OKLAHOMA CITY — David Adelman’s basketball nerddom is not limited to just offense.
Maybe that’s his reputation — he was the Nuggets’ offensive coordinator for years under Michael Malone, after all — but he’s not eager to be stuck in that box as a head coach.
“It’s not something that’s new for me,” he’ll say.
Whether as a high school program leader in Oregon or as an NBA coaching cub scout years before his arrival in Denver, Adelman has never been a stranger to defensive scheming. And as he’s fond of pointing out, the offensive installation process has also required him to study “how they guard us for eight years.”
So this is all coming naturally to him now, his more involved role in Denver’s defense since taking over as interim head coach in April.
“It’s kind of cool to have both,” he said. “It’s almost refreshing in a way. With this pressure comes a lot of refreshing things for me.”
If this is all an audition for the full-time job, then one component of it is surely the ongoing test of Adelman’s defensive chops with a roster that’s been limited at that end of the floor all season. The Nuggets have certainly been unafraid to experiment with the full range of concepts against MVP favorite Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder.
In Game 4 of the second-round playoff series, Adelman used a zone defense for about twice as many possessions as Denver had in any previous game this season.
“The biggest takeaway of what they’re doing through four games is that they’re doing a lot,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Tuesday before Game 5. “… They’ve thrown three different zones out against us. They’ve switched. They’ve shown (on screens). They’ve had (Nikola) Jokic back (in drop coverage). Jokic at the level of the screen. They’ve just shown a lot of different looks, a lot of different schemes, and they’ve pivoted pretty quickly.”
Denver’s base coverage features Jokic up the floor, “at the level” in pick-and-rolls, to utilize the center’s elite hands and anticipation while compensating for his lack of rim protection prowess.
But even in Adelman’s second game at the helm, the Nuggets made a temporary in-game adjustment to position Jokic closer to the rim in drop coverage. It allowed them to prevent Memphis from shooting as many 3s throughout the night in an eventual comeback win.
“That’s something I’m into,” Adelman said Tuesday. “You have to be careful. You don’t want to go too far, or you lose the spirit of your base defense, because your base defense is what gets you here throughout the season. But that stuff, to slow down the pace of the game a little bit, especially on the road, it goes a long way, I think, in staying in games. And you have to take chances sometimes. Sometimes it looks bad, when someone takes a wide-open shot because the rotation wasn’t correct, whatever it may be.”
The zone worked wonders for most of Game 4, until Oklahoma City’s role players knocked down a string of 3-pointers against it in the fourth quarter to fuel a critical run. Still, in the two contests in Denver, the Nuggets posted a defensive rating of 97 and held Gilgeous-Alexander to 21.5 points per game on 37% shooting.
With zone in particular, Adelman was hoping to take away the pick-and-rolls that Oklahoma City likes to run with two guards or wings — an effective method of hunting mismatches against man-to-man defense. Denver’s personnel isn’t supremely equipped to switch screens and live with the results over and over.
But going a different direction has its risks. Zones are susceptible to surrendering ball-movement 3s and offensive rebounds. Adelman has acknowledged that give-and-take with each attempted adjustment, his general goal being to force opponents into shots that Denver can at least live with.
And as for the persistence with which the Nuggets have kept changing their schemes? Adelman has felt comfortable experimenting thanks to his well-acquainted group of players. Even in the middle of the whirlwind that has been his interim coaching tenure.
“I think the guys have high enough IQ,” he said, “to take in a lot of information with one day between games.”
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Originally Published: May 13, 2025 at 8:38 PM MDT
