Nuggets other veteran acquisition may be even bigger disaster than Westbrook

Through three games of Nuggets basketball, the mood around the team has been doom and gloom. They managed to pull out an overtime win in Toronto on Monday night to avoid an 0-3 start, but things have undeniably been ugly.

They have a plethora of issues right now, but none are more glaring and concerning than the play of the bench. The team put all of their eggs in the basket of unproven young players, and cheap, aging veterans. They hoped to put together a new-and-improved second unit, but the early returns have not been promising.

The jury is still out on the young guys; Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther are consistent parts of an NBA rotation for the first time in their careers. They have shown some flashes, but there are going to be growing pains. It’s going to be a slow burn with those guys and it should be expected that they will likely take some time to get into a groove.

While it’s reasonable to practice patience with the young players, it has definitely been more challenging with the veterans. Russell Westbrook has taken the brunt of criticism as his poor play often tends to be the loudest.

Westbrook’s stats are mistifyingly bad and the team has cratered on both ends whenever he has been on the court. So far, the Westbrook experience has been a total nightmare for the Nuggets. 

Dario Saric was a worse signing than Russell Westbrook

But slightly more quietly, Dario Saric has looked just as bad - maybe even worse. Saric signed for the full taxpayer midlevel exception and received a player option for next season. That contract is already looking brutal as Saric may not even be an NBA-level rotation player anymore.

Through three games, Saric has just 2 points total. He has shot just 1/7 from the field and has only attempted one three pointer on the season. He looks painfully slow, hasn’t helped on the glass, and has not done a good job defending. He played just 4 minutes in Monday night’s win over the Raptors and somehow the team lost those minutes by 9 points.

If these keeps up, Saric will be out of the rotation shortly and the team will have to look at giving those minutes to Zeke Nnaji, or making another move. There was no reason to give Saric more than a veteran minimum contract in free agency and giving him the player option makes matters even worse.

I don’t want to overreact to three games, but this is shaping up to be a worst case scenario. The Nuggets don’t have many resources left to work with, they can’t afford a massive swing-and-miss on this level. This is yet another situation that needs to be figured out very quickly.