According to The Denver Post’s Christopher Dempsey, Murray State point guard Cameron Payne will workout for the Nuggets on Monday.
#Nuggets expected to get a workout w/ Murray State PG Cameron Payne on Monday. Payne’s stock on many draft boards is rising fast.
— Chris Dempsey (@dempseypost) June 11, 2015
A few weeks back I ranked Payne as the ninth best player in the upcoming draft and had the following to say about him:
As I’ve said numerous times already, Payne is my guy. This is just about as high as you’ll find him on any mock draft board around yet I feel more than justified in placing him here. Why? Because he crosses all the vitals off on the checklist. He’s got great size, he’s still fairly young, he’s got an elite skill (passing), he’s athletic, he can shoot, he can create for himself, he can be a junkyard dog on defense and he supposedly killed it in the interview process at the NBA Draft Combine. Guys like this who pass so many tests with flying colors just do not fail at the next level. Again, I’d love for Payne to be a future Ty Lawson replacement.
At that time most big boards had him much lower — somewhere in the mid to late teens — yet as Dempsey states, Payne’s stock seems to be on the rise. Though I’ve been a huge fan of Payne for quite some time it seems unlikely the Nuggets would select him at seven with Ty Lawson still on their roster.
Which makes you think…
Could this be the first foreshadowing incident in the eventual departure of Ty Lawson?
If the Nuggets are interested in supplanting Lawson with Payne a trade would of course be inevitable. And given Lawson is fairly revered on the basketball court you have to wonder what type of assets the Nuggets would attempt to pursue. Would they try and trade for an established veteran? Would they attempt to package him with other players on the roster to try and move up in the draft to select someone other than Payne with a higher pick, then select Payne at No. 7? Or would they simply try and trade Lawson for another draft pick immediately following the seventh pick which they would then use to select Payne?
No matter the case, this news courtesy of Dempsey should certainly pique the intrigue of Nuggets fans everywhere. I know it has mine.
