Denver Nuggets: Five former players that would have helped this team

5. Marcus Camby (2006-07)

Marcus Camby lands at number five given the potentially puzzling nature of this pick since the Nuggets already have a franchise center in Nikola Jokic. While a Camby-Jokic pairing might have extreme bust potential written all over it, its impact could also swing the opposite direction.

Camby, especially from 2004-2008, was a defensive force for the Nuggets and a dependable double-double every night. In the aforementioned four-season stretch, Camby averaged 10.7 points, 11.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 3.3 blocks, and 1.2 steals per game.

While Denver is a lot more consistent on the defensive end than in years past, there’s still room for improvement with their interior defense. They allow 48.8 points in the paint per game (19th in the league) and their 4.6 blocks per game have them similarly ranked at 19th leaguewide.

Evidently, having a guy like Camby protecting the hoop would boost their inside defense, pushing more shots back to the outside, which they currently defend at a high level. That being said, there’s an obvious elephant in the room about how he slots in when Denver’s best player plays the same position.

In a vacuum, adding a Defensive Player of the Year who averaged over three blocks per game for four straight seasons would be a net positive. For the Nuggets, however, having Camby and Nikola Jokic on the floor at the same time would mean that one of the two will likely be out on the perimeter, chasing modern-NBA fours.

Against teams that feature poor perimeter shooters and rely on their inside presence or teams that have two non-shooters on the floor at once (allowing the defender to sag off), it just might work.

Besides the potential fit problems on defense, one of the two would need to stretch the floor to prevent a clogged paint on offense. Camby had something of a mid-range game from the left corner and above the free-throw line, meaning that if he played today, he could potentially stretch that to the three-point line if he was required to.

While the Joker hasn’t been as effective from deep as he was two seasons ago when he shot 39.6 percent from outside, he is relatively effective from the mid-range, and given that he frequently operates the offense out of the high elbow, his passing prowess alone would likely keep defenders honest.

Moreover, with the Nuggets’ frequent use of dribble handoffs from Jokic to guards, we could see an added dimension in the Denver offense with the new option to throw a lob to Camby rather than finish at the rim or dish it back to Jokic.

It might work, it might fail spectacularly, but it would certainly be an interesting experiment, not unlike the Rudy Gobert-Nikola Jokic duo that may have panned out had the Nuggets not pulled the trigger on that 2013 draft-day trade.