NBA Roundup: 3 September takeaways and 3 NBA Finals predictions

NBA September Takeaway: The Nuggets have arrived

Some people would use a Nuggets discussion to bring up the embarrassing exit of the Clippers after being up 3-1 over Denver. They’d bring up how Kawhi Leonard left the Raptors, a team he won the 2019 championship with, only to get eliminated in the same round as them the following year.

They’d mention that the Clippers traded more first-round picks (5) for Paul George than he had made field goals (4) in Game 7. They’d poke fun at Doc Rivers for owning three of the 13 blown 3-1 leads in NBA history. I would never bring those things up though, not me. Instead, I’ll focus on how good the Nuggets were this postseason.

Jokes aside, the Nuggets’ run during these playoffs was arguably the most interesting on-court story of the entire NBA season. Coming into these playoffs, most people, including me to some degree, viewed the Nuggets as, let’s just be honest – soft. So for them to transform from a team no one outside of Denver trusted to a legitimately terrifying group of late-game scorers is the biggest shock of the postseason to me. Especially when they made that transformation by going through two well-known closers in Donovan Mitchell and Kawhi Leonard.

Does this run mean they should be considered a title contender next season? I don’t know. But what I do know is that they are hitting all the checkmarks on the way to being one of those teams very soon. When you build a team organically with young players you need them to have seasons like this where they get some scar tissue.

So the fact that they went from a tough Game 7 loss in the second round last season and then battled their way to a conference finals appearance this year while Jamal Murray developed into a co-star for Nikola Jokic tells me that they aren’t just a flash in the pan. The Nuggets are here to stay, and it looks like they’ll be here for a long time.