Julian Strawther can summon his droll brand of deadpan humor at any moment — on the court or off it.
Teammates who’ve gotten to know him best over the past 18 months with the Nuggets will tell you he has a wisecrack for every situation.
A spilled drink? “Oh, that’s my luck today? Cool.”
Two consecutive shots popping out of the cylinder during a workout? “I hate basketball.”
A humbling “Call of Duty” loss to an online stranger? “I guess all the people that don’t have the 9-to-5s are on tonight.”
“He’s just a real funny type of pessimistic,” Peyton Watson told The Denver Post.
“He may be the most laid-back individual I know,” added Christian Braun, “but he’s hilarious.”
Strawther’s new celebration befits his disposition, then. He’s been workshopping it throughout January. After he knocks down a timely 3-pointer, he outfits himself in that same matter-of-fact mug, extends his right arm and gives a “thumbs down.”
“I don’t know what it’s from,” said Jamal Murray, author of the “Blue Arrow” and resident expert in signature celebrations for Denver. Across the locker room, Strawther interrupted him: “That (crap’s) hard, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s hard,” Murray said, hesitating. “I just don’t know the backstory of it.”
Strawther’s aunt texted him recently that fans on social media were associating the gesture with that of a Roman emperor passing judgment, most famously portrayed in the Oscar-winning 2000 movie, “Gladiator.” That was news to the 22-year-old Strawther.
As he tells it, he and Nuggets two-way guard Trey Alexander were on the team bus one day when Strawther decided they needed a 3-point celebration, unaware of the villain played by Joaquin Phoenix.
“We just got to brainstorming,” Strawther recalled. “I said, ‘Thumbs down.’ He’s like, ‘That’s kind of hard.’ So we ran with it.”
Strawther is slowly giving himself more opportunities to strike the pose — not at a linear rate, but week to week, month to month, with the frustrating but natural lulls of a young player. He was 41.4% from outside the arc during a 12-game stretch entering Denver’s long road trip this week. Then he encountered a 1-for-9 slump. Still, the former Gonzaga star is finding his place in Denver’s rotation in his second NBA season, averaging 9.2 points off the bench (15.3 per 36 minutes) as one of the team’s only volume 3-point shooting threats (36.8% on 4.1 attempts).
For the Nuggets to be eight-deep in the playoffs with their current roster, they’ll need his development to continue at a steady pace. He was in and out of the rotation as a rookie. He was the star of Denver’s Summer League. He led the NBA in total preseason points. Now, this month, he’s strung together his best stretch of games as a pro.
“What I love about that kid is his work ethic,” coach Michael Malone said. “He was in our gym every day this summer. And I’m not making that up. Sometimes you hear these stories. They’re inflated. Julian Strawther was in our gym every day this summer.”
He learned those workout habits the hard way. What Strawther’s sardonic and self-deprecating sense of humor doesn’t reveal is an earnest determination that traces back to high school, when he gained an estimated 70 pounds after emerging as a prospect in Las Vegas.
“Growing up, I was always super skinny,” he told The Post. “And then I’d say my sophomore year of high school, my metabolism was like, ‘Hey bro, you gotta chill out.’ I started gaining some weight.”
As Strawther remembers it, he started around 180 pounds and barely noticed the difference until he was more than 250. Once a projected five-star recruit, his status in the class of 2020 dropped, forcing him to change his eating habits. “I was still a good player. Nothing changed. I just got big,” he said. “They ain’t want to see no big boy shooting that three from the logo.”
While in the process of reducing his playing weight, he suited up for the Puerto Rican national team, honoring his mother’s ancestry, at the U19 FIBA World Cup. It was the summer before his senior season back home.
Strawther continued to shed pounds during training camp with the team, he says, attributing the weight loss to a lack of air conditioning in the gymnasiums where he practiced.
“I’m a heavy sweater, and I’m from Vegas, so a super-dry state,” he said. “Humidity is a culture shock to me.”
He was back down to around 205 as a senior, equipped with a renewed perspective and lots of unexpected free time as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“If you want to focus on your craft, you’ve gotta take it serious in all aspects, not just on the court. I feel like my work ethic took a big shift after I started dropping the weight just because I realized what it meant to stay in the gym, be consistent,” Strawther said. “Before then, I was kind of just letting my talents (prop me up). I was just a talented player.”
Picked 29th overall in the 2023 draft, Strawther arrived in Denver and quickly endeared himself to young teammates. First, he had to address a topic he had been dreading: He didn’t have a driver’s license (and still doesn’t). He would need rides.
“I asked him, like, ‘What’s your first car gonna be? What whip you gonna buy?’” Watson recalled. “He was like, ‘Dawg, I don’t even have my license yet. I’ve gotta get my license first.’”
“(I was) just literally putting it off until I couldn’t put it off anymore, and then I felt like I didn’t need it at college, so then I never felt like I needed to learn there,” Strawther said. “And then you get to the NBA, and now you’re in the NBA with no license. So it happens fast. But after this season, I’m locked in.”
Chauffeuring Strawther around turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to Watson. They shared a similar taste in fashion. Watson, who handles the aux cord for the team, selected music during drives to the airport and learned that his playlist was in Strawther’s wheelhouse. Before long, the two of them and Braun had a group text going with song recommendations. Rylo Rodriguez, Lil Baby and Future are some of their favorites.
“It was some real good hits, man,” Strawther said, “and that kind of solidified us.”
The three young players are neighbors in the same building. Their growing pains in the NBA are similar. Their struggles are relatable. They form an organic, triangulated support system, holding one another accountable at tough moments such as last season when a disastrous November road trip left Malone frustrated and telling his team in a Houston locker room that he planned to make changes to bench players’ minutes.
Strawther has even shown Braun and Watson photos of himself from high school to indicate how far he has come.
“His thing was Pizza Hut,” Braun said. “He stopped eating Pizza Hut.”
“I’m scarred for life,” Strawther said. “Can’t eat Pizza Hut ever again.”
The shooting guard finished his rookie year a disappointing 29.7% from the 3-point line, fading out of the Nuggets’ rotation in the second half of the season. This time, the roster is not as deep. The armory of 3-point shooters is more spacious. The circumstances demand that Strawther improve. He has progressed as a scorer, albeit with room for more consistency. As a one-on-one defender, he has struggled, but Malone has praised his game-plan awareness and effort, even when making mistakes.
“The thing you wouldn’t understand is how bad he wants to succeed,” Braun said. “How bad he wants to be good. Because he’s so talented. … You can tell how hard he’s worked.”
The thoroughness of that effort and ambition has extended all the way to Strawther’s celebration game. Even if he’s technically pulling from references that pre-date him, the end goal was something new.
“I wanted something original,” he said. “Obviously, a lot of people have 3-point celebrations. But it’s hard to find an original one nowadays.”
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