With Denver Nuggets media day on Monday, the 2018-2019 NBA season is officially upon us. For the Nuggets, this year marks a pivotal point in what will likely be described as the Nikola Jokic-Michael Malone era. After two straight seasons of missing the playoffs by an excruciatingly small margin, the Nuggets are primed to return to the postseason for the first time in five years (their second longest playoff drought ever). There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic, given the pattern of development the team has shown over the past three years.
In 2015, once it became painfully obvious the team was not only going to miss the playoffs but also finish with it’s worst record in over a decade, then general manager Tim Connelly had to pivot.