NBA insider casts serious doubt over Nuggets' offseason prospects

Two weeks into June we are at the point where every new NBA report offers some tiny new inklings of details of what may happen this offseason. Slivers of info can be gleamed here and there and suddenly stories and pictures come into focus. 

So far, things have been mostly quiet in regard to the Denver Nuggets offseason, but a few common talking points have emerged. The biggest one is the continued speculation that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope will decline his player option and become an unrestricted free agent.

The other common trope to emerge is the Nuggets continuously selecting DaRon Holmes in expert mock drafts. ESPN, the Ringer, and Yahoo all had the versatile Dayton big man going to Denver with pick #28 recently, a fairly odd occurrence for such a late pick in a medium that’s generally a bit of a crapshoot.

On Saturday, Michael Scotto of Hoops Hype released a new mock draft with some interesting notes and details on each team and pick. Scotto aggregated 10 industry mock drafts to create cumulative scores and base each pick on that, attempting to generate something resembling an industry consensus for every pick.

Will DaRon Holmes be available for the Nuggets to draft?

Using his model, to no surprise, Hoops Hype had the Nuggets taking Holmes with the 28th pick in the first round. But Scotto threw some cold water on that idea as he stated that “multiple NBA executives” don’t believe Holmes will still be on the board by the time Denver is on the clock. 

This coming on the heels of a report that Holmes canceled his workouts because he received a draft promise is not exactly great news for any Nuggets fans who have been getting excited about the prospect of Holmes backing up Nikola Jokic next season.

Concern about the Nuggets retaining Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

To make matters worse, Scotto went on to reiterate the common public sentiment that there is “concern” that Caldwell-Pope will opt out of his contract and become a free agent. At that point, there could be multiple teams with cap space looking to offer KCP a big contract for multiple years and steal him away from the Nuggets, a la Bruce Brown last offseason.

None of this is breaking news for the Nuggets, but it’s also not great news. Where there’s smoke there’s fire and the talk surrounding KCP has started to get scary. These next few weeks have the potential to be extremely stressful for Nuggets fans.