From the moment Jamal Murray collapsed to the ground in agony last week against the Golden State Warriors, the Denver Nuggets' season has been in peril. For a team with championship ambitions, the loss of their star point guard to an ACL injury that will keep him sidelined for the remainder of the year was a near-fatal blow to the franchise's hopes of capturing their first NBA title. While the Nuggets still boasted enough remaining depth at the guard position to avoid a complete collapse, the news Monday that Monte Morris would be out indefinitely with an injured hamstring means that the squad will now require a backup plan for their original backup plan.
The Nuggets today signed Austin Rivers to a 10-day contract: pic.twitter.com/YS0EXc14U9
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) April 20, 2021
To help fill the void, Denver announced the signing of point guard Austin Rivers early Tuesday afternoon, acquiring the veteran following his release from the Oklahoma City Thunder late last month. Though Rivers and the Nuggets only agreed to an initial 10-day contract, there is ample reason to believe that former lottery pick will assume the starting guard duties for the rest of the season and into the playoffs.
While Rivers stat line is nothing to write home about–the eighth-year point guard is averaging 7.3 points per game, on 43% shooting, and 36% from behind the arc–his ball-handling ability and versatility on the defensive end should provide Denver with a decent facsimile of the skill-set that made Jamal Murray so valuable to the team. Though Rivers has only earned scattered minutes throughout the regular season this year in stints with both the Philadelphia 76ers and the Thunder, the guard was an above-average offensive contributor during his time on the floor as recently as last season with the Houston Rockets.
Not only did Rivers finish the 2019-2020 regular season in the 60th percentile of all offensive players in the league, according to Synergy Sports, but he was absolutely deadly in isolation. Operating with a superb handle and a quick first step, Rivers could regularly create space one-on-one and beat defenders off the dribble, scoring above a point per possession in such sets.
While it's unlikely the Nuggets will place the guard in the same number of isolation plays that the D'antoni Rockets utilized, Rivers' ability to create space with the ball should pair nicely when he shares the floor with Nikola Jokic. As long as he can avoid the type of turnovers that have plagued him in the past, Rivers' ability to create scoring opportunities for himself, paired with a quick trigger, should force opponents to send help and create secondary offensive options on the weak side. Though he clearly will not score with the same volume that Murray once did, Denver often ran similar actions when their star point guard was healthy, feasting on late passes from Murray to Jokic that the big man could further exploit.
Even if the raw numbers don't look quite as impressive, Rivers' game is a good enough approximation of Murray's that the Nuggets won't have to radically rethink their plan of attack. With the end of the regular season less than a month away, familiarity is as big a comfort as the Nuggets can hope for without Jamal Murray.
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