Denver Gazette beat writer Vinny Benedetto takes you around the NBA and inside the Nuggets locker room:

NBA Insider

The Nuggets should have a pretty good idea how they stack up with one of the four teams left in the title hunt.

Oklahoma City and Denver split their first 10 matchups of the regular season and playoffs before the Thunder pulled away in the final three quarters of last week’s Game 7 to advance to the Western Conference Finals. The Thunder could claim they should’ve swept the Nuggets, while Denver has an argument it should’ve won the series in five or six games before the Thunder’s health and depth played a big role in Game 7.

“They’ve put together a heck of a squad,” Kroenke Sports and Entertainment vice chairman Josh Kroenke said last week, giving Oklahoma City its props.

“They’re going to be a force to be reckoned both now and in the future, for sure.”

Denver and Minnesota, the Thunder’s opponent for a spot in the Finals, went to seven games in the second round of last year’s playoffs. The Timberwolves, which erased a 20-point deficit in the second half to eliminate the Nuggets last season, continued to have the Nuggets’ number again this season, winning all four matchups. The first and last matchups of the season were close, but the Timberwolves won the middle two by 29 and 20 points, respectively. Minnesota survived Nikola Jokic’s historic, 61-point triple-double in their last meeting.

“There’s a lot of ways to kind of weigh how close we are, but I think as a group we feel confident that we can go toe to toe with a lot of teams around the league,” Kroenke said. “Now, we’re going to get to work, seeing about how we can go toe to toe and then overtake them.”

Denver split its two games against Indiana, which is two wins away from reaching the Finals. The Nuggets beat the Pacers on Feb. 24, but Indiana effectively ended Michael Malone’s tenure in Denver by surviving a 40-point triple-double from Jokic and sending the Nuggets to a fourth consecutive defeat on April 6.

The Nuggets weren’t able to beat the Knicks in two tries this season. New York beat the Nuggets 145-118 in November and won by 10 in Denver on Jan. 29.

All in all, Denver went 6-13 against the conference finalists this season, with five of those wins coming against the Thunder. David Adelman was responsible for three of those wins during his time as interim. The Nuggets’ average margin of victory was 7.8 points in the six wins. The losses came by an average of 17.1 points.

“What I see around the league is a lot of successful teams that have developed their benches,” Kroenke said.

“There’s a lot of ways to improve it, and we’re going to be looking at all of them.

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What I’m Thinking

Adelman should exercise his freedom and hire a lead assistant with head-coaching experience.

After announcing he was removing the interim tag from Adelman’s title, Kroenke said the new head coach would have autonomy over the rest of his staff.

“DA is absolutely going to be given the opportunity to pick his own staff,” the KSE vice chairman said. “One of the reasons why we wanted to make the decision now and move forward with him as our coach was to give him the ability to build a staff that he really wanted.”

The contracts for most of Denver’s assistants expired at the end of the season, the Denver Gazette reported after former coach Michael Malone and general manager were fired with three games left in the regular season. That makes it easier for Adelman to go in a different direction with his first staff.

There are a few assistants with recent head coaching experience that are available for work. Mike Budenholzer didn’t work out in Phoenix but won a championship in Milwaukee. Mike Brown, former head coach of the Cavaliers and Lakers, has plenty of high-stakes experience, and won four championships as an assistant with the Spurs and Warriors before being fired by the Kings earlier this season. Frank Vogel hired Adelman during his stint at Orlando’s coach and coached the Lakers to the 2020 bubble title. He spent this season as a coaching consultant to Jason Kidd in Dallas.

Phoenix is the only head-coaching gig that remains open, so Adelman should have a shot at hiring at least one former head coach for his staff.

“We need to reinvent ourselves in a way, but not reinvent the wheel,” Kroenke said.

“Giving DA the opportunity to get some fresh faces, really get the people around him to support him in the areas that he thinks he needs is going to be vital for our group going forward.”

It didn’t look like Adelman needed much help during his 17 games as an interim, but it’s always good to surround yourself with a little more experience, especially given the nature of Adelman’s first opportunity.

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What I’m Following

– Those looking for a hoops fix in Denver must wait just a few more days. The 303 League, Denver’s top pro-am league, starts Sunday with a full slate of hoops at Bruce Randolph Middle School. Admission is free this year. The full schedule can be found at the303league.com.

– John Haliburton, father of Pacers star Tyrese, won’t have to watch his son’s heroics from a far much longer. John and the Pacers organization agreed he would stop attending games indefinitely after he confronted Giannis Antetokounmpo after one of Indiana’s first-round games against Milwaukee. John is expected to sit in a suite for Tuesday’s Game 4 against the Knicks. Nikola Jokic’s family spent this season in a suite at Ball Arena after older brother Strahinja was involved in an altercation during last year’s playoff series against the Lakers.

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What They’re Saying

Kenny Smith dropped one of the lines of the postseason during TNT’s halftime show Sunday.

“(Tom) Thibodeau wouldn’t play nine guys in a baseball game,” The Jet said of the Knicks coach, who’s infamous for playing his core heavy minutes.

Here are a couple of more tidbits from Kroenke’s 27-minute press conference last week. It took a little reading between the lines, but it didn’t sound like Kroenke thought a big change was needed.

“I think a lot of our answers are internal right now. With where we are from a roster standpoint, we have guys locked into contracts. We’re going into a coaching transition. To be frank, that’s a huge change – huge change,” Kroenke said.

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One thing that was clear is the KSE vice chairman understands what was on the line in the remaining years of his three-time Most Valuable Player’s prime.

“I want to do right by Nikola Jokic, the Hall of Fame basketball player, but Nikola Jokic, the person, is spectacular,” he said.

“There’s no one that we want to do right by more than that guy. As long as we’re on the same page, which we are, we’re going to keep plugging away together.”