“Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”
– Ernest Hemingway
I almost never open with two quotes, but boy did Brendan Vogt leave me with no choices in his exceptional Wednesday article…
“The (Denver) Nuggets, once kings of the hill, are sliding backward, the summit increasingly out of reach, while muddied, determined contenders step on their shoulders like rungs of a ladder.”
Woof. Completely on point. And then that point went right through my ribs, and twisted.
My buddy Vogt was describing the Nuggets recent loss of Peyton Watson to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a trade that brought them back the equivalent of a cup of coffee and a bag of chips, but his larger point is not lost, either. The Nuggets find themselves a rung lower than they did last season. Which was a rung lower than the season before. Which was a rung lower… well, you get where this is going.
Denver now finds itself three years removed from their last-and-only championship, and headed into a fourth season that does not bear a lot of hope for that next ring, or even rung. Nikola Jokic, their extra-loyal and extra-smart MVP center, says he’ll be here forever, and also finds himself headed towards unrestricted free agency. Not so much out of dissatisfaction, but because waiting allows him to get as large a contract out of the situation as his estimable history will allow. He’s made no noise about wanting to be anything but “Nuggets Forever”, and still, that dedication will come at a price that makes the rest of the dominoes behind him need to line up in a certain way if the next ring/rung is ever to be brung. Brought. Gotten.
Just in this last cycle, Denver has lost Watson, firestarter Tim Hardaway, Jr., and one of Jokic’s more ideal backups in Jonas Valanciunas. While it has yet to be expressly stated, fan favorite and multi-tool Bruce Brown is also expected to be on the outside of this picture looking in. The replacements brought in to shore up what was already not-good-enough are regarded by most to be… less good.
And yet it’s true that when they are at their finest, Denver’s starting five is better than any other starting five in the league. Still. Today. That’s a heartening something, but for it to be enough, the Nuggets would have to have the best injury luck in league history, something that has not blessed them much these past few seasons, and would need that starting five to play an even more exorbitant amount of minutes than they usually do… which runs directly counter to that whole “let’s not get injured” thing.
All of the above truths for the team to still be in the second apron, the only team in the league currently sitting thusly. In case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know, that means that the Nuggets can’t combine player salaries in a trade, can’t send cash out in a trade, can’t use past years’ trade exceptions, can’t send a player out in a sign-and-trade, can’t sign new players for anything above the minimum, can’t use the mid-level exception, can’t trade away picks that are seven years or more out, and possibly can’t go to the bathroom without someone holding their hand. I’m still looking into that last one.
So… over-budget and hamstrung. Once you’re into the second apron, you’d better be happy with the hand you’ve been dealt, as there sure aren’t any more aces up your sleeve. The goal everyone is guessing that Denver is shooting for is to shed even more salary to get below that second-apron-line. As the market for Zeke Nnaji appears to have dried up the second he signed his deal a few years back, it looks like the shedding options mean “get even worse”.
It’s weirdly reminiscent of the long and slow loss of Giannis Antetokounmpo by the Milwaukee Bucks, who won a ring the year before the Nuggets won theirs. Since then, the front office decisions in Milwaukee seemed to be a longer and longer swinging of the pendulum, always bringing back something a little less until there was no more Giannis for the Bucks. While it seems unlikely now that Jokic would suffer a similar fate, the slow and strange decline has a very similar smell to it. All very Khris Middleton/Damian Lillard/Myles Turner/Adrian Griffin/Jrue Holiday-scented. For Denver, there’s a lot of passion and well-intended love for the guys who are still here who brought them that ring, and they surely earned it. But if none of them are still the players who brought that championship four years back, and may never be those guys again… then the choice becomes sentiment or sentience. A tough choice either way.
For whatever it may be worth, I’d not trade that single ring for anything. Not even the current rung-dropping Vogt so aptly described. But you get a taste of what that meant, and it’s hard to not wish for another, which then leads to tough moments and decisions like these. The Nuggets only have so many more years to burn before Jokic is out the door, even if he stays for the rest of his career. Moreover, even he can only improve for so many more seasons before age starts catching up with his one-of-a-kind game.
If the Nuggets keep dropping rungs like this, there may be a point in a couple years when Jokic is passing to a cairn terrier and a breakfast burrito coming off the bench. That ladder just got shorter behind us, and longer in front of us. The further you drop, the more asses are in your face. How the hell can Denver climb again from here?
