Two seasons ago the Nuggets won 57 games and were poised to make a nice run in the playoffs. Unfortunately, small forward Danilo Gallinari went down with a knee injury a couple of weeks before the start of the playoffs. Kenneth "The Manimal" Faried was also not 100% in the first round loss to the Golden State Warriors.

They then lost Coach George Karl and Andre Iguodala. Big losses to be sure. Brian Shaw was a rookie coach, and the Nuggets had the fourth most games missed due to injury, 274, according the this chart from In Street Clothes, leading to a disappointing 36-46 record.

Denver gets back Gallo, Nate Robinson, JJ Hickson, and Javale McGee to begin the year. They may be on minute restrictions until they are 100%, but that’s a lot of talent coming back. Plus, they went out and got Arron Afflalo in a trade and picked up Gary Harris and Jusef Nurkic in the draft.

If it stays healthy, this is a better team. Much better. However, everybody is judging this team by last year, and not really looking closely at the roster improvement.

Here’s how the pundits see this year going for Denver. Vegas has them at 41.5 wins.

• The Cauldron: Under 41.5 wins - they talk about Afflalo and Faried. No mention of Gallo.

• FiveThirtyEight: 34-48. Worse than last year!?!? The write up talks about the huge jump in threes taken last year, and that Afflalo will be a great addition 49 pecent shooting from corner threes. Then they say the Nuggets will finish with a worse record.

• Bill Simmons (w/ Joe House): They were working with 42.5 Wins. Lots of ACL talk. Conference is too tough. Simmons is under. House talks about all the improvement but says under. Simmons says way under 42.5 because the conference is too tough.

• Zach Lowe: At least he admits it’s hard to call what’s going to happen with this team. And appropriately calls out issues on defense with Faried and Mozgov. It’s obvious he doesn’t think they’ll win 50.

• SBNation (Denver Stiffs - Nate Timmons): Nate says a fourth seed isn’t out of the question, adding that Houston got the fourth seed last year with 54 wins. Now, this Nate guy knows what’s up.

• CBSSports (Eye on Basketball Podcast Previewing the Northwest Division: Matt Moore and Zach Harper): Zach 46 wins. Matt doesn’t give a number but he predicts the Nuggets ends up in the 9th seed.

• The Big Lead (USA Today): "Maybe next year." Definitely not a playoff contender. He talks about Faried’s supporting cast not being very good.

• BLEACHER REPORT: 44-38. That’s a little better.

• Fox Sports: 39-43. Again, Western Conference is too good. Etc..

• Yahoo (Ball Don’t Lie) - Kelly Dwyer: 36-46 - exact record from last year. Creative.

• BoxScore Geeks (Andres Alvarez): 39.6 wins - He thinks they’ll be better with Gallo and McGee back. He thinks Faried is an All-Star because the model they use really over-values offensive rebounders that have good shooting percentages. He thinks they’ll have moderate improvement.

What are these people talking about (except for Nate). Denver’s starting lineup improves at every position. Ty Lawson, Faried, Timofey Mozgov are still on upward trajectories in their career. Gallinari returns and will be better than Wilson Chandler when healthy. And, Arron Afflalo is better than Randy Foye. That’s not worth something?!?

Let me go over all the ways this team improves this season.

STARTERS

Small Forward

Gallo - Grade on a curve. Let’s say the first two months of the season, he averages 70%. Denver has 32 games October-December. Then, he’s 100% January-April. I’m going to give the Nuggets four extra wins with this. He has an outside shot. He gets to the line. He plays good defense on the perimeter and down low. He’s a leader. No one is giving Gallo’s return enough attention. +5

Power Forward

Faried - He’s better. He and Brian Shaw worked their shit out at the end of last season. Shaw credits the idea of letting The Manimal and lead the break for his improved defensive rebounding. That makes a big difference. He’s also improved his offense every year he’s been in the league. And, maybe he learned how to defend a little better while working with Thibs for the World Cup team. +1

Shooting Guard

Arron Afflalo - Much better than Foye on the defensive end, and I’m going to give him the nod on offense by a smidge too. +2

Point Guard

Ty Lawson - He missed 20 games last year, and when he was out there he wasn’t playing with the full complement of players. He’s maturing. Let’s say he’s incrementally better than last year and only misses 10 games this year. +2

Center

Timofey Mozgov - Timofey keeps getting better under Shaw. He had his best year last year, and looked very good in preseason. Strange to say, but he gets a little consistency he could challenge for an All-Star this year. +2

BENCH

I’m going to give my +/- on wins in aggregate for the bench.

Wilson Chandler - Good player in short stints. Give him over 20 minutes a game and he becomes inefficient. First guy off the bench is a great place for him to be. Makes the bench much better.

Randy Foye - Ditto what I said about Chandler. Great shooting off the bench. Unfortunately, he may have to play back up point guard, because Nate Robinson sucks at running a team.

Nate Robinson - Back from injury. Used sparingly he can help. He missed 38 games last year due to injury. Not a big fan of his game, but he can give a spark in the right spots.

JJ Hickson - Kind of hoping Hickson and Robinson get packaged for a back up PG, but Hickson does some good things in limited minutes at the power forward position. Just don’t play him at center dammit.

Javale McGee - Potential. Potential. Potential. Shaw recently said that Javale has been supplanted as the second string center by Jusuf Nurkic, who has surprised everybody with quality preseason minutes.

I’ll add a few more because I’m hoping for a trade and this team is really, really deep.

Darrell Arthur - Terrible offensive numbers. Advanced stats dude’s hate him. But, he’s plays the best positional defense of any big on the roster. And, he’s looking more and more comfortable with the 3-ball.

Jusuf Nurkic - Did you see this dude in preseason. First he’s enormous, but he moves very, very well. He can pass. He has shown post moves. He has great footwork already. He boxes out. He’s a good rebounder. Denver people are super stoked about this 20-year-old’s potential.

Alonzo Gee - Bye bye Quincy Miller, hello athletic vet that plays hard and knows perimeter defense. This guy is going to get minutes. One, because you can tell Shaw loves his hustle, and two, you know Gallo and WC are going to miss games because they’re both injury prone. Very nice insurance.

For the bench I’m giving a +3.

Coach

I thought Brian Shaw was a frickin’ idiot at the beginning of last year, but with some reflection I can see what he was doing. He was forcing the ball into the bigs to initiate offense to try and establish a go to half court offense. Can’t blame him when the reigning coach of the year, who just coached the team to 57 wins was fired for playing "cute" up-tempo basketball that doesn’t win games. Brian went far the other way, but figured out pretty quickly that this team needs to play with pace. Lawson and Faried are much more effective that way. The team ended up third in the league in pace.

Shaw has talked about playing even faster this year, but also continuing to add a half court game to use when things slow down. He also seems very serious about improving the defense and only playing guys that are going 100% on that end.

He’s no longer a rookie coach. I think he’s going to be good. +1

Summary

So, that totals +16, which would be 52 wins. This sounds right to me. The only thing that really scares me is Ty Lawson’s ankles and hamstrings. The Nuggets do not have a reliable backup that can run the team in his prolonged absence. If he plays 72+ games I think this team will win 52 games. That lands them between 5th and 6th seed.