Nuggets unexpectedly enter top 10 ‘horrifying’ rankings after shocking deal
As a fun offseason exercise, Sam Quinn of CBS Sports took all 63 traded future first-round draft picks and ranked them based on their current value. The Nuggets, who have traded away many future picks, found themselves at number 10 on the list for the 2032 first-rounder they traded to the Nets in the Cam Johnson deal.
The trade was a home run for Denver, as they were able to upgrade Michael Porter Jr. into Johnson while freeing up enough money to sign Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr., plus trade for Jonas Valanciunas and his salary.
If the Nuggets win another championship during this era, that trade will be a massive part of the reason why. But the cost of doing business was sending out their unprotected first-round pick seven years down the road.
2032 Nuggets’ first-round pick a very juicy asset
Assuming Nikola Jokic signs his max extension next summer, the Nuggets shouldn’t have to worry about being a lottery team any time soon, but 2032 is a long way off. By then, Jokic will be 37 and could easily be long past his days of fueling winning in the NBA. In fact, there’s a very reasonable chance he’s no longer in the league at all by that point.
And given everything the Nuggets have sacrificed to compete during Jokic’s prime years, the team is going to go through some rough years once he decides to call it quits. That’s what the Nets were banking on when they agreed to this trade, and they are betting on the Nuggets falling off right around the end of this decade, thus owing a very valuable draft pick to Brooklyn.
Once Jokic starts to decline, Denver will have a hard time rebuilding the roster, and a big part of that is the draft capital they’ve sent out in recent years.
Hopefully, the team is built in a way that allows them to hang on longer than people think, and with some smart moves and luck, the rebuild may not be as long or ugly as some people think. Maybe they hang on and stay relevant without a major decline.
But there’s also a chance that the team completely craters and finishes near the bottom of the standings for years on end. In that scenario, they could easily be one of the worst teams in the NBA by the early 2030s, and they could be handing over a top 5 pick to the Nets in 2032.
That’s a long way away, but teams are already eyeing these situations. Everyone knows the power Brooklyn now holds, and we’ll see how they wield this pick for the next seven years, and how painful the deal ends up being for the Nuggets.