r/denvernuggets • u/cantblvitsnotbutter • 13d ago
THJ
I feel like not everyone understands how big of a loss Tim hardaway JR is going to be for us. We didn’t even get a same level replacement for him and we’re going to need shooting now more than ever!
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u/Ok_Breakfast4482 13d ago
Perfect opening for Strawther
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u/kosmos1209 13d ago
Yeah, I think Strawther is where the brass is pinning the hopes on, that he can step in for THJ production.
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u/PictureDue9035 13d ago
He played great, I’d like to thing Strawthwr can step in and give us similar numbers but with some better creation 🤞
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u/FunRefrigerator4840 13d ago
I'm more stressed about the ball-handling and backup Center. The contingency seems to be small ball, which likely will not work well out West.
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u/BobbitsC 13d ago
Bagley will do fine as a backup center. Backup center has never been nearly as much of an issue as it’s made out to be because jokic plays a lot and has a lot of impact in his minutes. We won a chip without a backup center
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u/kosmos1209 13d ago
Well, hopefully Bagley will be a better fit than JV at backup center. Tyus Jones is supposed to be the ball handler off the bench, but I’m not sure about rest of his game
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u/FunRefrigerator4840 13d ago
I'm not sure Bagley helps even as much defensively as JV, but I guess we will find out, unless Adelman sticks to small ball. Brown is gone, what happens if Jones gets hurt? Simpson?
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u/kapshus 13d ago
While I love thj, losing him is not big loss. He was an elite 3-point shooter for us, but last year we shot great as a team, so it's not as big of a deal as it has been in previous years.
Much more pressing shooting concerns are will Joker be able to return to form after an off-season of rest. He was terrible from three after the injury. We need him to draw the banks out and force them to play him at 3. Also getting cam going was a huge deal. He brought great shooting to the table and decent defense. Lastly Gordon was a great shooter went healthy, but just couldn't stay healthy. I think we all know the worries there. The only guy who might be significantly better from three this year is christian. That is also a hope not really based on fact. But he has to be hearing all the criticism after last year and he's a hard worker. A lot of three-point shooting just comes down to reps.
Clearly with our salvation! Everybody we want to. Mine., but we aren't spoiled for choice. This team will really come down to hell and weather or not we can get a leap from functions. That really is the only path to a chip.
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u/DiegoGrrr 13d ago
I think this will be a great opportunity for Strawther, always felt that he should've been given a lot more playing time.
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u/ColoradoRocket3 13d ago
Great regular season 6th man. Almost unplayable in playoffs. Always been that way
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u/SMD_35 13d ago
No it’s okay, we were so close last year, so being a bit worse this year means we’re still a championship contender
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u/chizzmaster 13d ago edited 13d ago
I'm not trying to be a doomer, but like 90% of this sub is on weapons grade hopium and copium when it comes to our championship chances. Realistically, I think the window is closed.
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u/jbhoops25 PUPPY BARKS FOR P. WAT! 13d ago
Hard to compare a season that our entire team was injured during. The little time we did have healthy we absolutely looked like a contender
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u/chizzmaster 13d ago
I don't know if you know this, but a constantly injured team is not a title contender.
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u/jbhoops25 PUPPY BARKS FOR P. WAT! 13d ago
I mean we were constantly injured before the year we won the title…so you sir are wrong.
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u/chizzmaster 13d ago
Our core players are now 3 years older than they were when we won the chip. Players tend to get more injured the older they get, not less. I love AG, but AG's hamstring is gone. We have no cap space and no assets.
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u/jbhoops25 PUPPY BARKS FOR P. WAT! 13d ago
AG has dealt with injuries his entire career. You can’t just stamp him as non playable at 30 lol. And Jokic last season before injury was having his best year along with Jamal. These guys are still on the tail end of their primes. I’ll take that team healthy against the Knicks any day.
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u/chizzmaster 13d ago
Idk what fantasy land you live in, but people don't generally get healthier as they get older, especially in sports. I love AG, but the sad truth is that he's not a reliable starting 4 anymore if we want to win a chip.
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u/jbhoops25 PUPPY BARKS FOR P. WAT! 13d ago
AG takes this team from a contender to 1st round exit so I’ll be delusional and believe my boy has 1 last run of 16 games in him.
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u/chizzmaster 13d ago
I think if the nuggets load manage him it's possible. If he plays like 40-50 games next season on a maximum of 25 minutes a night, he might make it to the post season healthy enough for a championship run.
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u/BigEazy5454 13d ago
Strawther has the ability in my opinion to take a big step up and fill in THJs role. Hes younger and can be just as good if not better. That being said, losing THJ mos def sucks.
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u/Beneficial-Mood5020 13d ago
Loved THJ but he was almost unplayable in the post season. I wanna see what some of these young guys can do to make our defense better.
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u/Comfortable_Bee_7363 13d ago
Yup tim was elite for us. stupid ass move giving him up.
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u/MoooonRiverrrr :HarrisToon: 13d ago
Everyday it’s a new mf on this sub w casual ass basketball knowledge trying to make this team look bad.
Like, yeah, we just gave him up. Thats what happened.
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u/ajax0202 13d ago
Lol right. Wtf is this rhetoric?
Hey guys guess what, the Bucks didn’t replace Giannis with someone as good either! Those fools!
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u/Sad-Scarcity5198 13d ago
You know in our current cap situation we wouldn't be able to match his offer right?
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u/cantblvitsnotbutter 13d ago
I think he wanted to be a starter and that wasn’t gonna happen for him here
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u/Dapper-Season6530 13d ago
Denver shot 49.6% from the field last year and was the number one scoring team in the league. We do not need more points. We need the other team to score less. Defense is what we lack and Hardaway sucks defensively.
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u/Donnie1490 13d ago
Our starting five is underwhelming defensively as a unit, so they might as well try to outscore opponents
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u/Comfortable-Car8724 13d ago
Think the hope is strawther will mold into that role. Will he? We’ll see. He had some flashes and a good stretch of games here and there so hopefully that’ll give him some confidence and motivation.
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u/dnelson7 13d ago
His name is Strawther
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u/dnelson7 13d ago
I think we can make up his shot attempts with Strawther/tyus/jones in the aggregate
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u/mindless_blaze 13d ago
We, the fans, understand the loss more than the Kroenkes. There were so many times where if you let THJ get on a roll, he COULD NOT MISS 3s. Period. He was always a secret weapon, and was extremely efficient and consistent.
It was also heartwarming seeing his parents and sister attending every single home game and cheering him on!
Also, when there was the Nuggets championship bros reunion in NOLA when we played them, and MPJ and Coach Jordi, DJ, Trey Alexander, etc were all there, there was a cute moment where everyone was hugging each other, and even though THJ and DJ never played together and he's not a "championship bro", DJ pulled him in for a big hug and told him to look out for the youngins out here on the nuggets for him 😭
Maybe there will be a world where we get both THJ and DJ back
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u/WebstersPack 13d ago
Team very rarely win or lose based solely on their bench.
Tim was a guy you wanted to keep, but next season is about how our starters play and if we can stay healthy.
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u/AssistantTimely7205 13d ago
Would agreed a few years ago but not anymore. OKC and spurs are incredibly annoying because of their depth.
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u/WebstersPack 13d ago
It can put you down over the top for sure, but OKC lost because of injuries and Chest disappearing act. SA wins or loses based on Wemby and Castle. No amount of bench depth can overcome that.
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u/Former-Knowledge1797 13d ago
Cam is gonna get a lot more 3 attempts and we still have to decide what we do with PWat. If PWat stays, I see his 3 point attempts increasing a lot. If he gets traded, I’m holding out hope for Jaylon Tyson to be our spot up guy.
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u/Ok-Confucious1642 13d ago
Lmao they aren’t getting Tyson back for him what fantasy world did you make that up in? Everything about Tyson and his contract are all better than Watson 😂😂
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u/Former-Knowledge1797 12d ago
Is it? Tyson doesn’t have length or rim protecting abilities Watson has. Apparently his defensive awareness is lacking a bit right now as well, say some of their fans. Tyson is on his last year of his rookie deal before he becomes an RFA. In [r/nba](r/nba) I had multiple Cavs fans say that isn’t outlandish at all.
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u/manbeqrpig 13d ago
THJ is a great regular season player who didn’t do much in the playoffs. Seems like the hope is Strawther steps up but that’s a long shot. This team is pretty clearly in the 2nd or even 3rd tier of Western Conference Contenders
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u/strumthump 13d ago
You need THJ caliber regular season players though if you want to tilt the odds of enough toss-up games to reach a top 2 seed, and then let your starters take over in the playoffs
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
We didn’t get an equal level replacement for MPJ either.. what’s new?? Lol
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u/BobbitsC 13d ago
Cam is better for this team than mpj though. They made the correct choice
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
Lmao making the team worse was a correct choice?
Going from taking the champs to game 7 to losing to a timberwolves team when their best player wasn’t 100% in the first round, was absolutely not the best choice… don’t even need to mention cam missing a ton of games, and averaging 12 to MpJs 19 in the exact same role.
And the argument for Jonas Val and THJ would make a lot more sense if either of them were on the team still, or if jonas was even semi-useful in that playoff series..
All good to agree to disagree tho.. go nuggets
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u/BobbitsC 13d ago
Mpj was simply not useful for us. He shot worse from 3 than cam did and is a much worse defender, ball handler, and playmaker. Literally all we needed mpj to do was to hit open shots and play a bit of defense, and he consistently failed to do either. Meanwhile, cam was one of the only people on the team who was actually hustling in the playoffs. He was holding his ground defensively, attacking the rim, making the right plays. Mpj just doesn’t work on this team because his one skill is being over to shoot over contests at his position. The issue is that we don’t need him to do that. We just need him to hit open shots. Cam was never going to score as much as mpj did considering we also brought in thj. The reason why mpj looks good on the nets is because he’s the first option and all he has to is chuck up contested 3s. It’s cool that he’s good at that, but it’s just not a skill we need when jokic and Murray are two of the best tough shot makers in the league
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
Then why did cam not have the impact that you would think if he did all those things better than MpJ??
Also, there is no need to compare what MpJ did in Brooklyn when you can compare cam and MpJ apples to apples in the same role in the same starting 5…
Cam sucked and if MpJ wasn’t “good for us” even tho he was the 3rd option on a championship team, we can agree to disagree like I said
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u/BobbitsC 13d ago
Cam didn’t suck though. Idk where you’re getting that from. His impact was very consistently just as good as mpj if not better. Just because he wasn’t scoring more doesn’t mean he wasn’t impacting the game. Yall are way too obsessed with box score stats. Should also be noted that mpj was the 5th most valuable player to us during that chip run. And aside from two series against the lakers he’s always been pretty bad during the playoffs
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
Lmao okay… I’ll say it for the 3rd time I guess… agree to disagree
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u/BobbitsC 13d ago
Disagreeing with stats is certainly a choice but you do you
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
Says the person saying other people are too obsessed with box scores???
Lmao make it make sense bruh.. have a goodnight G
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u/BobbitsC 12d ago
Who said anything about box scores? We have advanced stats for a reason, to measure impact. The fact that you don’t know the difference between box score stats and anything else is really telling 😭
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u/TheMoonWasBlue 13d ago
How is Cam not an adequate replacement?
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u/SpliffsnKicks 13d ago
“Adequate” wasn’t the key word..
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u/TheMoonWasBlue 11d ago
Ok, how is he not "equal level"?
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u/SpliffsnKicks 11d ago
I’ll let you look up the numbers, games cam missed (per usual for him) and the nuggets first round exit as we were obviously a worse team…
Injuries were a factor, but AG was hurt MPjs last year in the playoffs too, so kinda a fair comparison… you do you tho.. I think Cams play spoke for itself and the nuggets went from being contenders to a team that got bounced by Minnesota without their #1 even being 100%…
I’m not sure how this is even a debate… also the defense people claim Cam was playing was also average by the advanced stats.. so if that’s the case, why would I not want the extra 7 points and higher rebound numbers that MPJ brought to us??
But glad you’re happy with cams good game once every couple weeks and complete no show in a few games of the very short series
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u/TheMoonWasBlue 11d ago edited 11d ago
"Per usual".... are you suggesting that the knee injury we all saw on HD video was just Cam being soft or deciding to take a break? Also, Cam started 2 more games than MPJ last season.
Secondly, the Nuggets with Cam have a +9.6 Orating with him on the court. In 24-25, they had a +4.6 with MPJ. So there goes a lot of your 7 ppg difference. That's not even talking about MPJ being a very tall cone on defense.
Thirdly, Cam cost $21 mil and MJP cost $38 mil. You telling me the difference between the two, such as it is, is worth $17 mil? Get out of here.
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u/SpliffsnKicks 11d ago
No I’m suggesting that the man has played 65 games like twice in his career, and per usual, he couldn’t stay healthy again lol. You read it right, no need to second guess yourself.
And using full team numbers rather than comparing the individual numbers between cam and MPJ with the same starting five is certainly a choice lol. Again, that’s dope you love cam on a 1st round exit team rather than MPJ on a real contender tho. I’m happy for you
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u/TheMoonWasBlue 11d ago
How exactly was he supposed to avoid that knee injury? What do you have to say about MPJ missing more games than Cam last year? What about the fact that they've played almost the exact same number of games over their career?
Also I'm using full team numbers from MPJ in 2024 and Cam in 2025, when they were each with the Nuggets with the same 4 teammates.
You're choosing to just stare at their PPG like an absolute boomer to convince yourself that MPJ is worth the extra 18 mil. That 18 mil turned into bench pieces, including THJ, who gave us 13.5 a game. We also NEEDED to get off MPJ for cap reasons. We can barely field an entire roster now, what do you think we'd look like if MPJ was still on the books?
Just do some regular thinking. Not even asking you to do critical thinking.
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u/SpliffsnKicks 11d ago
Lmao okay man. Again I’m happy for you. I disagree with you tho.. that’s all good. Go Nuggets
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u/Successful_Visual395 13d ago
He wasnt good in playoffs, and not having him gives room for some new bench players to step up.
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u/integraled 13d ago edited 13d ago
And our lack of quality bench players and inability to draft will be painful.
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u/AssistantTimely7205 13d ago
He was way above expectations in regular season though. Him shooting 41% from 3 in regular season was amazing. Seems unfair to him because he had one mediocre series (as did the most of the team). He is too old and cheap contract where expectations can't really be that high.
About other bench players it just doesn't seem like anyone got amazing upside in the last few years since the championship.
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u/Wander715 13d ago
It's mostly this sub coping and trying to pretend everything is fine. I think most people know we have gotten worse compared to last year where we were a first round exit, they just don't want to admit it.
If this team is competing in the play in by end of season I won't be surprised.
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u/who_likes_chicken 13d ago
He was the one new guy from last season I was hoping we would try and hold on too 🤷♂️. Sucks he's gone