If the Denver Nuggets are overlooked as a championship favorite relative to the typical No. 1 seed, it's because they ranked 15th in points allowed per possession.
Even amid an unprecedented scoring boom, it's rare for teams with an average or worse defense to win the title. The Nuggets ranked 15th last season, 11th two seasons ago, and 16th in 2019-20 — the pandemic-interrupted season in which Denver won two seven-game series to advance to the conference finals. (This indeed happened, despite every postseason broadcast of the Nuggets featuring some reference to the pressure on Nikola Jokic to finally lead Denver deep into the playoffs.) This is who the Nuggets are: an average defensive team.
They have an all-world offense built around an all-galactic superstar, and a few teams with that profile — incredible offense, blah defense — have advanced to the promised land.
But Denver's defense has backslid in each of the past four postseasons. The regular-season trend of Denver being stingier on defense with Jokic on the floor has not held up in the past three of those postseasons.