Scouting one-pager: Denver Nuggets (DEN)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,196 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Nikola Jokić is a genuine shot-maker: +16.1 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Aaron Gordon (1.15 xPPS on 398 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: N. Jokić - J. Murray - C. Johnson - P. Watson - S. Jones (+17.8/100 over 354 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| DEN | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.154 | 1.091 | +0.062 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.085 | 1.097 | -0.012 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +6.9 | -0.5 | +7.4 |
| Rim share | 26.9% | 28.4% | -1.5 pp |
| Mid-range share | 11.6% | 10.0% | +1.6 pp |
| Three share | 40.8% | 41.5% | -0.7 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 26.7% | 25.9% | +0.8 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.7% | 1.8% | -0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Jamal Murray | 1,360 | 1.146 | 0.996 | +15.0 | +12.1 | +2.6 |
| Nikola Jokić | 1,132 | 1.237 | 1.038 | +19.9 | +16.1 | +4.9 |
| Tim Hardaway Jr. | 779 | 1.181 | 1.088 | +9.3 | +6.0 | +1.4 |
| Peyton Watson | 581 | 1.120 | 1.125 | -0.4 | -0.5 | +1.6 |
| Bruce Brown | 522 | 1.059 | 1.113 | -5.3 | -3.8 | -3.3 |
| Cameron Johnson | 475 | 1.192 | 1.131 | +6.0 | +3.3 | +2.4 |
| Aaron Gordon | 398 | 1.148 | 1.146 | +0.3 | -0.1 | +2.9 |
| Jonas Valančiūnas | 390 | 1.185 | 1.086 | +9.9 | +6.1 | -0.8 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| A. Gordon - N. Jokić - J. Murray - C. Johnson - C. Braun | 360 | 753 | +14.7 |
| N. Jokić - J. Murray - C. Johnson - P. Watson - S. Jones | 171 | 354 | +17.8 |
| N. Jokić - J. Murray - C. Johnson - J. Strawther - C. Braun | 119 | 258 | +5.8 |