The Nuggets' Draft Pick Must Become A Human
Plus, my small board for the Nuggets' 26th pick
The Nuggets have the 26th overall pick in Tuesday’s draft. An actual pick in a draft, which is rare for this era. Whether they keep it or not remains to be seen.
Here’s a look at what I think I think I think as the draft gets closer.
THE NUGGETS CANNOT BURN THE PICK
The options are obvious, but let’s go over them again.
Use the pick, draft a player with the 26th pick in a deep draft
Particularly, the draft is deep at what I consider to be a position of need for Denver: power forward. Morez Johnson, Koa Peat, Joshua Jefferson, Zuby Ejiofor, and Chris Cenac are all options at that position to provide help if Aaron Gordon misses time
Trade up to acquire a higher pick in the draft. Everyone wants to move up; no one wants to move down, but if Denver packages a starter with the 26, that’s a pathway to a possible deal into the teens.
This is great way for Denver to be able to mitigate the demands to stay out of the luxury tax and retain Peyton Watson while also adding a component to make Nuggets fans believe the team is better.
You cycle out Christian Braun or Cam Johnson, start Peyton Watson in their stead on a new deal, and then add the rookie into Peyton Watson’s bench minutes allocation.
This doesn’t get you out of the luxury tax so you’re still probably losing another starter in a talent-losing deal, but it’s also better than the last option.
Trade the pick for a veteran
Even if you include a starter like Cam Johnson or Christian Braun with the pick, you could acquire 1-2 rotation players that might be a downgrade in talent but fill more total minutes with more total skillsets. This is a hypothetical, not one I’m reporting, but if you trade Christian Braun and the pick for Nnaji Marshall and whatever else, that accomplished a lot of goals and at least adds a rotation player.
Use the pick to dump salary
Multiple sources confirmed this has been discussed with other teams in the last few weeks.
I want to be clear that you need to not hear things like this and believe that’s what Denver will do. It’s something they explored. They’ve looked at all these options. The only way to find out whether you should do something or not is to look at whether you can do something or not.
That said, there have been talks that would include using the 26th pick to just trade Zeke Nnaji, finally freeing them from the contract that could not be dealt.
I do not blame the Nuggets for doing due diligence in looking at all options to fulfill ownership’s desire to duck the repeater tax, if that edict has been issued.1
However, this pick needs to become a player the Nuggets can play next season. He needs to be a human that Nikola Jokic can physically pass to and who can physically catch the ball and shoot.
