The Denver Nuggets had an unspectacular 2015-16 season, finishing 11th in the Western Conference with a record of 33-49. The good news is that the Nuggets roster is flush with young talent, a solid head coach, and a bevy of picks in the 2016 draft that is just two weeks away.
Last season was bleak for the Nuggets. The team ranked either last or near the bottom in attendance, social media, and television. To put it simply, Peyton Manning ain’t walking through that door. Since that is the case, the good people of Colorado prefer the winning ways of their Broncos to the struggles of their hoop brethren. But it wasn’t always this way.
Denver made the playoffs for 10 straight seasons beginning in 2003–their squads including Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson and other mid-level talent during that stretch. Inexplicably, they failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs nine times during that stretch. The one time they escaped the first round they went all the way to the conference finals. That was 2009.
The Nuggets have now missed the playoffs for three consecutive years. However, things appear to be on the upswing. Between some smart drafting, a good trade or two, and the hiring of Mike Malone as head coach, they are poised to push for the playoffs once again.
Emmanuel Mudiay, Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris comprise part of one of the very youngest cores in the entire league. In addition, they have a few older players who are in, or near, the prime stretch of their careers. Players like Kenneth Faried and Danilo Gallinari are some of the “old” guys on this roster – but both are still several years away from their age 30 seasons.
Yet, the Nuggets enter the 2016 NBA draft without a true star player. They’ll have a lot of options to trade some players who are likely on their way out already. Gallinari comes to mind. So does Faried, and maybe even Jusuf Nurkic if the minutes share makes him unsettled and Jokic stays healthy.
Improvement by trade is a real option, but Denver has an opportunity to move up the draft board this season. The Nuggets currently have three first-round picks – No. 7, 15, and 19 – and two second-round picks – No. 53 and 59.
And this is where the narratives begin to intertwine. The Nuggets may be looking to acquire a star by packaging one of their talented players who has run their course in Denver along with some picks, or swap a few selections in the draft for an asset, or package some of their picks to improve their drafting position.
What I’m saying is this: Denver has a lot of picks and there is no benefit to keeping all of them.
Based on their current roster composition, they couldn’t realistically use their draft picks and keep the players they draft because they could not fit all of those picks onto a 15-man roster. They could, and probably will, go the draft and stash route with some European players with their second-round picks. But that still leaves them with three of the top 19 picks this year.
The possibilities are wide open at No. 15 and 19. They could potentially be packaged the same way that the Nuggets acquired Gary Harris and Nikola Jokic from the Chicago Bulls, who drafted those players in the same pick range and traded them to the Nuggets for the rights to Doug McDermott after the Nuggets drafted him with the 11th pick.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for the second-round picks and the likely movement of picks in the mid-first, we need to focus on the No. 7 pick.
This is an ideal draft spot for the Nuggets this year, assuming they don’t find their way into one of the top two picks. The Denver frontcourt is mostly set for the near future and Mudiay is going to be a primary piece of the backcourt. Adding a player to run in the back court with Mudiay will be one spot they can focus and this is a draft that offers a lot of options for that particular need.
Consulting the Lottery Mafia Big Board that has been expertly curated by our own Zach Reynolds, we find that there are at least three players who slot in at the two spot and it is likely that two of the three will be available.
The leading candidates for the Nuggets would be Jamal Murray, Buddy Hield and Furkan Korkmaz.
Murray would be the ideal fit for the Nuggets, but a few things will need to fall in place for him to be available at No. 7. The same can be said for Hield. It seems like the Minnesota Timberwolves at No. 5 have been matched with Hield for a while, though that might seem to undermine Zach LaVine who functions so much better off ball than as the primary ball handler that you can hear the audible screams of Wolves fans from my apartment 90 miles from the Target Center any time he is subbed in at point guard.
There isn’t much confidence in saying that they wouldn’t draft Hield, however. And that’s Hield who is rated behind Murray. If Hield is off the board at the Wolves spot, Murray must be gone.
After Murray and Hield, Korkmaz is one of the more intriguing prospects in the draft at the shooting guard position. The seventh pick is a reach for Korkmaz if drafting for best available and the Nuggets don’t need a guard so badly that they would overlook the opportunity to add depth at the wing or draft a young player as a replacement for one of the trade candidates on the roster. At this point, it becomes a toss-up between drafting the shooting guard position and picking a player that may ultimately slip to the mid-first where the Nuggets have two more picks or grab a player like Jaylen Brown at small forward.
Brown might be more compelling or attractive to the Nuggets if Hield and Murray are gone. If they are particularly high on Korkmaz, they could always attempt to engineer a trade to acquire him using their picks the way I pointed out earlier in their McDermott swap with the Bulls.
If you consult different mock drafts, you’re going to find different answers for who they take. Sam Vecenie at CBSSports has them taking Marquese Chriss, but Gary Parrish also of CBSSports has them taking Jaylen Brown. Of the 20 or 30 other draft boards that are worth their salt, you’ll see similar variance in who the Nuggets could take. Keep in mind that I have them valuing shooting guard as their priority, but the two CBSSports drafts cited here have them taken a small forward and a power forward respectively.
The order of picks for the Nuggets are the best available shooting guard among Murry and Hield, then the best available small forward, likely Brown, and possible a reach for a foreign player like Korkmaz or taking a shot on question mark like Chriss if he is also still available. It seems a bit convoluted right now, but after the first six picks are off the board, the Nuggets course of action should be fairly obvious on draft night and for their future.
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