All it took was one game of the 2024-2025 NBA season for Charles Barkley to start sounding the alarm bells regarding the Denver Nuggets.
The Nuggets hosted the Oklahoma City Thunder in the late game of TNT’s doubleheader on Thursday night. They lost the game 102-87 and shot just 35.7 percent from the field. 14 different players played minutes for the Nuggets, but Barkley was not impressed with the group beyond the starting five.
“The team that might be in trouble might be the Nuggets,” Barkley said on TNT’s postgame show. “Because they were pretty much last in the bench last year, and I saw nothing on that bench tonight to be like, ‘uh oh.’ And because the West is better. My Suns are better. New Orleans is better. Memphis is gonna be better. The only team in the West that’s not any good is Portland.
“So the Nuggets, they gonna have to find a bench. They gonna have to do something, because it’s such a major dropoff on their bench. That’s not fair to [the starters].”
The game was fairly close when Denver’s starters were in, but they lost the game when their bench players saw action. Russell Westbrook shot 2/10 and was a -24, while Julian Strawther was a -23.
The team didn’t look great in their first game, but it might take some time for them to figure out their rotations and optimal lineup combinations.
