Jokic won 48 games last season without Jamal Murray or Porter Jr. The Nuggets endured some terrible injury luck last year and it would be almost impossible for Denver to have worse luck than it did a year ago, and even with all those injuries they put together a 48 win season.

After the 2021 trade deadline the Nuggets core of Jokic, Murray, Porter and Aaron Gordon outscored opponents by 46 total points in just 117 combined minutes together. Prior to Murray's injury, Denver looked unstoppable. It had arguably the NBA's best offensive trio and had finally found a jack-of-all trades forward to pair with it as a defender, screener and cutter.

Getting an All-Star point guard back in Murray will stabilize the team and take a lot of pressure off of Jokic to do everything for the team. Michael Malone is still a very good coach and will have much more tools at his disposal this year. When you look at some of the starting lineups the Nuggets trotted out last year it really is amazing they were able to win as many games as they did. Bench players who were starting last year will slide back to bench and give this team some much needed depth.

They picked up Bruce Brown in the offseason which provides a smaller version of Gordon and significantly more lineup flexibility. They also aquired Kentavius Caldwell-Pope who will be the first true 3-and-D guard Denver has had during the Jokic era. Jeff Green can once again come off the bench along with young developing players like Bone Hyland and Zeke Nnaji.

There are no guarantees in the NBA, but this looks like a very solid team. Denver would need to suffer almost as much misfortune as it did a year ago to win fewer than 50 games. You can also factor in the home field advantage of playing in Denver at altitude which shouldn't be overlooked. They have a significant advantage playing at home and that really shows up over the course of a long NBA season. This is a dangerous team that can also be considered for Western Conference and NBA Title bets. But our favorite way to play this team is over their win total of 49.5 as they may be better suited to rack up a bunch of regular season wins as opposed to making that big leap to a real title contender.