Is A 1st Option Available In The Draft?

The Denver Nuggets need a 1st option on offense. Can they find their guy in the 2016 NBA Draft?

The Denver Nuggets want to be great. Championship great.

During the broadcast against the Sacramento Kings, small forward Danilo Gallinari expressed his thoughts very candidly, via Mark Haas of CBS Denver:

These statements by Gallo are strong words. He is creating an imperative with regard to the team that he thought he was joining back in 2011 after the Carmelo Anthony trade. Gallo has always stated that he wants to be a part of a winning franchise. It’s quite possible that he forgoes his player option following the 2016-17 season in order to become a free agent.

The Nuggets cannot let that happen, and if Gallo wants out, action will need to be taken, but that’s an article for another time.

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Coach Michael Malone has also expressed an interest in winning, but he has stated that it is unwise to skip steps in the rebuilding process. Right now, he knows that the Nuggets are growing. They are in step one of the rebuild, and won’t reach the next steps until the younger players simply get older, or they trade for older players.

With Emmanuel Mudiay, Nikola Jokic, Gary Harris and Jusuf Nurkic, mortgaging the future to improve the present would be dangerous. All four players are 21 years old or younger and they are each under contract through at least the 2018-19 season. While those guys develop, Gallinari, Kenneth Faried, and Wilson Chandler (if healthy) will be playing in their basketball primes.

This means that while the young core develops, they will still be respectable because of the veteran talent, but when the core finally reaches its potential, the veteran guys will only be approaching the twilight of their careers and they would still be useful pieces.

This opens up the question of the 2016 NBA Draft. Should the Nuggets continue to utilize their draft picks and take players that will need time to develop? What kind of player(s) should they be seeking out? Should they trade the picks for more veteran talent?

The question resides with which pair of players is more valuable to the team. Either the team should focus on developing around Gallinari and Faried or they should focus on drafting around Mudiay and Jokic.

On one hand, the roster is in need of asset consolidation. There are many young guys and potential draft picks,and once the Nuggets cross a certain number of young players on their roster, some of those players will not play. Take the Orlando Magic for example. They have a strong core of young players that need time and minutes to develop their skills, but during the first half of the season, many of the young guys didn’t play.

One of those young players, Mario Hezonja, was the fifth pick in the 2015 draft, and the only reason he’s playing now is because the team traded Tobias Harris for less than market value.

The Nuggets should attempt to avoid a situation like this and find a spot where their lottery pick can contribute immediately. The minutes don’t have to be large off the bat, but with the team looking to be slotted seventh in the lottery, they could look to get that player in at least a bench role. The question is, are there any spots open?

At point guard, Mudiay and D.J. Augustin have formed a solid rotation at the position. With Mudiay’s youth, he needs a veteran backup in order to steady the ship. Even if Augustin were to go down, Jameer Nelson‘s contract is guaranteed as well, so any young player would have difficulty finding minutes.

On the wing, Harris and Gallinari have separated themselves as starters, while Will Barton has become a Sixth Man of the Year candidate with his scoring and rebounding. Wilson Chandler will also be returning next season and he has averaged 31.1 minutes per game over the course of his career.

While he likely won’t reach that total coming off the bench, it’s safe to say that as long as he’s healthy, he will account for 20-25 per game. All this to say, there’s not much room on the wing either barring trade or injury.

However, the Nuggets remain lacking in one skill above all: shooting. The Nuggets rank 21st in field goal percentage and 23rd in three-point percentage. This leads to wing prospects possibly being targets in the Nuggets’ draft room. A wing that can shoot above all else is incredibly useful in any situation, and if they have other projectable skills, then they will be looked at heavily.

In the middle at the center position, the Nuggets already have two stud players in Jokic and Nurkic. There’s no reason to touch that position in the draft this year.

The minutes distribution gets interesting at power forward. Faried has been the starter for a number of years. His interior presence and intense rebounding and hustle have become a mainstay in the rotation, but his defense has also become a major liability. If a new starter came in, he could be introduced to a bench role which could utilize his energy.

Behind Faried right now is Darrell Arthur, who has a player option, and Joffrey Lauvergne, who hasn’t shown enough to warrant extended minutes next season.

Unless trades are made to shake up the rotation, the most likely targets for the Nuggets will be future power forwards and wing players that can shoot. Point guards that have flexibility to play shooting guard next to Mudiay will also be targeted.

The question is, where can the Nuggets find these players?

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As I currently see it, there are three locations where the Nuggets could possibly draft:

1. The lottery gives them a top-three selection
2. They remain at around seventh or eighth
3. Just outside the lottery with either one or two picks via Portland and/or Houston

This gives the Nuggets three distinct locations where they can identify players that have high ceilings and also fit their positions of need. No matter what, the Nuggets should draft the best available talent if it far exceeds the player that fits a certain need.

That being said, the Nuggets need players that project as high quality shooters on the wing, and if they can find and develop a player at the power forward position, the core while have a full assortment of players to choose from.

Above all, the Nuggets need to identify the player that has a killer instinct. This player needs to have a willingness to take over the game. Mudiay has done a good job of this at times, but Harris and Jokic have become too passive at times when the game goes down to the wire.

Sometimes, those guys have shot very efficiently up until the beginning of the fourth quarter, but as the game becomes more intense, Harris and Jokic have had a tendency to pass as opposed to take those difficult shots.

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Mudiay, Harris, Jokic and Nurkic are likely the future of the Nuggets, but that doesn’t mean general manager Tim Connelly’s job is done. He needs to find the next candidate to lead the Nuggets out of the Western Conference cellar and not only return to the playoffs, but exceed once they get there.