With the Olympic games drawing closer, it is time we take a blast to the past and look at the top 5 International Denver Nuggets of all time.
The Denver Nuggets have a compelling history with international players. One particular night, the 2002 NBA Draft, captures that entirely. Holding the 5th overall selection, then GM Kiki Vandeweghe drafted Nikoloz Tskitishvili out of Georgia.
Two picks later, the New York Knicks drafted Brazilian big man Nene; then they immediately traded him to Denver along with Marcus Camby and Mark Jackson in exchange for Antonio McDyess and a future 2nd round pick.
Nene went on to carve out one of the more successful and important careers in modern Nuggets history, while Tskitishvili floundered, and as a consequence was out of the league just four years later. Long-time sports columnist Bill Simmons described Tskitishvili as ‘the worst-case scenario for any foreign pick’, and it’s hard to argue against his claim.
The Nuggets have had some forgettable international players wear the powder blue; Tskitishvili, Tariq Abdul-Wahad and Mengke Bateer. But they have also had some spectacular players, too; Nene, Dikembe Mutumbo and Danilo Gallinari. Thus, the pattern has continued.
Until recently.
Fast forward 14 years from the 2002 NBA draft and the pattern is changing drastically in the Mile-High. In the last few years alone, the Nuggets have drafted international players with incredible amounts of success. Evan Fournier (2012), Joffrey Lauvergne (2013), Jusuf Nurkic and Nikola Jokic (2014) and Emmanuel Mudiay (2015) have all performed admirably in Denver. With the addition of Canadian Jamal Murray and Spaniard Juancho Hernangomez in this years NBA Draft, the future of the Denver Nuggets looks set to be built around these foreign talents.
Despite some failed experiments with foreign prospects, like in the case of Nikoloz Tskitishvili, the Nuggets have a rich history of foreign players coming over to the States and finding success in Denver. In honor of that rich history, and the fact the current Nuggets roster resembles a United Nations meeting, here are the top five international Denver Nuggets players ever.
But first, let’s start with some honorable mentions.
Next: Honorable Mentions