Raptors title shows that Denver Nuggets front office can’t be afraid to take chances
The Raptors won the 2019 NBA Championship and their amazing title run has shown multiple paths to a title for the Denver Nuggets; it all depends on if the front office isn’t afraid to be bold.
The Toronto Raptors 2018-19 championship roster was carefully constructed by likely Executive of the Year Masai Ujiri, who pulled off the fateful trade with the San Antonio Spurs that netted them Kawhi Leonard. While it is obviously true that the devastating injuries to the Golden State Warrior’s key players played a large factor in the Raptors capturing their first title in franchise history, it would be neglectful of anyone to ignore how incredible the Raptors were as a team and how impressively Ujiri built this squad. Nuggets General Manager Tim Connelly can no doubt learn from Ujiri’s moves to get the Raptors to a championship level.
The performance of Toronto’s role players, Leonard’s individual brilliance and surprise NBA Finals star Fred Van Vleet’s play were all reminders of the various ways Ujiri attacked building a championship roster, and showed that Connelly shouldn’t be afraid to be bold when it comes to putting the finishing touches on the Nuggets title-contending roster.
“Being bold” doesn’t mean simply packaging a number of the Nuggets core players not named Jokic in a trade for another superstar talent, but that is a possibility, and one Connelly should explore if he and the rest of the front office find such a deal. This brings us to disgruntled Pelicans star Anthony Davis.
Denver is a longshot to land Davis, and there is no indication that the Nuggets would be interested in such a seismic shift, even for a prodigious talent such as AD. But the fact that Ujiri’s big gamble paid off with a title is even more of a reason for Connelly to at least give Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin a call.
A trade sending Davis to the Nuggets would obviously have to wow Griffin. The problem is, the Nuggets roster makeup means they aren’t likely to have high first round picks anytime soon. And while the AD trade would hurt their depth and theoretically make them weaker from that perspective, an additional young player would likely satisfy the Pelicans’ needs.
All that being said, wouldn’t do such a deal at this time; just because a talent like Michael Porter Jr.’s NBA Summer League performance will tell us quite a bit about where he is heath-wise. If Porter shows that he is back to his pre-injury self in summer league, then it would make it a lot less painful for Connelly to give up so much in an AD trade. Ujiri nailed the timing of the Leonard trade and Connelly can do the same with Davis.
Griffin is a shrewd negotiator, but there is still the fact that everyone knows about AD wanting out of New Orleans. The Warriors’ injuries have opened up the Western Conference in the 2019-20 season the same way LeBron James‘ departure from the Eastern Conference opened an even wider title window for the Raptors this year.
The Nuggets won 54 games in the 2018-19 season, the fourth most in the league. If they swung for the fences it would result in a deal likely looking something like this:
Starting lineup post-trade: Monte Morris, Will Barton, Michael Porter Jr., Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic
Again, at the end of the day, the safe (and my preferred method for this Nuggets team) of building would be the pre-DeRozan Spurs way. Jokic is your Tim Duncan-esque figure, who the Nuggets have already done a great job of building a positive team culture around. Now the front office needs to scour the market for inefficiencies, and take advantage of snagging undrafted talents like Ujiri did when he signed Van Vleet out of Wichita State in 2016.
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But this 2018-19 Raptors title is unprecedented, and it definitely warrants us to all take a deeper look at how NBA front offices should go about team building. If the 2019-20 Denver Nuggets want to take the same route to a championship as the 2018-19 Raptors, they will have to give up more than Toronto did to get to the point. But there is a dominant superstar under contract that wants out and the Nuggets—with Nikola Jokic locked in—are in the unique position of being able to offer Davis the chance of playing power forward next to a center that will get him more quality shots than anyone he has ever played with.
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Paul George re-signing in OKC and Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors winning the 2019 title are two huge moments [Editor’s note: One obviously being more impressive] that have shown the value of going after disgruntled superstars in pre-agency. It would be remiss of the Nuggets front office—while well-positioned roster-wise for long-term success—to not consider every available route to making the Nuggets the 2020 NBA Champions.