The Nuggets defeat­ed the Suns 115–107 in their 2023–24 pre­sea­son open­er Tues­day night in Phoenix. Here are three take­aways from the defend­ing champs’ return to NBA action.

First glance at potential second unit?

Four pre­sea­son games remain, and as Michael Mal­one has point­ed out, he might feel inclined to keep tin­ker­ing with his bench unit after the real games start like last year. But the pre­sea­son open­er did offer some grain-of-salt sense of a devel­op­ing peck­ing order as inter­im coach David Adel­man went 10 deep in a first half that seemed designed to vague­ly sim­u­late stan­dard line­up sub­sti­tu­tions. Denver’s starters — with the excep­tion of Michael Porter Jr. (left ankle) — did actu­al­ly start, as opposed to Phoenix not play­ing Devin Book­er, Kevin Durant or Bradley Beal at all.

The first two off the Nuggets’ bench were point guard Reg­gie Jack­son and rook­ie for­ward Hunter Tyson. Soon after, Julian Strawther, Pey­ton Wat­son and Zeke Nna­ji round­ed out the sec­ond unit. Justin Hol­i­day, whom Mal­one labeled at train­ing camp as this year’s Jeff Green, start­ed at the three with Porter out. Denver’s sec­ond-half start­ing five, once the four actu­al starters were done for the night, con­sist­ed of Jack­son, Strawther, Hol­i­day, Wat­son and DeAn­dre Jordan.

Jalen Pick­ett was the team’s only 2023 draft pick who didn’t play in the first half. He checked in for the first time late in the third quar­ter and played most of the fourth.

The obvious standout debut

New sixth man Chris­t­ian Braun is the only cer­tain­ty on that sec­ond unit, occu­py­ing the two-guard posi­tion and mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for a new­com­er like Strawther to earn a role at the NBA lev­el. But if he keeps play­ing as well as he did Tues­day with Braun out (left calf con­tu­sion), the rook­ie might make the Nuggets think twice about who plays the back­up three.

Strawther got off to a slow shoot­ing start, but his floor spac­ing off-ball — the trait that stood out most to Mal­one through­out train­ing camp — was already evident.

By the sec­ond half, he had a feel for his shot. If the high­est praise a quar­ter­back can receive is that he “can make all the throws,” Strawther was the quar­ter­back of the Nuggets’ bench. He made all the shots: catch-and-shoot 3s, 3s off the drib­ble, base­line floaters while oper­at­ing the pick-and-roll, run­ners in the lane, midrange pull-ups. He scored 15 points in the third quar­ter on per­fect shoot­ing for 20 on the night.

Joker gets a motivated foe

Phoenix’s new cen­ter, ex-Nugget Jusuf Nur­kic, seemed deter­mined to make the most of his prac­tice reps against the two-time MVP. He enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly tried to back down Jokic sev­er­al times, suc­ceed­ing ear­ly at scor­ing on one try and get­ting to the line on anoth­er. Jokic didn’t look his absolute sharpest as he adjust­ed to his first com­pet­i­tive action since Game 5 of the NBA Finals, but a matchup as moti­vat­ed as Nur­kic was help­ful toward reignit­ing his phys­i­cal­i­ty. Jokic grew into the game, cooked Nur­kic with a post move lat­er in the first quar­ter and beat his coun­ter­part for a cut­ting layup (and one) in tran­si­tion. He fin­ished with nine points on 4‑of-11 shoot­ing and just two assists.