The Nuggets have put themselves in a gruesome spot this summer, thanks mostly to awful mismanagement of assets and contracts in recent years. The latest and most pressing issue on their hands is finding a way to keep Peyton Watson, a restricted free agent, while also cutting salary.
This is only a problem because last summer, the Nuggets decided to give Christian Braun a five-year, $125 million extension, while opting not to give any extension to Watson. One year later, that looks like a brutal decision after Watson broke out as a budding young star, while Braun regressed massively, and his contract already looks like an albatross.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time that Denver has given out a woeful contract for little to no reason. Some of them are still weighing down the roster (Zeke Nnaji), while others have forced them to pay a price to be rid of. And that appears to now be the case with Braun, in what has become a bit of an urgent situation.
Nuggets must essentially trade Braun to keep Watson
We know the Nuggets don’t want to go over the second apron, and realistically, they probably want to be a lot cheaper than that. We also know that the team is already up against the second apron without even offering Watson a dime. To have any shot at signing him (which should be a priority), they need to shed significant money, and that has to come from either Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson, or Braun.
Braun is by far the least useful to them right now and the one with the lowest trade value. Salary dumping any of the other three would hurt the team badly and would be a really tough look for ownership in the heart of Nikola Jokic’s prime. Which all leads us back to the idea of moving Braun on his negative-value contract.
The Nuggets are almost bereft of draft capital and young assets in the future, but as gross as it may sound, their best path forward may be to sacrifice this year’s first-round pick to dump Braun’s contract, an idea that was floated by Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux on a recent episode of the Dunc'd On podcast. There are rebuilding teams with cap room, like the Bulls and Nets, who may be open to taking on the 25-year-old Braun if he comes with the 26th overall pick in a few weeks.
Would the 26th pick in the draft entice a team to take on CB?
That’s not a good way to do business, and it’s a move that has bitten the Nuggets time and again, but it may be the only way. Parting with a first-rounder just to get off of money is never ideal, but unless the front office has a time machine, I’m not sure what else they can do here.
The move would allow them to shed Braun’s money while taking little or none back. The 26th pick probably wasn’t going to be someone who would come in and help immediately on a team that wants to compete for titles in these final years of Jokic’s prime.
The savings would allow them to keep premium core players, Murray, Gordon, and Cam, or use them in other deals to actually bring back talent. And most importantly, it would give them the ability to offer P-Wat a competitive contract and keep the closest thing they have to a young, homegrown star. Past mistakes continue to kill this team, but this could actually be a pretty clean way to erase a mistake while inflicting minimal damage.
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