Season Recap

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Malik Beasley’s second season in the NBA provided a few more glimpses as to the type of player he aspires to be – and left him hungry to work this summer to put himself on the fast track to achieve those goals.

So, what will he work on? In a word: Everything.

“Get better,” Beasley said. “Strong. Work on my ball handling, work on my shooting. Work on everything… just trying to get better. Especially my body. I want to make sure I don’t get any injuries, and I want to stay strong in my core.”

The Nuggets reserve shooting guard’s appearances grew by 40 games from his first season (22) to his second (62). A five-game stretch in December – in the midst of the Nuggets’ second-longest road trip of the season – provided Beasley’s most dense period of playing time this season. There were six straight games where he reached double figures in time on the court. Five of those were at least 16 minutes or more. Two were over 23 minutes, including an inspired 28-minute game at Orlando, where Beasley scored 12 points with four rebounds and three assists in a Nuggets’ victory.

Defense, however, was the reason why Beasley hit the court.

“I’ve known that Malik Beasley not only has the physical talent to be a good defender,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone at that time. “But more importantly, Malik has the mental edge, the mental attitude and thought process to be a good defender.”

Beasley was the kind of player that Malone could put on the court to change the energy level on the defensive end. In his best moments, Beasley hounded ball-handlers, dove on the ground for loose basketballs, and could get out in the open court to finish with dunks at the rim if/when turnovers were created.

And midway through the season, the 21-year old Beasley had learned enough about life in the NBA, and about himself, that he made changes to his approach.

“I started figuring out after All Star break, just learning the season and learning how hard you’ve got to grind to be good every day and maintain your body every day,” Beasley said. “I just took a different approach to the game to really focus on basketball, not all of the other things. Watched more film, worked on my body more. I could see the results and I started to get better and better every day.”

Those are things he aims to build on during the summer. Because Beasley, who averaged 9.4 minutes per game, understands one central fact:

“I think I could have pushed a lot more,” he said. “I just know I’ve got to get better overall. Whether that’s offense, defense. I’ve got to get stronger, too.”

Beasley has an intriguing future. And he’s ready, more than ever, to make that future a current reality.

Christopher Dempsey: christopher.dempsey@altitude.tv and @chrisadempsey on Twitter

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2017-18 Nuggets Player Breakdown: Malik Beasley

By the time February rolled around, the Nuggets knew they were in need of experienced, veteran help at reserve point guard, and Devin Harris arrived via trade in February to help.

With 14 years in the NBA, and still playing at a high level, Harris fit the bill. He has so much experience that his career stats take up a full screen, top-to-bottom when scrolling through them on the NBA.com stats site. And he ended up putting a lot of heady play on the court for the Nuggets when they needed it.

Nuggets coach Michael Malone was looking for Harris to push the pace, and Harris did just that. His pace of 100.75 was fourth-best on the team among regular rotation players from his first game, on Feb. 10, to the end of the season. For comparison, the team’s overall pace during his 27 games was 99.98.

Overall, Harris averaged 8.2 points and 2.5 assists. He was second on the team in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.48) in his 27 games with the Nuggets. Harris, who came to the team from Dallas, is an unrestricted free agent this summer.

“With the young guys that they have, learning to play with these guys, I would like to know what a full season looks like,” Harris said. “I would like to continue to help these young guys as well as getting better in the situation myself. That’s definitely on the table.

“Coming from the situation that I was in, being able to play meaningful games, playoff atmosphere games, it’s been great for me. Especially, late in my career. I really enjoyed my time.”

OFFENSE: Once Harris got comfortable with the offense and could to playing without thinking, he was a highly effective player. He graded out well in all of his most-used actions – spot-up shooting, handling the ball in pick-and-roll, transition and in handoffs.

In pick-and-roll, Harris was best in making decisions with the ball. And he quickly got on the same page with Nuggets bigs, Nikola Jokić and Mason Plumlee. With Jokic, he regularly slipped passes to the big man, who mostly popped out to take jump shots. Harris quickly created space by taking two defenders and then snapping the pass to Jokić right where he could catch and shoot.

With Plumlee, Harris was able to turn the corner on screen-roll action and draw multiple defenders to him – and then lob the ball up for an alley-oop dunk. Harris had 13 assists to Plumlee and 14 to Jokić. So, 27 of his 67 assists in a Nuggets uniform – 40 percent – went to those two players.

And because he was a threat to make a shot, defenses had to play him honestly, and Harris could almost always pick out the pass he wanted. When he opted to shoot, he was effective. From March 7 to the end of the regular season, as he was settling into the Nuggets’ system, Harris shot 43.3 percent from the field and 38 percent from the 3-point line. He was a threat off the ball playing alongside starting point guard Jamal Murray, and in scramble situations when the Nuggets got an offensive rebound. Harris averaged 1.101 points per possession as a spot-up shooter with the Nuggets, which ranked in the top 25 percent of the league in that span of time.

DEFENSE: Harris was helpful in pick-and-roll coverage as part of five-man units that held opponents to .757 points per possession and 37 percent shooting in screen-roll plays. Opponents turned the ball over in 16 percent of the screen-roll plays that Harris was part of defending.

Harris had 11 of his 14 steals with the Nuggets in the month of March, including four games of two steals. Defending in spot up shooting situations was second-most on the list. Combined, defending pick-and-roll and spot up shooting accounted for nearly 70 percent of all of Harris’s action on that end of the court.

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2017-18 Nuggets Player Breakdown: Devin Harris

The connection was a flash of what could be. Monte Morris, swiping a pass along the sideline at midcourt and quickly getting downhill toward the rim on a fast break. Tyler Lydon trailed the play, sprinting behind Morris. Morris flipped a behind-the-back pass to his Rio Grande Valley teammate, who threw down a monster two-handed dunk.

Lydon spent the majority of his 2017-18 season getting experience in the G League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers before a knee injury cut his season short. He played in one game with the Nuggets. Lydon had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in January, and spent the remainder of the season rehabbing the injury. According to his agent, who has done multiple interviews with news outlets on the subject, Lydon is hoping to be ready to play for the Nuggets summer league team in July.

Prior to the injury, Lydon was playing well. In fact, his final stats with Rio Grande Valley were nearly identical to his college stats in his final season at Syracuse, which earned him a first-round draft selection, No. 24 overall, to the Nuggets.

2017-18 at Rio Grande Valley: 12.6 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 51.8 field goal percentage, 36.7 3-point percentage.

2016-17 at Syracuse: 13.2 points, 8.6 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 47.2 field goal percentage, 39.2 3-point percentage.

At his best, Lydon put a solid floor game on the court. He ran the court well, was athletic to the rim, was not afraid to mix it up for rebounds, and was scrappy in diving to the court for loose balls. On draft night, Nuggets brass expressed high hopes that Lydon could grow into a bonafide shooting power forward. When he returns to full health, he’ll get a chance to get back on the road to being just that.

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2017-18 Nuggets Player Breakdown: Tyler Lydon

There were good days and bad days, but almost no perfect health days for Mason Plumlee, who plowed through a painful season with a straight face and workmanlike approach.

He recently had core surgery to begin the healing process in earnest, and is expected to be ready to go for training camp in September. But because he was ailing a little more on many nights, Plumlee played 19.1 minutes per game – only the second time in his career being under 20 minutes – as the Nuggets medical staff and coach Michael Malone monitored him on a nightly basis.

One of the Nuggets’ toughest and most physical players, Plumlee averaged 7.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.1 blocks – second only to Paul Millsap’s 1.2 swats per game. This was his first full season with the Nuggets after being traded to the team in February 2017 from the Portland Trail Blazers.

OFFENSE: Nuggets coach Michael Malone has long talked about Plumlee’s floor game mirroring some of what starting center Nikola Jokic can do, and there were definitely elements of that on the court. In particular, in the areas of handling the ball up the court after snagging a defensive rebound, and of playmaking from the top of the key.

But perhaps Plumlee’s deadliest action was as the roll man in screen-roll actions. He had synergy all year long with guard Will Barton on lob plays after setting the screen, and then guard Devin Harris quickly connected with Plumlee on a number of lob dunks off high screen-roll action late in the season after coming to the Nuggets from Dallas. Plumlee was a 63 percent shooter in rolling to the basket and averaged 1.022 points per possession in that action. He was second on the team to Jokic in “screen assists” at 2.0 per game, which extrapolated over 36 minutes would have been 3.8 per game, a number that would have placed him among the top 15 in the league.

Plumlee’s post-up game was built on brute strength. At a stout 6-11, 255 pounds, he could back down nearly any player in the league, and when he was turning over his left shoulder, Plumlee flashed a reliable right-handed hook shot. When turning over his right shoulder, Plumlee opted to go up with two hands to the hoop more often than not. He’ll continue to work on his left hand in the painted area, as well as his footwork on the block.

Plumlee was very good in transition, making 74.3 percent of his shots when getting out into the open court. As one of the Nuggets most athletic players, finishing with dunks was a regular occurrence, and he became known for tossing a large number of those in backward. Plumlee drew 152 fouls – fourth most on the team – but didn’t cash in regularly on those attempts, shooting 45 percent from the stripe.

DEFENSE: Overall, Plumlee finished his fourth straight season with an average of over one block per game and led the Nuggets with 81 total blocks. Plumlee had nine games of at least three blocks, and the Nuggets were 5-4 in those games. On a team that struggled overall with rim protection, Plumlee provided a significant amount.

And he was one of the Nuggets’ best pick-and-roll bigs.

Plumlee was the team’s most aggressive big in hedging out on ball handlers. That resulted in him forcing a turnover in screen-roll action a robust 16 percent of the time. He lived to disrupt the ball-handler, and Malone trusted him to get the job done. Plumlee deflected 1.7 passes per game and was fourth on the team in contested shots with 7.2 per game. When the Nuggets needed a stop, Plumlee was almost always out there with the five players entrusted to try and get it.

And once fully back to health, Plumlee can continue to find continuity with his new team.

“It’s nice to have that security,” Plumlee said.

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2017-18 Nuggets Player Breakdown: Mason Plumlee

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