Denver Nuggets: Complete 2017 offseason grades
Traded for Trey Lyles, pick No. 23
Entering the 2017 NBA Draft, the Denver Nuggets, losers of the race for the Western Conference’s final playoff berth, were firmly fixed at the back end of the lottery. While the 13th pick was not the most valuable of picks, it represented an opportunity to add talent to this core before the team made the next leap forward.
As the draft board played out, the Denver Nuggets made the decision to double their chances at finding another rotation piece. Rather than stay at No. 13 and make a pick there, they flipped the pick to the Utah Jazz in return for the 24th overall pick and forward Trey Lyles.
Lyles played one season at the University of Kentucky before declaring for the NBA, and the Jazz took him with the 12th overall pick in 2015. Playing on a deep team, Lyles has shown flashes of potential while playing limited minutes, but never cracked the rotation full-time. During Utah’s postseason this past spring, Lyles was not a factor in the rotation.
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If we identify Denver’s greatest need as a defensive stopper on the wing, then two players available at No. 13 offered large defensive upside. Donovan Mitchell out of Louisville is long and projects to be an immediate impact defender, and is the player the Jazz selected as part of the trade. He would have fit a clear need for the Nuggets, and at 13 was a solid value.
The other player available was OG Anunoby, a sophomore out of Indiana who has the ability to one day soon guard all five positions in the NBA. It has been reported that Denver was hoping that Anunoby would fall to them at 24, and in fact he made it all the way to 23, when former Nuggets general manager Masai Ujiri and the Toronto Raptors took him one pick ahead of Denver.
In general, when drafting in the NBA, it is wiser not to trust your own evaluations but instead to give yourself as many chances as possible to draft a high-upside player. Denver did that in a way with their trade, adding both Trey Lyles and Tyler Lydon, getting two bites at the apple. But there were players available that Denver could have taken to meet needs, and they lost out by trading down.
Grade: C