NBA Trade Deadline portfolio: Denver Nuggets
By Jeff Siegel
The Denver Nuggets might have the most interesting trade deadline in the league ahead of them. Given their plethora of assets both young and old, one could make an argument for them to consolidate some of them for a better veteran or move their veterans to get even younger, either through picking up guys on rookie contracts or future draft picks.
Denver’s cap situation is incredibly clean this year and moving forward, though the reported trade for Mason Plumlee will muddy the waters a bit. On Sunday, Denver and the Portland Trail Blazers agreed to a trade that sent Jusuf Nurkic and the Grizzlies’ first-round pick in 2017 to Portland in exchange for Plumlee and a second-rounder in 2018.
Plumlee is one of the best passers for his position in the league and the Nuggets already have rising star Nikola Jokic, perhaps the best passing center in the league. Plumlee is going to be very expensive this offseason. Fortunately for Denver, they can afford it; they have just $55.2 million in guaranteed contracts for next season after dropping almost $3 million off their 2017-18 cap in the Nurkic trade. With a reported cap of $102 million, that leaves a ton of room for whatever Plumlee might want in free agency, assuming Denver’s front office likes what they see from him over the next two months. They’ll hold Plumlee’s Bird Rights as well, so even if they have additional trades or signings that take them over the cap, they can use that provision in the collective bargaining agreement to re-sign him.
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For this season, Denver bought themselves about another $600k in cap space by swapping Nurkic for Plumlee, which doesn’t mean a ton since they were already $17 million under the cap before the trade went down. Being this far under the cap means that they can take a player’s large salary into their cap space, rather than having to match his incoming salary with outgoing salary of their own. Any player who makes less than about $17.5 million this season could be essentially traded for nothing into Denver’s cap space, if the Nuggets wanted to help a team get out of a bad contract in order to pick up some future draft picks.
Denver’s first order of business, more so than almost any other team, is to evaluate their own team and figure out what players already under contract are going to be a part of the next great Nuggets team. Veterans like Danilo Gallinari, Kenneth Faried, Wilson Chandler, Darrell Arthur, Jameer Nelson, and Will Barton probably don’t factor into this discussion, as only Faried has more than one year left after this season on his current contract, and trade rumors have been swirling around him forever. Gallinari could become a free agent this summer and at age 28 with his injury history, it’s unlikely that he’ll opt into another year at $16.1 million.
Denver could seriously look into deals for many of these veterans if they want to get even younger. Of their veterans, Chandler probably has the most trade value as a starter-level wing who a team could keep for the rest of this year and next at a reasonable price. There’s already been some noise that he wants out of Denver and there are a number of contending teams who could use his services in exchange for a future first round pick.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Nuggets have so many young guys that some of them aren’t getting enough playing time to develop. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Emmanuel Mudiay, Juancho Hernangomez, Malik Beasley, Gary Harris, and the aforementioned Plumlee are all still on their rookie contracts; only Plumlee becomes a restricted free agent after this season. Denver is in the enviable position of having multiple years to develop their core and add pieces around them before that core gets expensive, but it’s not as if they’ve ever been a key free agent destination, despite Dwyane Wade’s flirtations last summer.
One name that has been popping up in Nuggets trade rumors for the past two months is Atlanta Hawks’ superstar Paul Millsap. Millsap would be the perfect defensive addition next to Jokic or Plumlee with his ability to guard out on the perimeter as well as down low and would fit seamlessly into Denver’s offense, whether they’re running pick-and-roll with Mudiay or running the ball through Jokic or Plumlee at the elbows. Millsap has plenty of experience in both offensive styles; this season’s Hawks are more reliant on the pick-and-roll, while Millsap played with Al Horford, perhaps the NBA’s best passing center, for the past few years while Horford was in Atlanta.
The Hawks’ asking price for Millsap might be high, but for a team with an abundance of assets, Denver might be the right partner for Atlanta in a trade, especially given that Denver wouldn’t have to match a majority of Millsap’s salary, allowing Atlanta to take on younger players and draft picks in the deal. Millsap will be a free agent after this season (he has a player option that he almost certainly will not pick up), and obtaining Millsap at the deadline would put Denver in the driver’s seat to retain him, as they could offer him larger raises and more years than any other team. Given that their cap is so clean in the future, overpaying to retain Millsap would be an easier pill to swallow.
Another route the Nuggets might want to go is to look for a quality wing, their most needed position on the roster. Of their young core, nobody looks to be a wing; Mudiay, Murray, Harris, and Beasley are all guards and Jokic, Plumlee, Hernangomez, and the yet-to-join-the-team Petr Cornelie are all bigs. Unfortunately, wing is the most scarce position in the NBA right now, so Denver would have overpay immensely to get one, especially a young one who fits the timeline of their core. Denver will either have to find them in the draft or spend in free agency to bring in a rotation of veteran wings to accompany their young guards and bigs, as they’ve done in the past with Chandler and Gallinari.
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The Nuggets have a ton of options for the approaching trade deadline and which direction they choose will show us a lot about what they think of their core and the timeline on which they see themselves. Their cap is exceedingly well-managed by Tim Connelly and his team, giving them the flexibility to be involved in every trade discussion in the league, as they can afford to take on long-term salary as well as draft picks to get better down the road or trade for a star to help them accelerate their path to contention in exchange for some of their own picks or young players.