Denver Nuggets: 5 biggest disappointments from 2017-18 NBA season
By Ty Delbridge
4. Not trading Kenneth Faried
It was reported by ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski, that Kenneth Faried and his camp were hoping the Denver Nuggets would trade him and allow him to start elsewhere. The Nuggets apparently worked hard to find Faried a new home, but could not find a deal and decided to hold on to him.
The first 348 games of Kenneth Faried’s career, he started in 287 of them. The past two seasons, Faired has only appeared in 93 games and has just started 41. He signed a four-year, $50 million extensions with the Nuggets back in 2014 and will be playing in the final year of his contract in 2018-19.
Sources: There's still hope within Kenneth Faried's camp that Denver will find a trade for Kenneth Faried and allow him a fresh start elsewhere. Denver has been talking to teams -- including Indiana -- but those haven't resulted in a deal.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 8, 2018
Faried had a very successful start to his career in Denver, but his game does not adapt well to today’s NBA. The Nuggets started to move on from Faried by drafting Jusuf Nurkic and Nikola Jokic back in 2014. They traded Nurkic to Portland after Jokic started to become a star and then added Paul Millsap last summer. Faried made $12.9 million this year and is set to make $13.8 million next season.
The Nuggets are moving in a new direction for their team, and it’s clear that they plan to move on from Faried one way or another. It would be a waste of money for the Nuggets to pay Faired nearly $13 million next season when he is 28 years old and sitting on the end of the bench.
The Nuggets have a solid young core they are building around and need to save their money to put better players around them and re-sign their young guys these next couple season.
Faried is still a talented player could be a bench contributor on a team like the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets or Cleveland Cavaliers. The Nuggets have invested a lot into Faried these last few seasons and it would be a shame for them to lose him for nothing in free agency. The Nuggets should have moved him at the deadline, but need to find him a new home this offseason.