The Nuggets essentially have one card to play this offseason, and that’s the taxpayer midlevel exception. Denver is well over the salary cap, but they get an exception of about $5.7 million that they are allowed to use to sign a free agent this summer.
It’s a valuable tool that will grant Denver the ability to sign (likely) one player to a deal that’s slightly greater than a minimum. It gives them a small bit of market power they otherwise wouldn’t have, and it could be the difference in landing a key veteran role player who can impact winning next season.
Nuggets have squandered TPMLE on Jackson and Saric
So, it sounds easy, right? Well, unfortunately, that hasn’t exactly been the case in recent years for the Nuggets. The last two players that Denver used this exception on were Reggie Jackson and Dario Saric.
Jackson was at least a decent player for the Nuggets and gave the team some solid minutes, but the team inexplicably added a player option to the deal, which Jackson happily accepted. Calvin Booth attached three second-round picks just to dump Jackson’s expiring contract to the Hornets, just one year after signing him, a trade that is still haunting the Nuggets.
Somehow, even more inexplicably, the Nuggets turned around and made the exact same mistake this past offseason with Dario Saric. Saric was an even more disastrous signing than Jackson, as he immediately proved to be unplayable and was out of the rotation within a handful of games.
Now, Saric has a player option for over $5 million, which he’ll almost certainly exercise, and become deadweight at the end of the bench for another season.
TPMLE is Nuggets’ best avenue to improve the roster
But those moves were made by the old regime, and we’re entering a new era in Denver. We still don’t know exactly who will be calling the shots, as the team is yet to name a GM. But whoever it is, they need to nail this move and make sure they get a meaningful player with the taxpayer mid-level.
The Nuggets have no picks in the draft this season, and the only players on the roster with any trade value are key members of an already-thin rotation. Still, these playoffs showed that the Nuggets are not far off at all from contention. One or two more role players and they’d instantly be back in the title hunt.
It’s a lot easier said than done, but they absolutely have to nail this move. It’s too early to speculate about potential players (a Bruce Brown reunion, perhaps?), but there will be plenty of solid vets who trickle through the cracks during free agency. Evaluating the available talent and maximizing this resource will be one of the most important decisions the Nuggets make this offseason.