NBA Trade Rumors: Nuggets have considered trading Javale McGee, Wilson Chandler

According to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders, the Denver Nuggets have contemplated shopping center Javale McGee and small forward Wilson Chandler.

The Javale McGee experiment has gone awfully wrong for the Denver Nuggets. In fact, the only thing done well was unloading Nene’s big contract. Signed to a four-year, $48 million deal in 2012, McGee, despite all of his immaturity, was expected to be the center of the future as the organization hoped his potential would turn into production. Instead, McGee found himself as the second, and sometimes third, center on the depth chart under George Karl which came out to be an issue during the summer of 2013 when the Nuggets changed management and wanted to force McGee into a bigger role, making Karl a casualty of the transition.

Thanks to a injury–a stress fracture to the left leg–McGee’s first season as a starter in Denver was only five games long, ultimately killing any trade value he’s had. The center position is deep in the NBA and there are few teams dying to have one–only the New York, Los Angeles (L), Boston, and Cleveland coming to mind, but none of those teams are in dire need of McGee. And that depth kills the trade market for McGee.

As far as Wilson Chandler is concerned, he seems to be a piece in the Nuggets attempt to move McGee. In a league where small forwards are asked to be power forwards, that drives up his value, but injuries balance that back out.

It’s going to take the Nuggets driving up McGee’s value for a team to sell themselves on him and odds are that won’t happen unless injury takes down someone’s starting center.