The Avs are Van Halen. The Nuggets are a minivan.
The Avs are Doja Cat. The Nuggets? Hello Kitty.
The difference between the approach of the local hockey team and resident hoops club remains striking. What makes it more confusing is that they are both owned by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.
The Avs throw caution to the wind. The Nuggets rely on caution to prevent wins.
Knee-deep into the offseason, general manager Joe Sakic has executed three trades, shipping Ross Colton and Jack Drury to Nashville and Valeri Nichushkin to Columbus for a combined five draft picks and three players. He created $8 million in additional salary cap space to re-sign Brett Kulak and Brent Burns.
And he still has $6 million left to pursue a forward. It is easier to make moves in the NHL, but the Avs have been bold over the last two trade deadlines and summers.
They moved on from Mikko Rantanen and Nichushkin, exhausted by Moose’s contract demands and wisely recognizing Nichushkin’s decline. These were not only top players on their team, but, at times, in the league. And they ripped off the band aid in pursuit of a Stanley Cup.
As CSG podcaster Jeff Morton pointed out last week, the Nuggets have been cautious, while other KSE properties are aggressive. Is it because president Josh Kroenke is more involved in the basketball operations, becoming too close to the players?
There is no question he has strong relationships. I witnessed the emotion first hand in the locker room after the Nuggets were eliminated the past two seasons. Caring is not a bad thing. But it is always better to like players, not love them.
And it is fair to wonder if Kroenke’s connection to the Nuggets has influenced the team’s conservative movement this offseason.
The other potential answer? It is about money. NBA owners would rather swim through a moat of alligators and walk in hot lava to their suite at The Four Seasons than go into the second apron.
It is punitive, and the Nuggets showed how scared they were during the first round of the draft. Desperate for a better ball handler or a tougher big man — Jonas Valanciunas was a scorer, not an enforcer — the Nuggets traded their pick to San Antonio for a pair of second-round selections.
They moved back to make the team they are chasing better, giving the Spurs another brute, Tarris Reed Jr., to guard Nikola Jokic.
Co-general manager Jon Wallace said it was important that the Nuggets not catch “draft fever.” The buzzword was discipline. Cheap also works for a team that hired two general managers and a coach with no previous experience in their roles.
Remember, the Nuggets’ new second rounders — Trevon Brazile and Bryce Hopkins — will receive non-guaranteed contracts. Hardly anyone does unless their name is Bronny James. Brazile might become a rotational player this season, but it is more likely he is hooping with Hopkins in the G-League.
It would be easy to crush Wallace and co-GM Ben Tenzer for this draft night yawn.
But was it really their choice? Or are they operating under guidance from Kroenke?
Collecting picks is not uncommon, and there is an argument to follow this path as a market correction for the horrible trades of Isaiah Hartenstein and Reggie Jackson and for Bol Bol and DaRon Holmes II.
Those missteps left the Nuggets without assets to move up, or contributing players to fill out the roster (Where have you gone Bryn Forbes? Nuggets Nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo, woo, woo).
Why can’t the Nuggets be transparent? Just admit they are in the middle of a reset?
Instead, Kroenke insists they are in a championship window because, you know, Jokic is on the roster. Well, you know who seems to be having a hard time believing that?
Jokic.
As the well-conditioned captain of the Serbian national team, Jokic said last week that the Nuggets were not good enough to win last season. The year before he said they were not deep enough.
All he left out was too predictable and unathletic, and he would have hit the problems right on the nose.
And the answer to all of this is frugality? Really?
“I think any time you get bounced in the first round like that, everyone’s gotta look themselves in the mirror,” Wallace said. “I think a large part of that is health. I think a large part of that is, as our team has entered into a more seasoned state individually, the type of basketball we play. The way we prepare, the way we attack teams is gonna have to change a little bit.”
This word salad makes me hungry for the Nuggets to just be honest about their intentions. Ship off two of the four starters between Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson and Christian Braun and re-sign Peyton Watson.
Develop Spencer Jones and Julian Strawther, hope Brazile and Holmes become contributors and position the franchise to make a championship run in 2028, or more likely, 2029.
This is not my preference. I would love ownership to say, “F-them dollars!,” pay a significant tax penalty and become a second apron team for the first time under the current collective bargaining agreement. Then trade Johnson, keep Tim Hardaway Jr., and add backup point guard Keaton Wallace.
That would spark talk of another championship.
But that is not realistic. That is something the Avs would do.
They, after all, are Ozzie Osbourne to the Nuggets’ Ozzie and Harriet.
