What next?
That’s the question that keeps popping into my head when it comes to the Denver Nuggets. They’ve rebuilt the roster with young talent. They’ve found a coach players can rally behind. They’ve hired a general manager who can find talent in the most foreign, remote regions of the world.
Now what?
Do they consolidate that talent and trade for an All Star? Do they remain status quo and hope their young assets develop into stars? Do they look to make an incremental improvement this offseason in hopes that they can land a big fish next offseason?
I don’t know. I have my opinions, obviously, but I don’t have the faintest idea what Tim Connelly and Michael Malone have up their sleeves. Yes, both have insinuated on multiple occasions that they’re “not done,” that they’re still on the lookout for a big move. But as we see everyday in the NBA, there’s a lot more talk than action.
What we do know is that the Denver Nuggets have money to blow — a lot of it. Even after the signing of Mike Miller, the Nuggets have $18.86 million in cap space, second most in the league behind the Philadelphia 76ers.
More importantly … they still have to spend $9.45 million to reach the salary cap floor.
Now, the Nuggets technically don’t have to reach that floor. If they don’t, they’ll just end up splitting the remaining money between the rest of the roster, but that’s a rarity — an option, though, nonetheless.
And if they wanted to, the Nuggets could part ways with the non-guaranteed contracts of Joffrey Lauvergne, JaKarr Sampson and Axel Toupane, saving an additional $3.57 million and opening up a total of $22.43 million in cap space ($13.02 million to reach the cap floor).
With 16 players currently under contract (the NBA’s max is 15), the final number is bound to come in somewhere in between, but the point is that the Nuggets have a lot of room to work with.
So, again, what do they do now?
Well, it essentially comes down to two options: spend now or spend later.
Here’s are those could break down:
Spend Now:
Again, the Denver Nuggets have more money available than any team not named the Philadelphia 76ers. That puts them in prime position to steal a restricted free agent or clean up some of the remaining free agents.
The issue? There’s not much left.
In terms of restricted free agents, the only guys that make any sense are Maurice Harkless and Donatas Motiejunas, but even then, those two don’t seem to fit the Nuggets’ plans.
Harkless is a fifth-year small forward who can’t shoot and wouldn’t see a lick of playing time behind Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and Will Barton. And while Motiejunas is a more-talented player that seems to fit the Nuggets’ stretch-big-man mold, he’d quickly become just another foreign big in the Nuggets rotation — the worst of the bunch, at that.
For the price that it would take to steal these guys away from their current teams, I can’t imagine Connelly entertaining the idea.
So if they’re going to spend money this offseason, it’s going to be in the unrestricted-free-agency market. But even then … the options are, well, limited.
And that leads us to the second option of spending later …
Spend Later
The most important thing to remember is that the Denver Nuggets do not have to spend another dollar. If they don’t reach the salary floor, they’ll just end up distributing the rest of that space to the players on their roster at the end of the season.
It is also important to note that, in this scenario, not reaching the salary cap ceiling (or even the salary cap floor) does not make the Denver Nuggets cheap; it makes them smart.
Now, I don’t expect the Nuggets to stay put, but they do already have 16 players on their roster, which means that they’d have to cut two of Toupane, Lauvergne or Sampson to make room for any one of the NBA’s not-so-sexy free agents.
So, for me, the question becomes: Is there really an option out there that’s better than a guy like Toupane, and, more importantly, should the Nuggets pay him seven or eight times what Toupane is making just to reach that salary floor?
No!
Here’s the deal: The Denver Nuggets are building towards next offseason, and they’ve outsmarted most everybody in doing so.
While we spent over a year talking about this free agency class and all the money that was set to be handed out, the real prize is the 2017 free agent class, not 2016.
Here’s just a quick list of potential free agents next year:
And that’s only the unrestricted free agents. Yes, we had Kevin Durant this year, but behind him there wasn’t much. Next year will have true star power, and a lot of it. And as of right now, there aren’t many teams that will have the cap flexibility to offer as much as the Denver Nuggets can in 2017, especially with the estimated reduction in next year’s cap.
Today, the Nuggets are projected to have the third-most salary cap space in the NBA next offseason ($22.57 million), but once Danilo Gallinari inevitably opts out, they’ll jump to No. 1 with almost $39 million in space.
That’s almost enough room for two max players, and there will be plenty to choose from.
Now, will those max players choose to come to Denver? That’s a different question entirely, and it’s why it’s so important that the Nuggets have a strong outing this season. They need to show the NBA that they’re on the verge of competing, and they need to show star players that they can win in the Mile High City.
That’s also the reason why getting a seat at the table with Dwyane Wade was so important this offseason. They didn’t get him, but it showed other stars around the league that the Nuggets are an organization worth talking to.
There’s a lot to be excited about with the Denver Nuggets. They’ve placed themselves in an ideal position to succeed in the near future. Now they’ve just got to execute.
We’ll see what they do.