Behind front-office maneuvering and a string of additions designed to push the team back toward championship contention, the Denver Nuggets’ offseason had an unmistakable urgency to it. Among the most talked-about moves was the trade for Jonas Valanciunas.
While the Big Val addition wasn’t without drama, as he flirted with a Panathinaikos offer, the circumstances surrounding his arrival in Denver felt impactful. After so many years of poor center depth behind Nikola Jokic, landing a physical, proven big man to back up the three-time MVP felt like a luxury for Nuggets fans.
Big Val’s solid start to the season
To his credit, Valanciunas delivered on that early promise. Through the first 54 games of the season, the Lithuanian big man averaged 8.6 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists. Modest as those numbers may be, they remain meaningful contributions from a backup center role in the Mile High City. Asked to be physical and reliable, Big Val was exactly that for most of the first half of the season.
Even after missing 12 games with a calf strain in January, Valanciunas logged solid minutes in Jokic’s stead. But basketball is a game of trends, and the trend lines on Valanciunas have been pointing in the wrong direction for a while now.
Falling off a cliff
Since Denver’s loss to Cleveland on Feb. 9, something has shifted. In the 18 games since that date, Valanciunas put up averages of just 6.1 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 0.8 assists. Denver’s efficiency differential — team points scored minus team points allowed per 100 possessions — with Valanciunas this season is a jarring -15.2, by far the worst mark of Val’s 16-year career. The numbers are down, but the reason why might tell the real story.
As the league leans harder into five-out spacing and small-ball lineups, Valanciunas has become increasingly difficult to play. He’s not a floor spacer and struggles to switch on D. Against teams that want to spread the floor and force rotations, his presence creates defensive liabilities that head coach David Adelman simply can’t ignore.
Consequently, across the team’s last 12 games, Valanciunas has topped 12 minutes just twice. And in Denver’s two most recent outings, he didn't play at all — back-to-back DNP-Coach’s Decisions.
What makes the DNP-CDs particularly telling is that with Jokic on the bench, the Nuggets haven’t turned to their veteran backup big. Instead, Adelman has, perhaps out of necessity, leaned into small-ball experimentation, sliding Aaron Gordon — and sometimes Spencer Jones — into the center role. But that tactic is currently working well enough that the coaching staff keeps going back to it.
That’s a fairly damning indictment of Valanciunas’ recent play. Losing minutes to another big is one thing, but to lose them to a couple of forwards? Uh-oh.
Playoff stakes and offseason reckoning
The Nuggets are gearing up for another playoff run, and every rotation decision from here forward will be made through that lens. A backup center that earns DNPs in March is unlikely to see the floor in May.
There’s also an offseason financial subplot worth watching. Peyton Watson is set to get paid this summer, and the Nuggets will need cap flexibility to retain one of their most promising young pieces. Moving on from Valanciunas could help create the room to make that happen, turning an awkward roster situation into a fairly practical solution. (Although scouring the market for a backup big again doesn’t sound all that enticing to me.)
The Valanciunas era in Denver may have been shorter than anyone anticipated when he signed last summer. But in a league that moves fast and forgives slowly, the Nuggets can ill afford romanticizing the idea of Valanciunas as Jokic’s backup when the Joker’s legacy is on the line.
Big Val gave Denver something this season. The question now is whether Denver can become something even better without him.