Congratulations Denver.
Sure, having your star player and face of the franchise force his way out of town doesn’t feel like something to be congratulated over, but there is the silver lining you keep hearing about — at least you’re not Cleveland. That’s got to make you feel better, right? You got something in return at least.
Maybe it doesn’t feel that way, but it’s sort of true. You got some nice role players — Raymond Felton is a quality point guard, Danilo Gallinari can shoot, Wilson Chandler has real game, Timofey Mozgov is tall and sets a nice screen.
But what that means now — and by now we mean in the next 24 hours — is the Nuggets front office has another serious question to answer:
How important is it for Denver to make the playoffs?
How you answer that determines what you do between now and the deadline.
As of Wednesday morning the Blazers, Hornets and Nuggets are tied for the 5 to 7 slots in the West, with Utah 1.5 games back in the 8 slot and the Grizzlies half a game behind the Jazz in the nine slot. The Suns are 2 games back of the Grizzlies in 10th.
If you are going to make a playoff push — and George Karl wants to — then you keep Nene and Gallinari, you give Chandler lots of minutes. You hope that Portland slips against its tough schedule the rest of the way.
And the Nuggets may be leaning this way — according to Marc Spears at Yahoo the Nuggets plan to offer Nene a contract extension, not trade him away. That will be for about five years, $50 million, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo. Which seems about right based on what Joakim Noah and Al Horford got.
But Wojnarowski adds that Nene is intrigued by how he would fit in with Oklahoma City. And that would be intriguing. The Thunder only need a couple pieces and a big like Nene is one of them. It has to be tempting. Other tempting teams need a big too, like Miami.
Then there is Gallinari, which has the Clippers dangling a pretty good first round pick to get. If you want to make a playoff run you need to keep him. If you are going to dive headlong into rebuilding mode you move him and get parts.
Same with J.R. Smith, who has drawn interest. You likely flip Raymond Felton either way, because you have Ty Lawson so you don’t really need another point guard.
But the question is out there Denver. You’re going deep into rebuilding mode at some point, but you’re in position to make a playoff push and get in. Get a couple home playoff games (but you won’t last that long against the Spurs/Mavericks/Lakers). Is it worth it, or do you start the rebuilding now?
