For half a decade now, Denver Nuggets fans have wondered when their next great star will emerge.
The NBA, as we hear so often, is a league built around its players. Without a perennial All-Star on your roster, it’s impossible to win an NBA championship.
As frustrating as that may be for some Nuggets fans to hear, the team’s history bears that refrain out.
In their nearly five-decade long tradition, the Nuggets have only advanced beyond the conference semifinals one time. Of course, in that year, 2009, Carmelo Anthony was leading the charge for Denver. By that time, Anthony had already been an All-Star twice and he was on his way to seven more consecutive appearances in that game.
Watching the Oklahoma City Thunder and Golden State Warriors compete in the Western Conference Finals this year, it’s hard not to think back to that 2009 Nuggets team both teams competing in the conference finals now did the same thing the Nuggets did to land Carmelo Anthony in 2003. They got lucky.
In 2003, the Nuggets saw Anthony fall into their laps with the third overall pick when the Detroit Pistons chose to select center Darko Milicic. In 2007, the Thunder got lucky when Portland selected Greg Oden instead of Kevin Durant. In 2009, the Golden State Warriors got lucky when Steph Curry, the seventh overall pick, turned out to be the transformational player he’s become.
However, traditionally, seven is far from a lucky number when it comes to acquiring stars in the NBA draft. Yet that is exactly where the Denver Nuggets find themselves positioned to pick on June 23.
Of the 35 players selected seventh overall in the NBA draft, just seven have ever made an NBA All-Star team. Comparatively, 27 of the last 35 first overall picks have become All-Stars.
Sure, there are exceptions to this rule. Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird all come to mind as players picked outside the top five who went on to have outstanding NBA careers.
In the NBA draft, perhaps more than in any other draft in professional sports, the higher you pick, the likelier you are to select a genuine star. The Nuggets are in need of just that. At No. 7 overall in this draft, Denver is about as likely to find the franchise changing star they need as you are to find a snowball in Texas during the summer or good Mexican food in Minneapolis.
Waiting around and electing to hold onto the seventh pick will put the Nuggets at a disadvantage heading into the season. General manager Tim Connelly knows this. Connelly told the Denver Post’s Chris Dempsey immediately after the lottery that he would be open to taking calls throughout the next month leading up to the draft.
“Now it becomes real,” Connelly said. “I think we will be a team that will enjoy a lot of calls for not just the picks.”
With an average age of 25.7, The Nuggets are already among the NBA’s youngest teams. Adding more rookies to the roster isn’t exactly going to speed up the development of Denver’s other young players like point guard Emmanuel Mudiay and center Nikola Jokic.
Instead, the Nuggets would be considerably better off trading their seventh overall pick, and perhaps some veteran players, in exchange for that All-Star level talent (if one is available this summer) that could move the development of Denver’s young players along.
Names like Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, and Al Horford have all been mentioned as potential trade targets for Denver.
Selecting another developmental prospect at No. 7 overall in a draft most experts admit is one of the weaker classes in recent memory, isn’t exactly a move that comes off as a team turning the corner from rebuild to playoff participant, something that Connelly has reiterated is a goal next season.
Unless the Nugget’s brass are confident they can grab a game-changing talent at No. 7 they would be better off trading out of that pick and acquiring a talent who can help shape the young emerging stars in Denver.
