Nuggets fans should be furious as team clearly hasn't learned from past mistakes

Now that the Nuggets roster is all but settled, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the moves that were made this offseason. Most of the focus is on the splashy transactions; letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk, signing Russell Westbrook, and even trading up to draft DaRon Holmes.

Recently, the attention has shifted to Summer League and international play; Holmes’ injury, Julian Strawther and Trey Alexander shining, and Jokic and Murray representing their respective countries at the Olympics.

Dario Saric signing mirrors Reggie Jackson debacle

But two smaller transactions really stand out. On the surface, they don’t appear to be connected, but in reality, they tie together quite a bit. Those moves were the Reggie Jackson trade when the Nuggets dumped Jackson along with THREE 2nd-round picks to the Hornets and the signing of Dario Saric with the full taxpayer midlevel exception.

Each of these deals seems fairly innocuous in a vacuum, but let’s rewind things a bit to last offseason. The Nuggets were losing players, were short on cash, and needed to sign a backup point guard. They decided to bring Jackson back, which was fine, but they should have signed him to a veteran minimum contract. 

Instead, they gave him the full TPMLE. To make matters worse, they gave Reggie a two-year deal and the second year was a player option. This was terrible market value as Jackson was barely playable. He happily opted into his deal for this season, which led the team to dump three draft picks just to get Jackson’s contract off the books (reminder: they signed this deal just last offseason).

Nuggets set themselves up to fail again next year

It was a bad bit of business all around, but not the end of the world. Except that, it appears the Nuggets may not have learned from the mistake and instead, may have repeated it. Saric seems like a fine backup center, but he had no market. The Nuggets could have likely signed him to the minimum.

But for some reason, the team gave their full TPMLE to Saric, and again, gave him a player option for year two. Ideally, Saric works out and proves to be an impactful player for the Nuggets. But with his age, limited skill set, and injury history, it’s not at all unrealistic to think he struggles to even stay in the rotation.

Furthermore, who’s to say we won’t be in the exact same situation next year? Saric may show that he’s no longer an NBA rotation player this season, in which case he will almost certainly pick up his option, and burden the Nuggets with a bad, unwanted contract for the second straight year. Will the Nuggets be paying to get off of Saric’s contract a year from now? We can’t rule it out.

It’s disappointing and completely unnecessary. And to make things even more frustrating, the Nuggets gained no advantage by getting rid of Jackson, they simply saved the owners some tax money. It’s a careless use of assets and it sends the wrong message to the fanbase. Continual moves like this will eventually prove disastrous for a team trying to contend for a championship every year.