Sunday Best: All my latest trade talk and personnel Intel from the NBA grapevine
What will Denver do in response to its worrisome start? We tackle that trade topic and more in a fresh Sunday batch of around-the league notes
Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday?
On a Sunday slammed with 12 games before the league's schedule gets truly funky for a few days with only five games total Monday through Wednesday to put the focus squarely on the quarterfinal knockout games in the NBA Cup?
On a Sunday, furthermore, that leaves us with just one week to go until the Dec. 15th date synonymous with the start of NBA Trade Season?
As it should be!
Let's get right to the latest in my notebook regarding the Denver Nuggets' increasing woes, how they plan to respond and more pertinent trade topics:
The Nuggets are the talk of the NBA.
To be clear: That's anything but great news this early in the season ... as November's Bucks and 76ers (and more recently LeBron James and the Lakers) could tell them.
The 2022-23 champions are 11-10 after Saturday's humbling loss in the nation's capital, whose Wizards were without their best player (an ailing Kyle Kuzma) and had lost 16 consecutive games — all but one of those 16 by double digits.
"We're really going in the wrong direction," Denver's Nikola Jokić conceded to reporters in Washington after his career-high 56 points could not prevent the Nuggets' humiliation.
So what now for the Nuggets?