If you’re gonna tear another page off the cold, heartless calendar marking Nikola Jokic’s career, dang it, do it with gusto. Grip it and rip it.
Staying the course is fine, so long as you like watching somebody else swig champagne and ride shirtless on fire trucks. If the honest goal is a dynasty, about the worst thing the Nuggets can do on the first night of the 2024 NBA draft is follow last year’s script.
You know what they call doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Insanity. With the 28th pick, Denver selects … a movie we’ve already seen. And a rookie coach Michael Malone won’t trust. Or won’t play, once he’s tasked with navigating the merciless, Mad-Maxian, kill-or-be-killed wastelands of the Western Conference.
Me? I nail down Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon. Then I put a window sticker on everybody else in that locker room. Everybody. Including Jamal Murray. Including Michael Porter Jr.
Especially Michael Porter Jr.
It’s not personal. It’s not about the family. It’s not about the podcast. It’s not about the narrative. It’s not about the NBA Finals last spring. It’s not about the Minnesota series last month. (Well, maybe it is about that last part. A little.)
It’s about business. It’s about the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, which punishes the holy heck out of contenders with max contracts who don’t get superstar production from said guys on max contracts. It’s about creating flexibility with one hand while keeping a title window open with the other.
The Nuggets have bigger enemies in front of them right now than the Thunder, Timberwolves and Mavs. The first is the CBA. The second is fear.
Fear of having to explain to your owner why trading for Damian Lillard, as Milwaukee did, got you bounced in the first round again anyway.
Fear of having to explain to the Joker why a three-time MVP and the best player on the planet has only one ring at age 30.
It took courage for Boston to trade Marcus Smart, just as it took chutzpah for the Bucks to land Dame. One worked. The other bombed.
You know what? It took some cajónes to deal Monte Morris at his apex, too. Two summers ago, the Nuggets pointed the bat at bleachers, Babe Ruth style. Last summer, they bunted. Only one of those approaches at the plate turned into a parade.
NBA fortunes favor the bold. The biggest week of the offseason starts Wednesday, with the draft on deck and the start of free agency in the hole. And welcome to the time of the year when the Nuggets’ greatest strength of the fall and winter — their starting five — becomes the summer’s biggest albatross.
Unless you get wacky. Unless you get creative. Unless you get brave.
Keeping 3-and-D guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is doable, assuming he opts out of his deal, but will probably also push the Nuggets into the NBA’s dreaded second salary apron — essentially a cap before the cap. And even then, you’re not out of hot water: Murray’s deal is up after next season, while Gordon has a player option after 2025-26.
In a perfect world, you’d keep them all, long-term, and keep them happy. Alas, exec Calvin Booth lives in this world, where the CBA seems hell-bent on giving his best-plaid plans a wedgie.
The quickest path to breathing room, to options beyond rolling the dice with rookies and vets on minimum deals, is getting one of three max contracts — Jokic, Murray and MPJ — off the books.
We know which one of those is never moving (Joker). Murray’s maturity and injuries control too much of the narrative for my liking, granted. But as long as Playoff Jamal exists, somewhere, I’ll ride that train.
Which shifts the magnifying glass to Porter, who’s slated for a $35.86 million cap hit next season and a $38.33 million hit in two years. That’s an awful lot of scratch for a 6-foot-10, catch-and-shoot wing who averaged 16.7 points and 7.0 boards last season, with defense that comes and goes.
He also turns 26 at the end of the week, so there’s still the potential for more upside. Bonus: MPJ’s coming off his first season of appearing in at least 81 regular-season games, a feather in the cap of a young man whose history of back problems scared off so many front offices.
You could argue Porter’s healthy and at the peak of his powers, whatever those powers may be. Which, funny enough, is also exactly why this could be the perfect window in which to shop him around and see who bites. Sell high.
“Back-to-back years, he’s played a crazy amount of games,” Booth said last month. “So I think that’s been a revelation for a lot of people in the league, including us, quite frankly, because considering some of the takes on his medical coming out of Missouri, a lot of people thought he wouldn’t be playing right now … So I think he’s done a fantastic job of building this foundation. He’s been a great player.
“(He’s) trying to develop into a two-way player because as you get deeper into the playoffs, teams start to get more and more desperate about how to get a basket. You don’t want to be that guy that they’re trying to find. And I think he’s really worked hard at that and come a long way.”
That said, dynasties don’t have time to be sentimental. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Sure, you might fail. So what? You failed this spring.
The only thing promised is another year of Joker’s clock, ticking away softly in the distance, another calendar page torn. The wastelands aren’t getting any kinder. If I’m destined to go down, I’m going down swinging.
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