Denver at Phoenix
Time: 8 PM CT, NBA LP
Spread: DEN -7
Total: 220.5
Odds c/o 5dimes
The Denver Nuggets are 29-26 and seeded No. 8 in the Western Conference Playoff race. Denver trails No. 5 Portland by just 1.5 games, however, and enters tonight’s road matchup against the Phoenix Suns as 7-point favorites according to NBA oddsmakers at bookmaker 5dimes. The over/under is set at 220.5 points, and the game will air at 8 PM Central Time for NBA League Pass subscribers.
Phoenix
The Phoenix Suns have been mired in a horrible season, but made a clutch move at the trade deadline in acquiring Orlando Magic point guard and No. 10 overall pick in 2014 Elfrid Payton, for the lost cost of a second round pick. Phoenix now possibly has obtained its point guard of the future, though the list of black marks on Elfrid’s resume do abound. Magic analysts cited his poor defense and overall poor basketball IQ as ultimately irresolvable for the Orlando team, and it certainly did not defend well. Payton now transitions to a Suns team, however, which also has been poor defensively.
Phoenix allows 112.5 points per game while scoring just 104.2 itself. No team surrenders more buckets than the Suns, so can Payton manage to make that defense any worse? Perhaps he gets energized playing with his new team and star shooting guard Devin Booker, who is inarguably better than every talent Payton shared the court with while in Orlando. The Suns now have a really intriguing backcourt, and the Magic simply are trying to shed the team of what it had from the Rob Hennigan era (with the obvious exception of Aaron Gordon).
Phoenix will benefit from Payton’s court vision and ability to push the tempo, and it really could be a match made in heaven. That is not to say Phoenix will start winning games en masse, but the realist’s outlook is that a former lottery pick with four triple doubles to his resume could flourish in a high octane offense with the Suns.
Denver
The Denver Nuggets have won six of its last 10 games but are just 7-19 on the road this season. Denver ultimately will face a team with that homeport disadvantage, in the first round, so that does not bode well if the Nuggets cannot find a way to win away from the Pepsi Center in Denver (where it has gone 22-7, conversely). Denver most recently lost on the road to the Houston Rockets 130-124, but it had won three-straight prior to that contest and upward movement in the standings is still very possible in a tightly packed playoff race in the West.
Denver is a team that many have suggested need a point guard, but the Nuggets rank No. 6 in offensive rating in the NBA, and they get it done through the sharp (and sometimes wizardly) passing of center Nikola Jokic. Jokic leads the Nuggets in assists per game with 5.5, which ultimately reduces the playmaking load of Denver’s bevy of shooting guards. The team really has no true point guard on its roster, though Emmanuel Mudiay was originally billed as a 1. More of a combo guard, he and Jamal Murray usually man up with opposing points, but combined the pair averages just 5.9 assists per game.
The Nuggets as a team post 24.1 assists per game with 14.7 turnovers per night, so to criticize the team’s success on the base of its offense would be incorrect.
Defensively is where the Nuggets need the most improvement.
Denver ranks just No. 21 in defensive rating, and Jokic is part of the issue there, strangely. While the center is a demon with the ball in his hands, he is slow rotating and the Nuggets seem to prefer to almost never use Kenneth Faried, who is a defensive game changer at times. Denver has some tradeable pieces, and Mason Plumlee leaves plenty to be desired defensively, too.
Even so, the Nuggets are a high scoring team that can play with the league’s dominant teams and steal occasional wins, it is just probably in need of a better secondary playmaker to play with Jokic—and also probably a defensive forward who can “quarterback” its defense to call it switches and better the defensive communication.
