As the Nuggets head out west to LA to get ready for a massive game three against the Clippers, much of the talk has revolved around the team’s lack of depth. They’ve been running Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into the ground while playing Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun heavy minutes. Michael Porter Jr. and Russell Westbrook have split the rest of the work, and that’s pretty much been it.
Denver is essentially rolling with a six-man playoff rotation until it kills the. That’s just what coach David Adelman has to work with right now. I’m sure he’d love to play more guys and get his stars some rest, but the personnel on the roster just isn’t allowing him to do so at the moment.
A big part of that is the roster construction and the moves that have been made and not made in the last couple of seasons. One of the most pronounced and maligned moves of this era was letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk in free agency last summer.
KCP had been a key starter for two seasons in Denver, but Calvin Booth and company didn’t want to pay him the massive deal he got from Orlando. So, Caldwell-Pope went to the Magic, the Nuggets didn’t really replace him externally, and the team lost a key starter and important depth in the process.
KCP making playoff news for all the wrong reasons
As much as the Nuggets could use a guy like KCP on the roster right now, it’s clearer by the day that they made the right choice in letting him walk. Caldwell-Pope has had a brutal first season with the Magic, and his play has fallen off a cliff in the playoffs.
In game one of his team’s series with the Celtics, Caldwell-Pope committed a flagrant foul on Jayson Tatum, injuring the superstar’s wrist and knocking him out of game two. KCP entered TD Garden as public enemy number one on Wednesday night and had a chance to play the villain role, but instead completely cratered in enemy territory.
When his team needed him most, KCP scored just 3 points in 34 minutes on 1/9 shooting and 0/6 from the three-point line. He could not buy a basket and even missed one of his two free throw attempts. The Magic desperately need some veteran scoring and shooting, and Caldwell-Pope is incapable of providing it.
KCP’s 3-year, $66 million contract is aging like milk already
The worst part for the Magic is that this is just year one, and KCP signed a three-year, $66 million contract. This is quickly starting to look like one of the worst contracts in the entire league, and it’s not even halfway done.
The Nuggets couldn’t have predicted his offensive game would evaporate this quickly or dramatically, but the signs were there, and the writing was on the wall. Now that he’s not playing alongside LeBron James or Nikola Jokic, his flaws have become pronounced, and it seems unlikely he’ll be a starting-caliber player on a playoff team for much longer.
That’s a brutal hit for a team that paid big money to bring in KCP as a veteran leader and a guy who could help them on both ends for years to come. But that’s their problem now, and it seems like, as much as they could use the depth, the Nuggets dodged a major bullet by not matching this deal.