2023-24 NBA Christmas Grades: Northwest Division
Merry Christmas, everyone!
The NBA Christmas games have been run and won and every team is now give or take a third of their way through their respective schedules. So let’s see what grades every NBA team received from the Jolly Fat Man (Santa, to be clear, not Oliver Miller).
We’ve already taken a look at the Atlantic Division so now we head west to examine the Northwest Division. Keep an eye on the Vendetta Sports Media socials as we will be releasing all the grades over the next few days.
(All numbers come via Basketball Reference unless otherwise stated)
Denver Nuggets – A-:
The numbers: 22-10 record, 8th in offense, 9th in defense, 6th in Net Rating
The Nuggets are humming along nicely at Christmas without exactly setting the world alight and that’s perfectly fine. They’re sitting comfortably in second place in the west with top-10 efficiency at both ends of the floor. They’ve done it despite missing Jamal Murray for 13 games and integrating a raft of youngsters from the bench.
Perhaps because of Murray’s absence and when he has been available losing the rejuvenated Reggie Jackson, Nikola Jokic was sporting a career-high usage before it started to normalise a touch in mid-December. It’s a nice security blanket to know that if you are suffering from injuries you can simply throw it to your all-world big man and know that he’ll make something happen.
The litmus test for the Nuggets will clearly come in the playoffs. Can their young bench step up when it really counts? That might be the only weakness of a formidable basketball team.
Minnesota Timberwolves – A+:
The numbers: 22-6 record, 17th in offense, 1st in defense, 3rd in Net Rating
About 18 months ago, when the Wolves took their big swing in trading for Rudy Gobert, I guested on Trey Daubert’s That’s Some Cheese pod and was cautiously optimistic about how the Wolves could look with this new alignment. Last season a raft of issues popped up that stopped the Wolves from ever really getting the chance to jell. Still, there were concerns about where the best version of this team could go.
Well, given they’re atop the conference at Christmas, it turns out they could be quite a long way. Gobert is back to his Utah-era “defensive eclipse” best. Anthony Edwards is very close to genuine superstardom as an all-action offensive hub. Karl-Anthony Towns has found his groove as a versatile offensive big man. They still have to fully reintegrate another all-defense level player in Jaden McDaniels, too.
Minnesota’s offense is somewhat ho-hum, overly reliant on Edwards and Towns to give them enough juice. Will that be enough come playoff time? With a defense that is simply smothering teams in the half-court (86.9 points conceded per 100 possessions, a full 4.2 better than anybody else) it could well be.
Oklahoma City Thunder – A+:
The numbers: 18-9 record, 6th in offense, 6th in defense, 4th in Net Rating
It feels like the Thunder’s rebuild is going rather well, doesn’t it? Currently sitting third in the West, with a genuine MVP candidate in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the probable Rookie of the Year in Chet Holmgren and a whole army of young, talented contributors, this all feels very genuine.
The amount of respect that the opposition gives you often comes across in how far your opponent is willing to go to counter specific threats when they play you. According to Jared Dubin’s Variance Plus defensive metric, which measures how often a team deviates from their standard defensive structures, the Thunder rank fourth in the NBA after coming in 23rd in the same metric last season. In short, teams are so worried about the Thunder that they’re breaking their own defensive rules to counter them.
With a war chest of picks, general manager Sam Presti can afford to be patient with his rebuild, though he does have one quite pressing issue that must be handled: Josh Giddey. The Australian is, in a vacuum, clearly a better player than Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe and perhaps even Jalen Williams. He doesn’t really dovetail with Shai in the way those other players do, though. Is a trade on the cards? If so, will it be for somebody who might actually snare a rebound from time to time, fixing the Thunder’s one glaring weakness?
Portland Trailblazers – C-:
The numbers: 7-21 record, 27th in offense, 16th in defense, 26th in Net Rating
Up until the past fortnight or so, this grade was firmly entrenched in the D range but the Blazers have shown signs of life since early December. What was a league-worst offense has been given a shot in the arm by the season debut of Anfernee Simons after a thumb injury. Prized rookie Scoot Henderson, who was frankly awful to begin the season, has come back from an ankle sprain to look solid and at times genuinely good in a reserve role.
Shaedon Sharpe has shown some tantalising signs of elite shot-making. Toumana Camara is already a genuine rotation piece. Beyond that, though? It’s not been great.
Robert Williams suffered another season-ending knee injury after just six appearances. Deandre Ayton is well on his way to becoming this generation’s Joe Barry Carroll (for those too young to know, that is not good); Jerami Grant has been good, but probably not good enough to generate a monster haul when he’s inevitably traded. Malcolm Brogdon hasn’t been nearly as good as his stats might suggest.
Overall, this is an incomplete team that could be decent if they choose to be. They could also decide to fire up the ol’ Panzer and top out at 15 wins.
Utah Jazz – D:
The numbers: 12-18 record, 24th in offense, 25th in defense, 25th in Net Rating
The Jazz are currently Danny Ainge‘s ideal Christmas present: On-court ineptitude, tradable assets and draft picks. Despite sporting Lauri Markkanen, a genuine All-NBA talent, this team is … well, Coach Will Hardy summed it up best when he said after a recent 50 (!) point loss that his team was a “masterpiece of dogshit.”
Let’s be clear: The Jazz as currently constructed are not designed to win games of basketball. Their best guard is a 20-year-old rookie in Keyonte George, Walker Kessler, who a year ago looked like a future Defensive Player of the Year, is backing up Omer Yurtseven, the ghost of John Collins hasn’t been reincarnated in Salt Lake.
The Jazz are poor and, given they’re likely to move their one legitimate high-end player in Markkanen, could get a lot worse this season.
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