nuggets. So if you enjoy these episodes at all, please tell a friend. That is the best way for us to grow our audience, and we want to reach out to more basketball fans. So thanks for listening.