Positional Power Rankings: 30 best power forwards in the NBA
By John Buhler
Kenneth Faried
Power Forward, Denver Nuggets
Here’s one guy that has been largely forgotten. He once was a member of Team USA basketball as the best player on a terrible Denver Nuggets team. Kenneth Faried is still a good player for the Nuggets, but has been leapfrog by a handful of people in the Nuggets hierarchy.
Everything in Denver revolves around young star center Nikola Jokic. Now that both Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari have been mostly healthy, the Nuggets have a strong frontcourt it can start every night with Faried in a diminishing role. It doesn’t help that Jusuf Nurkic is doing quite will in his new home with the Portland Trail Blazers.
At the end of the day, we may have seen the best of Faried in his NBA career. Frankly, he needs to go to another team, preferably a bad one to get noticed again by casual NBA fans. Denver may be a big metro area, but it is a small NBA media market. The problem is that his game relies too much on physicality and not enough finesse to thrive in a small ball world.
Faried isn’t big enough to play center and doesn’t have the 3-point shot to play a stretchy game. Denver plays at a sluggish pace, which helps Faried get court time, but he has ran out of playing time in Denver. His contract isn’t terrible, but it is one the Nuggets should look to move on from. Faried can still be an effective big, but needs to be traded.