The Denver Nuggets have bled talent since winning the 2023 NBA championship. Key reserves Bruce Brown and Jeff Green walked as free agents immediately afterward. A year later, starting shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope left as well. There were legitimate financial reasons for the Nuggets to lose all three of those players. They couldn't legally match the offer Brown received from the Indiana Pacers, and keeping Caldwell-Pope would have come with a host of second-apron, roster-building restrictions.
Still, the plan to replace those players internally through the development of youngsters has gone poorly thus far. Denver is 2-2, but both wins came in overtime against expected lottery teams in Brooklyn and Toronto. The Nuggets rank 17th in offense and 21st in defense as of this writing. Only the Raptors are taking fewer 3-pointers per game than they are. Denver is getting more out of some of those prospects than others. While Christian Braun has ascended into a starting role and largely held his own, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson are playing inconsistent minutes off of the bench.
There was, at least for a moment, a potentially more enticing option on the table for Denver this summer. According to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, Denver inquired about Paul George before he became a free agent last offseason. Those talks reportedly never got far, though, in part because the Nuggets refused to discuss including Braun, Watson, or Strawther in a deal.
Now, there's important context to consider here. For starters, Denver practically would have had to include Michael Porter Jr. in the deal for cap purposes, so really, we're talking about those young players in addition to Porter. Second, as Shelburne noted, the Clippers were hesitant to build a deal around so much long-term salary. Porter and Zeke Nnaji, the two money-matching pieces Denver would have likely included, are owed $147 million. The Clippers let George go in part to maximize their own financial flexibility moving forward. It's not reasonable to say that there was any sort of viable deal here for the Clippers. Brief and unrealistic trade inquiries happen all of the time.
That is the 10,000-foot view. Here's the surface-level takeaway: the Nuggets won the championship in 2023 and employ the best player in the world in his prime, but were unwilling to discuss trading any of three unproven young players for a nine-time All-Star who theoretically fit their roster almost perfectly. Even if such a trade wasn't actually feasible, that notion alone warrants a closer interrogation of Denver's priorities.
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George carries long-term health risks. His playoff resume is shaky. He'll turn 35 during the 2025 postseason. Those are valid concerns. He was still capable of garnering at least one full max offer from a win-now team in the Philadelphia 76ers. Even the most pessimistic long-term outlook on George would likely grant that a trade of, say, Porter, Nnaji and one or two of those young players would have improved Denver's 2025 championship odds and perhaps their 2026 odds as well. The Nuggets essentially then declared that maintaining a longer but treacherous runway was more important to them than opening their window wider and potentially closing it sooner. Shelburne's reporting more or less confirms this approach. General manager Calvin Booth has said that the Nuggets are five years into what they hope is a 10-year peak for Jokic.
But betting on a 10-year run in the modern NBA is generally foolish for most teams. We've had six champions in the past six seasons. The rules, as currently laid out, make keeping a contender together nearly impossible. The Nuggets have experienced this firsthand. Sure, there are exceptions. Teams like the Thunder and Spurs have so meticulously accumulated draft capital that they have pathways to replacing core players they might one day lose, but that simply isn't the approach Denver took in building this contender. They spent their picks, most notably for Aaron Gordon, rather than hoarded them.
The young players they do have aren't much like the ones San Antonio and Oklahoma City have already begun to accumulate. Braun has already pretty considerably outperformed his No. 21 draft slot, but his limitations led to him falling out of the top 20 in the first place. He's never going to shoot at the volume Caldwell-Pope did. Watson hasn't demonstrated any ability to shoot at all. Strawther fell out of the first round because shooting is all he really does well. These are potentially useful prospects, but hardly the sort that can be relied upon to replace what the Nuggets have already lost barring outlier outcomes. All of this looks very different if, say, Watson suddenly starts making 3's. There's just not much of a reason to believe anything like that is going to happen.
There wasn't last summer, either. And yet the Nuggets remain so committed to these young players that they are reportedly off of the table entirely in discussions for George. It's an enormous bet to make on your own ability to identify and cultivate young talent, and it's one that tends not to work out for contenders in the middle of their window. The Golden State Warriors are the most infamous example given their failed "two timelines" strategy, and it's worth remembering here that there was far more reason for optimism for those young Warriors. James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga were lottery picks. Jordan Poole was, at least briefly, seen as a future All-Star.
The Warriors held onto most of their young players too young. They effectively flipped Wiseman, a former No. 2 overall pick, for Gary Payton II. Poole was essentially cap dumped onto the Wizards in a move that cost Golden State a protected first-round pick. Kuminga still has trade value today, but he's already lost his spot in Steve Kerr's starting lineup and will be a restricted free agent this offseason, so it's not clear how much longer that will be the case. Meanwhile, the Warriors have spent the past six months or so looking for exactly the sort of veteran star the Nuggets didn't seriously engage on. They, too, sought a George trade. Now it's not clear if they'll ever be able to find a similar move.
The Nuggets may not either, though such moves aren't as embedded in their DNA. The Nuggets want to be a team that relies on drafting and development. That made them a champion. But whether or not George was realistic for them, they, like Golden State, have an MVP at the peak of his powers right now. Once you have that player in place, it's rarely a good idea to get cute in how you build around them. We know Paul George could have helped Jokic compete for more championships. It's not clear how much Braun, Watson or Strawther will be able to contribute on that front, nor is it clear how much trade value they'll have down the line if it turns out that they can't.
