With no developing rumors and obvious flaws in his game to limit his value, it looks like Kenneth Faried could be tricky for the Denver Nuggets to trade.
The Denver Nuggets have a power forward situation. The position is way too cluttered on their roster and they need to clear some room, both in terms of creating enough minutes for the right players and freeing up some cap space. Kenneth Faried is the obvious trade candidate that springs to mind, but it’s hard to see him drawing much interest right now.
Once the Nuggets landed Paul Millsap in NBA free agency, teams around the league started calling Denver to ask about potential trades for Faried. Seeing as he’s been shopped in the past, it’s hardly a surprise. At the very least, teams could have been inquiring about deals purely to see how little they could get him for; the Nuggets’ need to ditch power forwards and clear cap space to make a run for George Hill at the time only lowered Faried’s value.
Fast forward a week or two later to now, and we’ve heard no more on the Faried trade front. Perhaps there have just been no trade talks worthy of much reporting, but it seems as though the interest in Faried is limited.
Even though he could obviously be moved at some point over the next year, this shouldn’t be surprising. He can’t space the floor or protect the rim, which are two fundamental flaws for any big man in today’s NBA. Despite Faried being a terrific rebounder (a career-high 12.8 per 36 minutes last season) and he can run the floor well with his explosiveness and energy, he doesn’t defend nearly well enough in other areas or create enough offense to make up for his flaws and size at 6’8″.
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It also doesn’t bode well for Faried’s value that he was far less successful without Nikola Jokic on the floor next to him last season. Faried doesn’t get the same frequency of easy backdoor cuts and lobs without Jokic around, which only highlights Faried’s lack of skill creating his own shot or providing any kind of catch-and-shoot ability that any player could assist him with. Essentially, his $12.92 million salary for 2017-18 and $13.76 million salary for the following season isn’t appealing. The market is dry for bigs in general right now, especially ones with such a limited skill set that doesn’t do too much in today’s NBA.
With free agency almost done and dusted, maybe we’ll hear more about a trade when teams know where they stand in terms of cap space and roster construction. Equally, the Nuggets can hope they find a young team willing to take on Faried’s contract so it can be cleared off the books for extra space in a couple of years.
Next: Why Nuggets should pursue a trade for Kyrie
For the time being, though, it looks like the Nuggets will be keeping their bevy of power forwards, and Faried is staying put. Hopefully in a reserve role with limited minutes behind Millsap, Faried can find success.