- None
- Two-way contracts:
- Non-guaranteed camp contracts:
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 ($1.2M).
-
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:
Other offseason news:
Salary cap situation:
- Remained over the cap.
- Currently about $979K below the tax line.
- Carrying approximately $131.65M in guaranteed salary.
- $4.82M 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.
