2019 Offseason In Review: Denver Nuggets

Hoops Rumors is breaking down the 2019 offseason for all 30 NBA teams, revisiting the summer’s free agent signings, trades, draft picks, departures, and more. We’ll evaluate each team’s moves from the last several months and look ahead to what the 2019/20 season holds for all 30 franchises. Today, we’re focusing on the Denver Nuggets.

Signings:

• Standard contracts:
  • None
• Two-way contracts:
  • Bol Bol
  • Tyler Cook (Waived)
• Non-guaranteed camp contracts:
  • PJ Dozier: One year, minimum salary (Converted to two-way contract).
  • Jorge Gutierrez: One year, minimum salary (Waived).
  • Elijah Millsap: One year, minimum salary (Waived).
  • Tyler Zeller: One year, minimum salary (Waived).

Trades:

• Acquired the draft rights to Bol Bol (No. 44 pick) from the Heat in exchange for either the Nuggets’ or Sixers’ second-round pick (whichever is least favorable) and cash ($1.2MM).
• Acquired Jerami Grant from the Thunder in exchange for the Nuggets’ 2020 first-round pick (top-10 protected)

Draft picks:

• 2-44: Bol Bol — Signed to two-way contract.

Draft-and-stash signings:

• Vlatko Cancar (2017 draft; No. 49 pick) — Signed to three-year, minimum salary contract. Third year non-guaranteed. Signed using mid-level exception.

Contract extensions:

• Jamal Murray: Five years, 25% maximum salary. Projected value of $168,200,000. Starting salary can be worth up to 30% of the cap if Murray earns All-NBA honors in 2020 (full details). Starts in 2020/21; runs through 2024/25.

Departing players:

• Brandon Goodwin (two-way)
• Trey Lyles
• Tyler Lydon
• Isaiah Thomas
• Thomas Welsh (two-way; waived)

Other offseason news:

• Retained Tim Connelly as president of basketball operations after Wizards pursued Connelly.
• Exercised 2020/21 rookie scale team option on Michael Porter Jr.

Salary cap situation:

• Remained over the cap.
• Currently about $979K below the tax line.
• Carrying approximately $131.65MM in guaranteed salary.
• $4.82MM of taxpayer mid-level exception still available ($898K used on Vlatko Cancar).

Story of the summer:

After improbably finishing at the bottom of the Northwest in 2017/18 despite winning 46 games, the Nuggets were the division winners in 2018/19, earning the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed with a 54-28 record. The club then followed up its regular season performance by winning its first playoff series in a decade.

Nikola Jokic was the driving force behind Denver’s success, earning a spot on the All-NBA First Team, but it was the Nuggets’ depth that helped set them apart from many of the other contenders in the conference.

Ten players averaged 19 or more minutes per game for the Nuggets in 2018/19, and all 10 of those players remained under contract for ’19/20. While many of their Western rivals drastically transformed their rosters, continuity was key for the Nuggets, who retained a dozen players in total from last year’s end-of-season squad. As we detailed earlier this week, no team in the West brought back more players than Denver.

Continuity isn’t inherently a good thing. A front office won’t be praised for keeping together an aging roster that just won 35 games. But in Denver, the approach makes a lot of sense.

Jokic is still just 24 years old. Jamal Murray, the second option on offense, is 22. Gary Harris is 25. Rotation players like Malik Beasley, Monte Morris, and Torrey Craig are coming off breakthrough seasons and still have plenty of room to grow. And 21-year-old forward Michael Porter Jr., the 2018 lottery pick who missed his entire rookie season due to injuries, is now ready to contribute.

With so many promising young players still on the rise, the Nuggets can realistically count on improvements from within to keep them near the top of the standings in the West. And if they want to go out and make a splash, all those young prospects – and available future draft picks – give them the ammo to do so.

The Nuggets may not have made many changes to their roster this offseason, but they didn’t need to.

Key offseason losses:

The Nuggets let a pair of power forwards, Trey Lyles and Tyler Lydon, walk in free agency. It may be hard for fans in Denver to remember Lyles and Lydon as more than the two players the team received in exchange for the draft pick that became Donovan Mitchell in 2017, but Lyles at least looked like a quality rotation player in his first year in Denver in 2017/18.

In that season, Lyles averaged a career-best 9.9 PPG on .491/.381/.706 shooting as a stretch four off the bench. However, his efficiency declined significantly last season, as he made just 25.5% of his three-pointers and saw his minutes cut back. With Lyles struggling and Lydon still not proving he was capable of handling regular minutes, it made sense that the team moved on and looked elsewhere for reinforcements at power forward.

The Nuggets also lost Isaiah Thomas in the offseason after the veteran point guard was limited to just 12 games due to injury issues. Signing Thomas to a minimum-salary contract in the 2018 offseason was a worthwhile gamble, but Denver ultimately didn’t need him that much even when he got healthy, given the emergence of Morris. Re-signing him this summer never made sense.

Key offseason additions:

Sending Wilson Chandler to the Sixers in 2018 cost the Nuggets a second-round pick and a separate second-round pick swap at the time. A year later though, the traded player exception created in that deal paved the way for Denver to make a savvy deal with a division rival, acquiring Jerami Grant from the Thunder in exchange for a first-round pick.

Oklahoma City’s trades involving Paul George and Russell Westbrook overshadowed the Grant deal, for good reason, but the veteran forward was an ideal frontcourt addition for a Nuggets team that parted ways with Lyles and Lydon. Grant showed off an improved three-point shot in 2018/19, knocking down 39.2% of his attempts. He also has the defensive versatility to match up with wings on the perimeter while holding his own against big men down low.

Even with Lyles struggling last season, the Nuggets had some frontcourt players who could shoot from outside — Paul Millsap and Juan Hernangomez each made 36.5% of their three-point tries. But neither player let it fly as often as Grant, and neither player has the positional flexibility that Grant does. The ex-Thunder forward should make Denver an even more dangerous team.

The Nuggets’ other offseason additions all have question marks and may not contribute a whole lot right away. Bol Bol was once considered a potential lottery pick, but injuries dropped him to the second round, and he won’t even start the season on the Nuggets’ standard roster, having signed a two-way deal.

Vlatko Cancar, the team’s second-round pick in 2017, signed this summer after being stashed overseas for a couple years, but I expect him to see some time in the G League too.

Finally, Porter isn’t technically a new addition, but practically speaking, he’ll be another weapon that head coach Michael Malone didn’t have at his disposal a year ago. Like Bol, Porter was projected to be drafted higher before health questions impacted his stock, and like Bol, he has the potential to be an impact player if he avoids the injured list and puts it all together. It’ll be worth watching to see how often he ultimately becomes a fixture in the Nuggets’ crowded rotation.

Outlook for 2019/20:

The Nuggets didn’t make major headlines this offseason, but they enter the 2019/20 season with one of the deepest, most talented rosters in the NBA. They look like a lock for a postseason berth and a strong contender for one of the Western Conference’s top seeds — I had them at No. 1 in our preseason predictions.

While the Nuggets should have a huge regular season, this will be a pivotal year for evaluating their playoff ceiling. Beyond Jokic, Denver doesn’t have quite as much star power as their rival contenders in the West, so if Murray doesn’t show soon that he’s capable of developing into an All-Star caliber player, the team may have to start thinking seriously about how to acquire that sort of star in a trade.

Salary information from Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post. Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.