Grading the Denver Nuggets’ Offseason
After a longer-than-expected offseason due to their first round exit from the postseason, we have finally reached the start of a new season for the Denver Nuggets. With that looming, let’s take a chronological look at their offseason and grade the moves they did (or didn’t) make. As a note, for the purposes of this article, a C grade represents a truly neutral move, so adjust your expectations accordingly. Now, withour further ado, let’s get to it.
The Draft
The Nuggets initially held the #26 pick in this year’s draft and, in the days leading up to it, there were rumors they were looking to trade up from that spot. At that point in time, the Nuggets had a very shallow pool of positive assets they could’ve hypothetically used to facilitate this type of trade. Since they should be in win now mode, I personally was not a fan of the idea of using what little assets they had to acquire a player who likely wouldn’t be a major contributor right away.
However, instead of trading up, the Nuggets ultimately traded down in the draft, acquiring pick #35 in this year’s draft in addition to two future second round picks in exchange for pick #26:
The Nuggets used their newly acquired pick to draft Trevon Brazile, an athletic 6'10 forward out of Arkansas. Additionally, the Nuggets used the 49th pick, one they already owned coming into the draft, to select 6'6 forward Bryce Hopkins out of St. John’s. Hopkins eventually signed a two-way contract while Brazile was signed to a standard 4 year, $9.26 million contract.
This was a good draft for the Nuggets. Trading up would’ve been a mistake and all the players I would’ve wanted them to target with pick 26 were off the board by that point. Instead, they added a few future picks while still drafting a player who was very similar in quality to who they could’ve taken with the 26th pick. Additionally, Brazile’s status as a second round pick allowed the Nuggets to utilize the second round pick exception to sign him rather than the standard rookie scale contract that comes with signing a first round pick, a move that saved the Nuggets about $1.7 million this season.
Grade: B
Losing Tim Hardaway Jr. to Miami
This is more of a move that wasn’t, but I believe it warrants a mention. After a very strong season in Denver, Tim Hardaway Jr. left the Nuggets to sign a 1 year, $6 million contract with the Miami Heat. There was some talk about this being another cheap move by the Nuggets to not retain talent, but it was really a scenario where they simply could not match what was offered by another team. Miami utilized the Taxpayer Midlevel Exception (TPMLE) to sign Hardaway Jr., something the Nuggets did not have access to with their cap situation. Since he was only with the Nuggets for one season, the Nuggets did not have his Bird rights either and were limited to offering him a max of 120% of his salary from the previous season, about $4.36 million. Whether or not the Nuggets formally made him that offer, it’s no surprise he preferred to play in Miami for more money.
Grade: C
Waiving Jonas Valančiūnas
After serving as a solid backup center in the 2025–26 season, Valančiūnas was waived by the Nuggets prior to returning to his home country of Lithuania to sign with EuroLeague club Zalgiris Kaunas. He flirted with leaving for Europe the year before, so this move was no surprise. Frankly, even if that wasn’t his plan, $10 million is a steep price for a team in the Nuggets’ financial situation to pay for a backup center. Waiving him when the Nuggets did lowered his cap hit for the season from $10 million to $2 million, a total they further lowered to $667k by stretching his dead money over the next three seasons.
This is largely a neutral move, but it’s notable that Valančiūnas’ salary for the 2026–27 season was fully non-guaranteed when the Nuggets acquired him, meaning they could’ve waived him and had no dead money on their books as long as it was done by June 29th. However, the Nuggets restructured his contract to guarantee him $2 million while pushing his full guarantee date from June 29th to July 8th. This allowed the Nuggets to keep him for the first week of the new league year that began on July 1st and hypothetically gave them more opportunity to include him in trades for salary matching purposes. However, this ultimately didn’t materialize and ended with the Nuggets taking on an additional $2 million of salary commitments for nothing in return. For that reason, I give this a slightly negative grade.
Grade: C-
Signing Alpha Diallo
The first official free agent signing of the offseason for the Nuggets was Alpha Diallo, who signed a 1 year, $1.4 million contract with them. The 29-year-old has no NBA experience and most recently played for AS Monaco Basket in the EuroLeague where he was named the EuroLeague Best Defender. Diallo led the EuroLeague with 57 steals in 42 games, certainly an appealing statistic for a Nuggets team that generated the fewest turnovers in the NBA last season, while also contributing 11 points and 4 rebounds per game.
There are always going to be risks associated with signing a player like Diallo. A player his age with no NBA experience is naturally going to face questions about whether his defense will translate and whether he can do enough on the offensive side (he is just okay as a three point shooter and doesn’t do a lot of ball handling or playmaking) to justify keeping him on the floor as a regular rotation piece. That said, I think the potential reward outweighs the risk and consider it a slightly positive move overall.
Grade: C+
Re-Signing Tyus Jones
In a somewhat surprising move, the Nuggets announced they were bringing back Tyus Jones on a minimum contract after signing him in the buyout market last season. Jones played sparingly for the Nuggets (8.4 minutes per game in the regular season and 10 minutes per game during the postseason, though he only appeared in three of their six postseason games) and didn’t appear to be a major part of their future. Nevertheless, the 30-year-old guard is back with the Nuggets for the 26–27 season.
When this signing was initially reported, my feeling was that Jones would be a fine addition as a third point guard who doesn’t play often, but a terrible one as a regular rotation player. As things stand now, the Nuggets haven’t added another primary ball handler to come off the bench ahead of him, meaning Jones is probably in line for at least somewhat regular minutes. This is likely not a good thing, but we should at least try to understand what the Nuggets are thinking here.
Prior to last season, the worst of his career by effectively every metric, Jones was an effective role player for several years. He finished sixth in Sixth Man of the Year voting in 2023 and, in the 2023–25 seasons, averaged nearly 11 points and six assists per game with just one turnover.
If the Nuggets were to get this kind of production from him, signing Tyus to a minimum contract would look like a steal. However, the unfortunate reality is actually getting this kind of production from Jones does not appear to be likely. Despite the solid surface numbers, we can look at underlying impact metrics which agree Jones has been in decline for a while now. Here are his career trends in RAPM (Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus) and EPM (Estimated Plus-Minus), both showing him in a steep decline that has spanned multiple seasons and finally reached a tipping point:
Given his age and these trends, there’s not much reason to believe we’re about to see Tyus bounce back to being the caliber of player who warrants regular rotation minutes on a contending team. However, seeing as he’s currently the only true point guard on the Nuggets’ roster aside from Jamal Murray, they appear to be hopeful of getting that kind of a bounce back anyway. The Nuggets have been loosely tied to a few other point guard options throughout the offseason, but until and unless they actually bring in a legitimate backup point guard, this signing gets a poor grade from me.
Grade: F
Signing Marvin Bagley III
Transitioning from what I believe was their worst signing of the offseason to what I believe was their best, the next transaction to become official for the Nuggets was the addition of Marvin Bagley III. The 27-year-old signed a 1 year, $3.5 million contract with the Nuggets that became official on July 15. After being drafted second overall in the 2018 draft, Bagley’s career has not panned out the way many envisioned. Injuries and general ineffectiveness have limited Bagley to primarily being a player coming off the bench for bad teams. In his eight seasons, he has never played more than 62 games (and that came during his rookie season), and in the games he HAS played in, his teams have gone what can only be described as an abysmal 106–243 (a 25-win pace over an 82 game season). He has appeared in just two playoff games in his career, both primarily during garbage time of blowout losses. So that’s the bad stuff. But there’s good stuff too!
Despite not having the career many hoped for, Bagley has carved out a niche for himself, and it’s one the Nuggets happen to need. BBall-Index grades him as an A or better at Rim Protection, Rim Disruption, Rim Deterrence, and Help Defense, all very useful traits for a team that quite frankly struggled to defend both on the perimeter AND the interior last season.
Here you can see Bagley effectively defending a pick-and-roll to bait Devin Vassell into a shot attempt, which he then blocks:
And here he is helping off his primary assignment in Minnesota to block Naz Reid’s shot attempt:
Additionally, in a limited number of attempts (he had just 52) Bagley showed some promise as a three point shooter, shooting 46% from distance. He’s still just a 31% three point shooter for his career so we’ll need a larger sample size to know whether or not this is a real improvement, but he looks confident knocking down this shot from the top of the key late in the season:
While they’ve been hesitant to do it in the past, Bagley’s skillset is different enough from Jokić’s that he should be able to effectively play next to him in a double big look, in addition to having enough size and ability to be the lone backup center when Jokić needs a rest. I like going in this direction for the backup center spot.
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Grade: B+
Re-Signing Spencer Jones
The next move for the Nuggets is one that probably happened before they would’ve wanted it to. After a breakout season in which he was converted from a two-way to a standard NBA contract, Spencer Jones entered the offseason as a restricted free agent. In short, this meant that any team in the NBA had the ability to negotiate with him and offer him a contract, but after agreeing to terms the Nuggets would have the option to match those terms to keep him. This happened when Jones signed an offer sheet with the Oklahoma City Thunder for two years, $11.75 million. After the signing of Diallo, a player who could have presumably taken on a role similar to the one Jones had last season ago, AND using both of their draft picks on wings, it seemed the Nuggets may have been preparing to move forward without Jones. However, that proved to not be the case as the Nuggets chose to match the offer from Oklahoma City and keep him in Denver.
There are two lenses to view this signing through. The first is the value of this contract in a vacuum, and through that lens the contract is probably fine. He’s not an incredible player, but a strong defensive wing who can shoot close to 40% from three is likely worth the $6 million the Nuggets will pay him this season. If that was the only factor to consider, we could slap a C grade on this deal and move on. However, we also need to consider this move in the context of the Nuggets’ roster and financial situation.
Keeping Jones only strengthened a position (wings) that had already been heavily focused on by the Nuggets during the offseason and, while he is a good defender, he’s just okay as a perimeter defender and didn’t spend a lot of time last season defending guards, their current biggest need on that end of the floor. Offensively, shooting three pointers (at a relatively low volume with just 5 attempts per 100 possessions last season) is essentially his only value. He does nothing with the ball in his hands and is often completely invisible on that end of the floor. Lastly, bringing Jones back when they did pushed the Nuggets into the second apron. This is something that was likely going to happen no matter what, but being there before finalizing the Peyton Watson restricted free agency situation made a sign-and-trade for him much more complicated. Given these circumstances, I think bringing back Jones was a suboptimal decision and earns a slightly negative grade from me.
Grade: C-
Signing-and-Trading Peyton Watson
Next is the offseason move that was understandably (and rightfully) the most talked about of the offseason for the Nuggets. After a breakout campaign of sorts, Peyton Watson became a restricted free agent just like Spencer Jones. It was initially believed by most that the Nuggets would work out a deal to keep Watson in Denver, but as we got deeper and deeper into the offseason it became more and more clear that the Nuggets weren’t going to offer the contract Watson was looking for and that he preferred to move on. This eventually led to Watson signing a 4 year, $88 million contract with a player option and being traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for a 2031 first round pick and a 2032 second round pick (via Sacramento). There’s a lot to unpack with this move.
As mentioned before, the Nuggets entered into these negotiations in a less-than-ideal financial situation. As a second apron team, they could not take back any players on a standard contract (they could, and did, receive a player on a two-way contract in Julian Reese, who was immediately waived) without also sending out more money (not including Watson’s contract) than they took back. As you might expect, this severely limited the options they had in any trade where they received a player(s) in exchange for Watson (I wrote before the trade about some of the players who were realistic options for them). Whether or not a trade like this was something the Nuggets could’ve gotten done, they ultimately opted for a pick based return instead.
Similar to the re-signing of Jones, the value the Nuggets got here was fine in a vacuum. Given their timeline, there’s a very good chance the 2031 first round pick from Cleveland is a high one, making it quite valuable as a trade piece. For the Nuggets, though, they would’ve been better served to acquire a 2032 first round pick after trading theirs away in the Cam Johnson deal. This would’ve given them two tradeable first round picks (their own 2031 and 2033 picks) instead of just one, which is what they got from this deal due to the Stepien Rule that prevents teams from trading away all of their first round picks in consecutive drafts.
Even beyond that though, the Nuggets have the best player in their franchise’s history who is 31 years old in Nikola Jokić. The clock on their championship window is ticking, and they should be doing everything they can trying to win now. However, draft picks in the 2030’s don’t help them to do that unless they’re subsequently traded away for win now players, which the Nuggets of course haven’t done. If and when there’s a follow up trade to this one involving the picks they received my evaluation of the trade may change (pending the details of that deal), but for now I can only grade the Nuggets on what they’ve done, which is trade away a key rotation player for a return that doesn’t do anything to help them win now.
Grade: D-
Signing DeMar DeRozan
The next move the Nuggets made was signing 17-year vet DeMar DeRozan to a 1 year, $3.9 million contract. A six-time All-Star and three-time All-NBA selection, DeRozan is coming to Denver for his age 37 season to chase the championship that has eluded him throughout his career. Despite what will almost surely be a Hall of Fame career when all is said and done, DeRozan has only won four playoff series’ in his career and has never even reached the NBA Finals. Now in Denver, DeRozan will come off the bench for the first time in his career to try to make that happen.
Starting with the positives, DeRozan gives the Nuggets a player who can create and hit shots off the bench, an archetype they have desperately needed over the years to keep the offense afloat during the times Jokić rests. Last season, DeMar averaged 1.24 points per possession (96th percentile) on postups, 1.03 (86th percentile) in isolation, and 0.97 (85th percentile) as a pick-and-roll ball handler, all while handling these playtypes at a high volume. He also put up an outstanding 1.23 PPP (98th percentile) and 1.2 (87th percentile) on handoffs and coming off screens, respectively. Here he is isolating and scoring against Herb Jones:
DeRozan is also very good at taking care of the ball. Last season, he turned it over just 3.8% of the time (88th percentile) on scoring attempts and 7.6% of the time (97th percentile) on pass creation attempts. Only he and reigning back-to-back MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander managed such low turnover numbers while shouldering a heavy usage load (minimum 22 shots and 10 potential assists per 100 possessions). Lastly, he’s great at getting to the free throw line. DeMar shot 87% from the line and had 8.7 free throw attempts per 100 possessions, a rate that would’ve been second highest on the Nuggets last season. This all means he should be a stabilizing force for the second unit’s offense and help to keep that unit afloat while Nikola Jokić is off the floor.
If that was the end of it, this would be an A+ signing, but unfortunately it’s not. DeRozan also has some issues the Nuggets will have to contend with. Staying on the offensive end to start, he has a terribly inefficient shot diet. Last season, DeRozan attempted 7.2 short midrange jumpers (96th percentile) and 7.7 long midrange jumpers (100th percentile) per 100 possessions. He is relatively good at converting these attempts, but at just 51.5% and 47.5% respectively, they are still inefficient overall. He also provides very little rim pressure (2.3 attempts per 100 possessions, 21st percentile) or floor spacing (3.0 three point attempts per 100 possessions, 2nd percentile), which can make it difficult for the rest of the offense to operate if he isn’t hitting his midrange shots.
This, however, is a minor issue when compared to his defensive woes. He is universally hated by pretty much all overall defensive impact metrics. Here is a sampling of just a few:
He is a low activity defender that essentially has to be hid in the corner at all times, as evidenced by him earning an F grade in matchup difficulty and primary defender involvement rate from BBall-Index. Additionally, he earned F grades for his ball screen navigation, off-ball chaser defense, perimeter isolation defense, and defensive talent. Finding visual examples of his poor defense is actually somewhat difficult because most of his defensive possessions involve him just standing in the corner not doing anything, but here’s a rare occasion he had to actually get involved in a play and promptly got beat on a back cut for a layup:
With the other primary reserve guard for the Nuggets presumably shaping up to be Tyus Jones, another poor (though not as poor as DeRozan) defender, it’s somewhat difficult to envision a scenario where any gains from DeRozan’s offensive ability aren’t given back and then some on the defensive end. To me, this is another move that’s fine in a vacuum but doesn’t feel like one that fits what the Nuggets need due to their pre-existing lack of strong perimeter defenders on the rest of the roster, and for that reason it gets a negative grade.
Grade: C-
Signing Cam Whitmore and Ryan Nembhard to Two-Way Contracts
Lastly, the Nuggets rounded out their offseason by signing Cam Whitmore and Ryan Nembhard to two-way contracts. First, we should define what these contracts are, then we can work on giving out a grade.
Whitmore and Nembhard were signed using two of Denver’s three allotted two-way contracts. This allows the Nuggets to play Whitmore and Nembhard either in the NBA or with their G-League team, the Grand Rapids Gold, without needing to use a standard roster spot or adding any money to their cap sheet. Both players can be active for up to 50 regular season NBA games, but if the Nuggets want them to be active for more games than that and/or if they want them to be eligible to play in the postseason, they will need to be converted to standard NBA contracts, which will require an open roster spot and will add money to their cap sheet. Despite these limitations, this allows the Nuggets to give both players an extended look and buys them until at least early February before they’ll have to decide whether to convert one or both players. Now that we have the housekeeping out of the way, we can talk about these players/moves.
If one of these guys is going to stick in the NBA long-term, my bet would be on Whitmore. At 6'6, 230 pounds, the 20th pick in the 2023 draft certainly has the size and athleticism to be an NBA rotation player. The place he’s showcased that athleticism the most is out in transition as a play finisher. Last season he averaged 1.33 PPP in transition (87th percentile). Here he is against Milwaukee after a steal:
However, the reason Whitmore was available for a two-way contract is the lack of skills he’s shown in other areas. Offensively, he has struggled in isolation and as a pick-and-roll ball handler, and after a strong rookie season as a spot up shooter (1.19 PPP, 89th percentile), he has struggled in the two seasons since (0.88 PPP, 21st percentile). He has also been a poor playmaker and generally struggled defensively as well. That said, he is still just 22 years old with all the physical tools you’d want for a developing young player and certainly still has room to grow.
Nembhard, on the other hand, is a completely different type of player. An undersized point guard at just 5'11, 180 pounds, Nembhard went undrafted but made the roster and played 60 games for the Dallas Mavericks in the 2025–26 season. His lack of size made scoring and defense a challenge, he was one of the most inefficient scorers in the NBA and provided next to nothing as a defensive playmaker, but there are things to be excited about from him as an offensive playmaker. Nembhard had 19.7 potential assists and five rim assists per 100 possessions last season (87th and 94th percentile, respectively) and was consistently setting his teammates up with good looks. Here he is feeding Moussa Cisse an easy dunk in the final game of the regular season (a game in which Nembhard had 23 (!) assists):
For a team lacking in quality ball handlers, there sure seems to be an avenue for Nembhard to get minutes and, should he impress enough in those minutes, potentially even supplant the incumbent backup point guard Tyus Jones (who I have previously expressed my disdain for).
Will either of these players develop into All-Stars? That’s highly unlikely. However, they both have the potential to at the very least give the Nuggets some solid minutes as they try to navigate the long regular season and keep their stars relatively fresh for the playoffs on contracts that carry effectively zero risk. Adding this pair earns a positive grade from me.
Grade: B-
With that, we’ve covered all 10 of the Nuggets’ offseason moves (or non-moves). As with most things, the things they did this offseason weren’t universally positive or negative. Some things I liked, some I didn’t like at all, others I feel relatively neutral about. Fortunately, we’re finally about to see how it all plays out on the court.
