The NBA community spent the last month waiting for Giannis Antetokounmpo to be traded — the proverbial first domino of an especially compelling offseason. Meanwhile, the Nuggets have been on their own side quest, scoping out the league for potential trade partners as they prepare to clear their books and make a push for restricted free agent Peyton Watson.
A lot of trade concepts league-wide are percolating around the first round of the draft, set to air Tuesday (6 p.m. MT) on ESPN. The Nuggets possess the 26th overall pick, which they were barred from trading — until draft day. For one night only, the pick offers them a variety of options that weren’t previously available. It’s an important moment for a team faced with a dwindling asset pool.
How will Denver approach it? Here are three avenues Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer could take with their first draft pick since taking over as co-general managers last summer.
Trade up
The Nuggets have indeed explored the possibility of trading up from No. 26, a league source told The Post last week, confirming a report by The Stein Line. This would be a clever way to kill two birds with one stone, in theory — shed a chunk of salary and improve your chances of drafting a viable contributor. Is Cam Johnson’s expiring contract appealing enough to get Denver into the mid-teens? Would any teams feel inclined to ask for Aaron Gordon instead? Denver is understood to be more reluctant to give him up.
The premise is easier said than done. You have to identify a team drafting higher than Denver — but not too much higher — with a reason to want one of Denver’s starters and room to take on more salary. There’s an interesting window of teams from No. 17 to No. 21: Thunder (via Philadelphia), Hornets (via Orlando), Raptors, Spurs (via Atlanta), Pistons (via Minnesota). But Oklahoma City is in cost-cutting mode right now, as evidenced by the Aaron Wiggins trade on Sunday. San Antonio, like OKC, is a direct threat to the Nuggets. They might not want help improve either of those rosters. Detroit’s pick is only five before Denver’s, which is less likely to be a meaningful enough jump.
The Hornets might be the most feasible trade partner to watch. They own the 14th and 18th picks, making it more sensible for them to move one down in exchange for a win-now player. They’re one of the NBA’s most interesting on-the-rise teams, they have more financial flexibility than most, and they could use a forward upgrade to pair with Brandon Miller. Johnson or Gordon would be a good fit in their lineup, offering veteran playoff experience to a young roster that’s ready to contend in the East. The Nuggets would have to take back some salary, but Charlotte can make the math work with a bench piece like Grant Williams, who has only one year and $14.3 million left on his contract.
With this type of framework, Denver would essentially be turning one player into two roster spots at a cheaper combined cost — the player received in the trade (like Williams, to use the Charlotte example) and the drafted player’s rookie-scale contract.
Moving up eight to 12 spots would also improve the athletic ceiling of Denver’s pick in a loaded class. For instance, Texas wing Dailyn Swain is reportedly considered unlikely to fall out of the top 20 at this point, after having been linked to the Nuggets early in the pre-draft process. What Denver doesn’t want to do is get married to the idea of one prospect, as former general manager Calvin Booth did two years ago, spending three second-round picks to move up six spots for DaRon Holmes II.
Trade down, or out
Here’s a much less satisfying approach that would have terrible optics, particularly at the ownership level. The idea would be to use the 26th pick to execute a salary-dump trade, attaching it to a contract that’s perceived as bad money — namely, Zeke Nnaji or Christian Braun.
This can’t be ruled out because the Nuggets have burned through several draft picks in recent years to rid themselves of other unsavory salary figures. They traded three second-rounders in 2024 to dump Reggie Jackson, then used a 2032 first-rounder last summer to balance the scales on their MPJ-for-Johnson swap.
If they choose this direction on Tuesday, they would be foregoing an opportunity to improve the roster and wasting an asset almost entirely for luxury-tax savings (barring an unexpected and bizarre trade return). Even if they ended up re-signing Watson afterward, it would be insufficient justification; sacrificing the pick without getting a rotation player back would be a cost-cutting move and nothing more, whereas trading up would also have productive implications for the team’s competitiveness.
Nnaji has two years remaining on his contract. He’s set to make $7.5 million next season. Trading him would help the Kroenkes avoid the second apron but not the luxury tax entirely.
Braun will make $21.6 million in the first season of a five-year ascending extension. Until the new league year begins at the end of June, he has a “poison pill provision” on his rookie contract, which means his current rookie-scale salary ($4.9 million) would count as the outgoing money in a trade for salary-matching purposes, while the incoming money for Team B would be calculated as an average of his current salary and his total extension pay, divided across the duration of the two contracts ($21.7 million). The purpose of the poison pill provision is to provide players some temporary security from being traded after they sign an extension with the team that drafted them.
Stand pat
If the Nuggets stay at No. 26, that doesn’t mean they won’t be active on the trade market going forward. They’ll be seeking opportunities to trade a starter for cap relief both on draft day and afterward, to discourage other teams from pursuing Watson. They can help themselves by telegraphing their ability and intent to match any offer sheet before free agency begins. Denver must extend a qualifying offer to Watson to officially trigger his restricted free agency.
The 26th pick is unlikely to yield a starter-level NBA player, but Watson is a convenient example of how valuable late first-rounders can turn out to be. Drafted 30th in 2022, he used all four years of his rookie deal to develop into a confident two-way talent, and now he’s going to shape the Nuggets’ offseason.
Բ projected Denver to pick a range of players, including Texas’s Swain (CBS), Arizona’s Koa Peat (ESPN), Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie (Yahoo!), Kentucky’s Jayden Quaintance (The Athletic), and Louisville’s Ryan Conwell (Ringer).
