A misinterpreted annunciation resulted in a Michael Malone gem last week.
During a pregame press conference at Ball Arena, the ninth-year Nuggets coach was asked if there was a particular trait he wanted to see his team display in the upcoming days. Malone was puzzled.
“I thought you were asking me about a trade,” he said. “Is there a trade I want to see? Yes. I want to see Kevin Durant traded to the Eastern Conference.”
That won’t be happening, much to Malone’s chagrin. But trades are on everyone’s mind, not just his. The conveyor belt of rumors has been churning for weeks. ‘Tis the season. As the NBA’s Feb. 8 trade deadline approaches, the Knicks and Pacers have already made significant deals (both with Toronto). Other teams looking to bolster their rosters for a playoff run will follow suit in the next week.
Don’t expect Denver to make any big moves just because it fits the description of a buyer, though.
The Nuggets are monitoring the trade market for frontcourt depth and bench scoring, but the week leading up to the deadline is likely to remain quiet for the defending champions, league sources told The Denver Post.
There’s only so much they can do. Denver has no open roster spots and a salary cap figure exceeding the first apron, which is set at $7 million over the luxury tax level, as outlined in the league’s new collective bargaining agreement. That apron is around $172 million this season. The Nuggets are hard-capped at the new CBA-instituted second apron ($17.5 million over the luxury tax level) due to the taxpayer mid-level exception used to sign Reggie Jackson last summer. They are projected to become a second-apron team as soon as next season, meaning more penalties — including a complete restriction on sending over cash or aggregating salaries in trades — but for now, salary matching must be within 110% rather than the standard 125%.
First thing’s first: All that context eliminates the possibility of a Bruce Brown reunion at his current salary ($22.5 million) unless general manager Calvin Booth is willing to completely decimate his championship roster.
That roster is structured intelligently from a salary cap standpoint, with the starting five occupying 80% of the payroll and every other player making $5 million or less. Denver’s starting lineup is one of the two or three best units in the league. Meddling with it during the season presents more risks than rewards. Packaging multiple team-friendly contracts (especially young players) to trade for a major upgrade doesn’t exactly make sense either, in addition to being an abandonment of the organization’s fundamental roster-building principles. To sustain dominance in the Nikola Jokic era, hitting on draft picks such as Peyton Watson and Christian Braun is more essential than making big trade splashes.
The team’s most theoretically tradable contracts conflict with its needs in a way that could dilute the value of a trade. Jackson has a $5 million cap figure and a player option after this season, when he’ll be 34 years old — but are the Nuggets going to find a better bench scorer than Jackson whose contract also works with their books? The organization has been pleased with the backup point guard’s overall contributions, even with him currently in a shooting slump. Jackson is still 38% from 3-point range this season. He’s averaging double figures. Most importantly, he demonstrated an ability to step up his game when Jamal Murray was out for several weeks.
As for frontcourt depth, the question the Nuggets must ask themselves is similar: Is there an affordable backup big available who will be better than Zeke Nnaji, both short-term and long-term? Nnaji signed a four-year, $32 million extension before the season that goes into effect in 2024-25. He has struggled in limited minutes this season, but he just turned 23 in January. An optimistic view is that he’s still early in his development, and now the Nuggets have him locked up on a relatively team-friendly, mutually beneficial deal that helps them navigate the cap in upcoming seasons.
But if a compelling upgrade became available and they wanted to trade Nnaji now, it would be complicated. A player who signs an extension before the end of his rookie scale contract becomes subject to a trade provision known colloquially as the “poison pill” restriction. If that player is moved before the extension goes into effect, his incoming value (for salary matching purposes) to the receiving team in the trade is not the same as his outgoing value. Instead, it’s the average of his current salary and his total extension pay across the duration of the two contracts. In Nnaji’s case, that means his outgoing salary would be $4.3 million to Denver. His incoming salary to a new team would be around $7.2 million. That makes him trickier to trade.
Belief in Nnaji’s development remains strong regardless of his production this season. Even if the Nuggets trade him eventually, it’s unlikely to happen this deadline cycle. Especially factoring in the organizational confidence in Aaron Gordon as a playoff backup center behind Jokic.
Denver could trade a future draft pick for a depth player, aided by trade exceptions ($2.2 million and $1.9 million from the Bones Hyland and Davon Reed deals). But that would require waiving someone on the active roster. That’s where it’s important to remember, there’s a “don’t ruin a good thing” element to all of this. Vlatko Cancar is out for the season, but he’s a serviceable backup power forward when healthy and a friend to Jokic regardless of injury status. DeAndre Jordan’s intangible value as an outspoken veteran leader might be greater than any on-court value Denver could acquire under the salary cap parameters. Justin Holiday has filled in effectively at multiple roles this season. Rookie draft picks are crucial to Booth’s long-term plan for the team.
Locker room chemistry is strong at Ball Arena. Making a cut on a championship team is easier said than done.
It all amounts to a set of circumstances not particularly conducive to mid-season roster changes. Nothing can be completely ruled out, but the Nuggets are far less likely to make a notable move this trade deadline than they were at the last one.
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