A Denver Nuggets lesson from past drafts: Don’t get too cute

In previous years, the Denver Nuggets have traded down in the NBA Draft on multiple occasions. This year, the team can learn from past experiences.

In early October, Gary Harris signed a four-year extension worth a maximum of $84 million with the Denver Nuggets, and that felt like a bargain. In his four years with the Nuggets, Harris has evolved into one of the most complete off-ball guards in the league, a model of efficiency, a two-way player, a building block.

It seems an eternity ago that when the Nuggets acquired Harris’ rights on draft night in 2014, he wasn’t even the headliner of the deal. On June 26, 2014, the Nuggets acquired the 16th and 19th overall selections in the 2014 NBA Draft from the Chicago Bulls in return for the 11th overall selection. Chicago went on to select Creighton star Doug McDermott, while the Nuggets drafted Jusuf Nurkic and Harris.

While Harris has flourished, Nurkic flamed out in Denver before finding success with the Portland Trail Blazers. As for the Bulls’ end of the deal…McDermott’s played for four different NBA teams over the last two years.

Sometimes, trading down in the NBA Draft makes sense. When another team is a set on a player, determined to move up, and, therefore, willing to eschew rationality, it is logical to pounce. Denver did so in 2014, and every year of improvement, every efficient possession, every glorious buzzer-beater from Harris is a testament to the legitimacy of that strategy.

However, there are times when front offices get too cute, reading Moneyball a few times too many and becoming too obsessed with maximizing value. I’m all for maximization in basketball: possessions, dollars, whatever it may be. But there’s a tipping point.

If you push the boundaries too far, really try to capture every last bit of value, you incur a great deal of risk, because someone else might be willing to sacrifice an iota of value. The Nuggets learned that the hard way in last year’s draft.

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The Nuggets entered the 2017 NBA Draft with the 13th overall selection but elected to trade the pick to the Utah Jazz for the 24th pick and Trey Lyles. In a move that will haunt the city of Denver for at least a decade, the Jazz selected an explosive second-year guard from the University of Louisville by the name of Donovan Mitchell. At No. 24, the Nuggets selected Tyler Lydon.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: the Nuggets were never taking Mitchell. Mitchell was a guard, the Nuggets had an abundance of guards, and Mitchell was not an elite, must-draft prospect. It is widely speculated, however, that the Nuggets did have a specific target in mind in OG Anunoby, a long, athletic wing out of Indiana University, who was viewed as a surefire lottery pick prior to suffering a serious knee injury.

The Nuggets liked Anunoby, but they wanted their guy and surplus value, and they were confident an injured Anunoby would last until pick 24. The Toronto Raptors selected Anunoby 23rd.

Anunoby had an encouraging rookie year, contributing to winning basketball for the East’s best regular season team, and acquitting himself well on the defensive end in the playoffs against the world’s most unguardable basketball player, LeBron James.

Anunoby’s game, fashioned around an ability to hit open 3s (he shot 37.1 percent on 2.7 attempts per game) and wreak havoc defensively, would have been a perfect fit in Denver. Instead, the Nuggets had to make do with the forgettable duo of Lydon and Lyles.

A favorite pastime of some (not all of us, I promise) Celtics fans on Twitter is to chastise the great Matt Moore of the Action Network for the grade he assigned the Celtics during the 2015 NBA Draft for selecting Terry Rozier with the 16th overall pick. Moore, back then, was not exactly fond of the pick:

Moore has since recanted, but it’s the lesson that he’s professed to have learned from this that is applicable to the Nuggets. Moore insists he was actually quite fond of Rozier, but thought the Celtics reached by taking him 16th. He thought the value sacrificed by reaching outweighed the player’s merits. Now, his philosophy has changed. Moore is now an ardent supporter of “getting your guy.”

It’s good to maximize value, but when there’s a guy you really want, don’t worry about sucking every last speck of marrow off the bone; just take him. Three years down the road, no one cares where you took Terry Rozier, because he’s the guy you believed in, and he’s tearing it up in the conference finals.

In 2014, the Nuggets traded down, and it worked. They got outrageously good value for a pick, because another team acted irrationally. In 2017, the Nuggets traded down, and it didn’t work, because they got too cute.

On June 21, when the Nuggets are on the clock, if the guy is there, the guy the front office really wants, they should take him. In three years, when he’s contributing to winning, no one will care if he went five, six or seven spots “early” according to some mock draft. If he’s not available, if there’s a group of guys the Nuggets view equally, and another team is determined to jump up, they should entertain trading down.

Next: 2018 NBA Mock Draft - Doncic still No. 1 in post-lottery edition

The Denver Nuggets must be flexible. There’s no set rule for these things, but recent drafts should teach this team one essential lesson: don’t get too cute.