{"id":1004210,"date":"2026-08-16T10:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1004210\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T10:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:09:15","slug":"nuggets-might-have-been-better-off-last-season-with-russell-westbrook-instead-of-bruce-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1004210\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets might have been better off last season with Russell Westbrook instead of Bruce Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashes to ashes, Russ to Russ.<\/a><\/p>\n

We said so long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, and good-bye to a one-year Nuggets legend this past week, and a future Hall-of-Famer.<\/p>\n

Russell Westbrook officially announced his retirement on Wednesday, putting the bow on an 18-year NBA career that featured 209 triple-doubles, nine All-Star berths and seven franchises.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Beastbrook\u2019s penultimate stop was in Denver for the Nuggets\u2019 2024-25 season. Which got the kids on the Grading The Week (GTW) team thinking \u2014 always a dangerous prospect.<\/p>\n

And thinking this, a question floated during one of our infamous 2-hour deli lunches: If the Nuggets could do it all over again, would they have been better off last summer bringing Russ back for one more ride \u2014 or reuniting with Bruce Brown?<\/a><\/p>\n

Westbrook or Brucey B? \u2014 C<\/p>\n

Hindsight is 20\/20, of course. And it\u2019s easy now to accuse the Nuggets of wearing 2023-colored glasses. After all, Brown was one of the straws that stirred the franchise\u2019s first \u2014 and, to date, only \u2014 NBA title-winners. Brucey B in \u201923 was a do-everything-anytime pest who could bring the ball up the floor, finish with a flourish on the break, needle opponents and play defense as if his very paycheck depended on it. Or at least, that was the Cowboy we remembered.<\/p>\n

Alas, Brown at age 29 wasn\u2019t the Brucey of 26. Or 27. The spirit was willing, more often than not, but the body didn\u2019t always cooperate. There were little mistakes, tiny miscues, that the vet couldn\u2019t always recover from. Not to put too fine a point on an already-sensitive (and painful) subject, but in the first round of the \u201923 postseason, Brown averaged 27 minutes, 11.4 points, four rebounds and 2.4 assists in a five-game series win over the up-and-coming Timberwolves, a matchup the eventual champs would almost unanimously say was the more challenging than dispatching the Suns in six, the Lakers in four or the Heat in five.<\/p>\n

Fast forward three years, same matchup, and it gets hazy. Brucey B in the first round against Minnesota in 2026: 19.4 minutes per game, 6.3 points, 2.7 boards, 1.7 dimes. The big three counting stats were all down by half off of his \u201923 numbers, in most cases.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to lay the Massacre in Minneapolis at Brown\u2019s feet \u2014 not at all. 2026\u2019s postseason failure was a team effort, a collective dumpster fire from Nikola Jokic on down the line.<\/p>\n

Would the Nuggets have folded like a cheap umbrella if Westbrook were coming off the bench instead of Brown?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tough to say. Although it\u2019s also not hard to imagine what Russ might have said \u2014 or done \u2014 to Jayden McDaniels after that \u201cNuggets defense\u201d comment following Game 2, a barb Jokic & Co. were forced to eat with a steaming plate of crow.<\/a><\/p>\n

Although Westbrook\u2019s Defensive Rating of 121 \u2014 as in, points surrendered over 100 possessions \u2014 during the \u201925-26 regular season, according to Basketball-Reference.com, was even worse than Brown\u2019s 117 score.<\/p>\n

And the Beastbrook\u2019s jumper, at least as we left it, was very much an acquired taste. And, lest we forget, it was Westbrook\u2019s missed layup on April Fool\u2019s Night 2025 that ultimately ruined the Joker\u2019s legendary 62-point triple-double at Ball Arena against \u2026 Minnesota.<\/a><\/p>\n

Like most of Westbrook\u2019s post-2022 career, you tend to remember Russ\u2019 Denver season as you want to \u2014 good, bad, or ugly, it all applies.<\/p>\n

The alley-oops to and from Jokic were breathtaking. The turnovers were maddening. Love him or loathe him, there may never be another like him.<\/p>\n

Kroenkes cash in on Lucas Herrington transfer \u2014 B<\/p>\n

While the Broncos released Burnham Yard plans and kinda-sorta hinted the project was inching forward again, the other branch of Denver\u2019s Walmart sports ownership family tree \u2014 the Kroenkes \u2014 might\u2019ve had the more profitable week. And not from the property you\u2019d expect.<\/a><\/p>\n

KSE\u2019s Rapids on Wednesday reportedly pocketed $17 million from the transfer of Colorado and Australia defender Lucas Herrington to Hull City of the English Premier League. And that\u2019s just the base number \u2014 the deal includes a reported extra $6 million in add-ons, with the Rapids holding a 15% sell-on clause on any profit from Herrington\u2019s next potential moves. What the GTW crew wants to know is: will Stan and Josh pour some of that cash back into a new scoreboard at Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods Park? Please?<\/p>\n

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver\u2019s teams.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ashes to ashes, Russ to Russ. We said so long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, and good-bye to a one-year…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1004211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[4740,32524,1339,32525,25868,402098,8605,155997,6649,88627,1370,3663,17660,402099,1260,3369,7198,194387,21596,88628,62,2632,67,132,68,11588],"class_list":["post-1004210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-australia","tag-ball-arena","tag-basketball","tag-broncos","tag-bruce-brown","tag-burnham-yard","tag-denver","tag-dicks-sporting-goods","tag-english-premier-league","tag-grading-the-week","tag-latest-headlines","tag-minnesota","tag-more-nuggets-news","tag-more-rapids-news","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-nuggets","tag-nuggets-takes","tag-russell-westbrook","tag-sean-keeler","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-walmart"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}