For a team threatened to be left in tatters by Carmelo Anthony and one without even a full roster when the lockout ended, the Denver Nuggets all of a sudden seem to be in pretty good shape. Instead of preparing for years of irrelevancy, they seem set for an accelerated rebuild. Of course, locking up a center like Nene for five years and $67 million certainly helps quite a bit. Think that’s a lot of money? Sure it is. But that’s the cost of doing business with someone who is 6-foot-11 and averaged 14.5 points and 7.6 rebounds a game last season.
That’s less per year than the Knicks will pay Tyson Chandler, who averaged 10.1 points, 9.4 rebounds and played alongside, oh, one of the best and most unique power forwards of all time in Dirk Nowitzki.
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But the big Brazilian is just one piece for the scrappy Nuggets, who were 17-7 and still made the playoffs for the seventh straight year despite the February departure of Anthony and Chauncey Billups. It makes sense for free agent Arron Afflalo also to return after a breakout season in which he put up 12.6 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists.
Meanwhile, Wilson Chandler, Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith are all stuck in China until March, but they were all free agents, too. The Nuggets will welcome back Chandler (15.3 ppg, 5.7 rpg). But the absence of Martin and Smith could open the door for rookies Kenneth Faried and Jordan Hamilton as well as underutilized Corey Brewer and Rudy Fernandez, who were added for essentially nothing from Dallas.
The result is a Denver team lacking outsized salaries but brimming with upside, particularly in slimmed down, European-experienced point guard Ty Lawson and simply European Danilo Gallinari, who are both talented and under 25 years old. Al Harrington’s long-term deal is the only outlier.
In the short term and a shortened season, the Nuggets have enough to battle for the playoffs as usual and the salary cap flexibility to tweak the roster next summer. There’s a luxury to being able to do both, especially for a team used to flirting with the luxury tax.
– Craig Stouffer
