Why Jimmy Butler is a perfect fit for the Denver Nuggets

With the 2017 NBA trade deadline less than 24 hours away the Denver Nuggets are once again poised to complete 82 games with virtually the same roster they had to begin the season. It’s groundhog day in Denver when what the Nuggets needed most was a baptism.

The good news is there’s still time to consolidate the roster before the deadline; the bad news: There’s not much time left, and if the Nuggets continue to procrastinate in addressing their problems those issues will only compound come free agency — which is exactly why the Nuggets should go all in for Chicago Bulls star Jimmy Butler.

Butler is exactly what the Nuggets need. He’s an All-Star (some would say a superstar) and has been getting better every year since entering the league in 2011. At age 27, he’s just coming into his prime and is still young enough to gel with the Nuggets’ young core, one that will be hitting its own stride several seasons down the road. But above all Butler is a great wing defender who could play the catalyst in helping the Nuggets shore up their abysmal defense as they begin to challenge for higher playoff spots in coming years.

Additionally, trading for Butler has one overriding advantage over most every other move on the market: his contract. In 2015 Butler inked a five-year, $95 million contract with the Bulls which ensures the earliest he could depart his incumbent team would be summer of 2019. But given his contract includes an enticing player option worth $20 million Butler could very well stay put, wherever he’s stationed, for one additional year as well.

Complete packages like Butler are rare in the contemporary NBA trade market. Occasionally GMs will probe the basketball bazaar to appraise their stars, but this is often done in the final year or two of their contracts in order to parlay their stars for assets in the event they depart come free agency.

Furthermore, those stars are often flawed on one side of the floor or another. In Butler’s case, however, none of these exclusions ring true. He is the rare star who is not only in his prime and on a multi-year contract, but also one of the better two-way players in the entire game, with the best basketball of his career yet to be played. He is essentially the perfect trade target.

Unfortunately for the Nuggets and the rest of the NBA, Chicago is also more than conscious of the above-mentioned factors. Butler will not come at a cheap price under any circumstance which is likely part of the reason he’s yet to have been dealt already. The good news for the Nuggets is that assets are one thing they possess.

In fact, they’ve been compiling assets for over three years now in order to have a seat at the NBA’s trade deadline table. And given the opportunity to sit down and participate in this once yearly poker game is about to pass — yet again — the Nuggets would be wise to finally go all in before their assets eventually succumb to atrophy.

With reports about Wilson Chandler wanting out of Denver surfacing for the second time in the last month, it would make no sense that he was not a featured part of a deal for Butler. But Chandler alone wouldn’t be near enough to complete a deal. The Bulls will be looking for pieces to build their franchise around and it’s difficult to envision General Manager Gar Forman not attempting to pry someone like Jamal Murray, Emmanuel Mudiay, Gary Harris, Juan Hernangomez or even Nikola Jokic away from Tim Connelly.

In theory, the Nuggets should be able to get a deal done without Jokic and Murray, but Nuggets fans would have to make peace with the idea seeing Harris or Hernangomez depart as tariff for one of the best players in the NBA.

If Connelly is as shrewd as many believe, perhaps he could convince Forman to absorb Kenneth Faried and a future first-round draft pick rather than giving up one of the Nuggets’ young franchise pillars, but it’s not likely the Nuggets would make it out alive without giving up someone they desperately wish to retain. Still, this is how deals work, especially the good ones: Everyone parts with something they don’t want to in order to achieve a greater stab at future success.

If the Nuggets could ship some combination of Chandler, Faried, Harris, Mudiay and perhaps a first-round draft pick in exchange for Butler and an outcast from the Bulls roster to make salaries match up, Nuggets fans should be delighted.

Not only would Denver at last obtain the perennial All-Star they’ve been in search of since the departure of Carmelo Anthony six years ago, the Nuggets would lay the foundation of a franchise with multiple superstars (assuming Jokic and Murray are retained) all while nearly guaranteeing a playoff spot this season, consolidating the roster once and for all and appearing surprisingly attractive to elite free agents in the following summers.

At this point the Nuggets’ future is increasingly binary: Either Denver will make a splash and overpay for a star or they will continue to engender roster dysfunction and player dissatisfaction while waiting for the perfect megadeal to materialize until they are forced to settle for yet another appetizer to placate their hunger.

In the NBA everyone has to eat and as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for.