Denver Nuggets: Complete 2018 offseason grades

The Kenneth Faried salary dump

Most people thought the Nuggets were done after dumping Chandler.

Denver had decreased its tax bill from astronomical to reasonable. Better yet, the team had done so largely without sacrificing future assets. The on-court product was worsened, but the long-term health of the franchise was effectively unchanged.

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Then the Nuggets traded Darrell Arthur, Kenneth Faried, a top-12 protected 2019 first-round pick, and a future second to the Brooklyn Nets for Isaiah Whitehead (filler who was immediately waived).

I wrote more extensively on the trade at the time. I’d appreciate a click, but the upshot is Denver made a fair non-basketball trade, but it was unequivocally a non-basketball trade.

The best way to go about this would be to assign two grades. A “fairness” grade would yield a B. Denver paid roughly the going rate to dump the amount of salary it did.

I don’t think it’s entirely fair to chastise Denver’s basketball operations for an ownership mandate, but I’m weighting the basketball aspect of this trade very heavily. Regardless of who called for the move, it was a disastrous one from that perspective.

Grade: D