DALLAS -- As Nikola Jokic hopped away on one leg in Miami, the Nuggets' position in the NBA's Western Conference standings had been stagnant for a week. They were in third place, a game back of San Antonio, and that real estate was in jeopardy all of a sudden on Dec. 29. Even when Jokic's knee injury was revealed to be only a bone bruise the next day, the concept of at least four weeks without him was unnerving to a city so accustomed to his presence on the court.
Would the Nuggets be able to hang on to a top-six seed in the West without their franchise player? Would they fall to the Play-In Tournament by the time of his return? Was a first-round playoff series matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder suddenly on the table?
Nine games later, as they cruised into the halfway point of the regular season with a 118-109 win at Dallas, they had remarkably not fallen in the standings at all. In fact, by improving to 6-3 without Jokic, they overtook San Antonio for second place by half a game on Wednesday night.
It's a scenario that would have been unthinkable to those watching Jokic limp to the locker room to join an infirmary of injured teammates in Miami.
"The narrative sometimes is so funny, because it's like, 'What are we showing?' We're showing what we can do," Jamal Murray said after scoring 33 points in Dallas -- his 12th 30-piece of the season. "Just playing basketball and playing together. The ball is hopping. Playing hard. We've got a squad."
"We've got a lot of talent," Aaron Gordon added. "Deep. Twelve, 13, 14 guys can play. I don't even know if we have 14 guys. But you get the gist. Everybody can play on this team."
Ask any of Denver's players, and they'll tell you that was the prevailing lesson of a lemons-to-lemonade first half of the season highlighted by this bizarre stretch of poor luck and resilience. The Nuggets were showing early signs of a juggernaut before the injuries started. They've kept finagling wins since then despite posting a negative net rating in the nine games without Jokic.
Not to mention the revolving door of other rotation players who've been in and out of the lineup this month.
"We're also missing Cam Johnson, (Jonas) Valanciunas, CB (Christian Braun). Those guys too, right?" Murray pointed out. "Those guys can play as well. But we've got enough in this locker room to keep it rolling. Obviously, we miss big fella. He's such a catalyst for our whole offense and everything he does, and he's so consistent with his energy on both ends. So we miss that. But guys are coming in and taking advantage of the opportunity."
The Nuggets (28-13) remain the NBA's best offense -- maybe of all time -- and that's been enough to keep them ranked fifth place in net rating (5.5) at the halfway point despite a 23rd-ranked defense.
They're the most efficient 3-point shooting team in the league (40.3%), and that's at a higher volume thanks to bench contributors like Tim Hardaway Jr. They're on track to break their two-year streak of attempting the fewest 3s in the league without sacrificing too much of their usual dominance in the paint.
"I think I've learned that we can play a lot of different ways if we have to," coach David Adelman said. "There's something to it where it's not just, 'Oh, we're losing all this offensive efficiency with him out.' I'm thinking about if we're lucky enough to be in the (playoffs) and he gets two quick fouls, we've seen a lot of stylistic basketball from us that wasn't the plan coming into the season."
In particular, the Nuggets have been forced to feel out how to play small, with backup center Jonas Valanciunas also out. Adelman has tried a full range of frontcourts, most recently with Gordon and Spencer Jones starting together. That was the lineup that helped Denver sweep a back-to-back in New Orleans and Dallas. Those wins, combined with a Spurs loss in Oklahoma City this week, allowed the Nuggets to leapfrog back into second place halfway through.
"Pretty happy. I feel like we've lost some games we thought we should have won, and we might have won some games that we thought we were gonna lose," Peyton Watson said. "I think that's part of the game. It's part of the ebbs and flows of a season. We're pretty content with what we're doing right now, but we can't get satisfied."
Watson has been the other revelation of the first half; his scoring and play-making off the dribble turning out to be an ability that was previously hidden to the public. He understands that his days are numbered in the outsized role, but in the meantime, his embrace of it has been both a stabilizing force for his team and, he hopes, an individual statement of intent about his future in the NBA. As has been well documented, he's a pending restricted free agent after not getting a contract extension from Denver in the offseason.
"I love playing in this league, and hopefully some teams would hopefully see the value of that, including the Denver Nuggets," he said Wednesday. "But I mean, this organization has just done a lot of great things for me. Brought me up almost as a man a little bit. I got here at 19 years old, and this organization has raised me. ... My game is only blossoming, so I think everything else will take care of itself."
At 28-13, the Nuggets are on pace to finish one win shy of their franchise record (57), which they've achieved twice including the 2023-24 season.
That was a year that ended in playoff heartbreak, as the toll of a championship defense and the lack of roster depth caught up with their starters in a second-round Game 7. This time around, they're seemingly equipped with the depth to at least avoid such a tremendous crash and burn.
"I mean, bro, if we're winning games like this with a lot of guys out and injured," Watson said,"I feel like as a full-strength team,it’s gonna be hard to beat us."
And perhaps just as importantly, Adelman's primary assessment of the first 41 games was that the depth hasn't created any rifts over playing time. The Nuggets, as he tells it, are pure of heart.
"Not (to be) like a Disney movie here,but these guys like each other.And they like playing basketball together,"Adelman said."That's a great feeling,to have a bunch of guys who make a lot of money to play this sport,with all the media that's involved in it and the pressure from the outside --this group just feels like shootarounds,walk-throughs,when we eat together,the bus,the planeobviously when we play games,there's just a real connection....They cheer for each other.They're happy when somebody else has a night,when it’s not their night.And that’s not something you get in the NBA every year.So I think that’s why we withstood all these injuries."