Get ready to hear something along these lines a lot over the next couple of months, but according to Michael Scotto of Hoops Hype, the Nuggets were one of the teams that “kept tabs” on Dorian Finney-Smith before the Nets dealt the veteran 3&D swingman to the Lakers.
So far, DFS is the first big domino to fall in which the Nuggets have been rumored to have interest. But it won’t be the last. I have a feeling this is going to be a common theme this season. To sum it up: a solid player is rumored to be available, the Nuggets are rumored to have interest, and the player gets traded to another team.
We are going to hear over and over again about how Calvin Booth and the Denver front office are looking into players, keeping tabs on players, monitoring situations, interested in players, and every other cliche that goes along with NBA trade rumors.
This is the sad reality of the situation. The Nuggets know that they’ve made mistakes. They can no longer deny that the roster isn't good enough and they run the very serious risk of wasting the prime of Nikola Jokic; an unforgivable sin.
Nuggets don’t have the assets to make an impactful trade
So, the Nuggets are going to sniff around every possible deal, and Calvin Booth and ownership will likely want it leaked to the media about how hard they are trying to wheel and deal. They are now going to do everything they can to give off the impression that they are all in on improving the team this season.
But the real reason the Nuggets are going to come up short on all of these trade efforts is simple; they don’t have the assets to compete in the market. Calvin Booth and company have badly mismanaged their assets and butchered the roster.
The team only has eight playable players and one of them is borderline. There is not a second player after Jokic who is even sniffing all-star consideration. The team has no promising young prospects with anything resembling star potential.
Beyond that, they don’t even have any tradeable contracts or useful expiring deals. They would struggle to match salaries in deals even if they did have the sweetener. On top of it all, they have nothing in the way of draft capital.
They have one 2nd-rounder in 2031 they can deal and can offer first-round pick swaps down the road; that’s it. With the recent implementation of the play-in tournament, more teams are alive for the postseason than ever.
The league is full of teams that are convinced they have a shot. Everyone wants to buy and there are only a handful of sellers. It’s a seller’s market and the Nuggets have zero buying power.
So, they can feign interest all they want. But as long as other teams are interested in said players, there’s almost zero chance the Nuggets are winning a bidding war any time soon.