Hoops Rumors

After signing a five-year, $125MM rookie scale extension with the Nuggets last October, Christian Braun had a down year. As Bennett Durando of The Denver Post details (subscription required), an ankle injury limited Braun to 44 regular season appearances and his three-point percentage dropped to 30.1%, easily a career low.

“I was rewarded for my work on my rookie deal, so I understand the expectations are higher, and I need to be better,” Braun said. “That just is what it is. So as an individual, I understand I need to get better. I need to play better. I get to get healthy, first and foremost. But there is no excuse.”

That left ankle injury – a severe sprain that included torn ligaments – was a recurring issue throughout the season and continued to swell up in the playoffs, Durando writes. Braun also sustained a left calf injury in Game 1 of the first round, two sources tell The Denver Post, which further limited his jumping ability. Still, the 25-year-old insisted that a disappointing year for both him and the team couldn’t be simply chalked up to health issues.

“A first-round exit’s not acceptable. We’ve gotta bounce back,” Braun said. “We’ve gotta get to work. … You can kind of put it on my shoulders. I think this team wasn’t resilient enough in the playoffs. … I just think I’m the leader of this team. I’m the vocal leader of this team. And when we don’t play well as a whole, you can blame whatever you want … You can blame anything. But I didn’t play well enough as an individual, and I didn’t have this team ready enough to play in a tough series. So we’ll be better. I’ll be better. I’m looking forward to next year, when we can respond.”

As Durando points out, while a cap-strapped Nuggets team may explore the possibility of trading Braun as his pricey extension begins, the widespread belief is that Denver would need to attach an asset or two to incentivize a team to take on that five-year contract. With that in mind, it’s more likely that Braun sticks around and gets a chance to rebuild his value with a bounce-back season in 2026/27.

We have more from around the Northwest:

• The Thunder – who have had the NBA’s best defense in each of the past two seasons – have no shortage of standouts on that end of the court, but Justin Martinez of The Oklahoman contends that third-year guard Cason Wallace deserves to be singled out with an All-Defensive nod this spring. “He leads the league in steals,” Luguentz Dort said of his teammate. “That says it all. The way he’s active with his hands, it’s really not easy to do. I’ve been trying, and obviously it’s not the same result. Just what he brings on that end of the floor, he’s active with his hands and he can move his feet really well. He’s really fast, and he’s stronger than people think as well. There’s a lot of stuff he does defensively that’s hard to do.”
• Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron (Substack link) previews what he believes may be the Trail Blazers‘ “most pivotal offseason in at least a decade,” examining the team’s cap situation and considering whether the time is right for the front office to make a major trade. It might make sense for Portland to cash in this summer on some of its excess first-round picks, Gozlan argues, since the teams those first-rounders are coming from – Orlando and Milwaukee – may improve in the coming years, reducing the value of their picks.
• Veteran big men Kevin Love and Jusuf Nurkic have expressed interest in remaining in Utah, prompting Sarah Todd of The Deseret News to consider whether the Jazz should want them back. Given that Love will likely be signing a minimum-salary contract, he’s probably more likely to return than Nurkic, whose future could hinge largely on his price tag in free agency, Todd writes.