Since the Denver Nuggets won the 2024 championship after losing only four games, many fans and media have believed that the Nuggets have the league’s No. 1 player in cash, Nikola Jokic, and the strongest and most comprehensive starter. , is expected to defend the championship and even start another dynasty.
But last season’s Golden Nuggets not only failed to make it out of the Western Conference, they also lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves led by young Wolf King Anthony Edwards as early as the second round. In view of Jokic’s dominance in the playoffs, public opinion began to point to the sluggish state of the team’s second-in-command Jamal Murray, and the team management’s failure to retain important replacements Bruce Brown and Jeff Green before the season. Powerful operation.
The Nuggets not only failed to retain starting backcourt leader Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in the offseason, they also sold off a large number of draft picks in order to reduce the total salary. They even gave Murray a four-year contract after his poor performance in the Olympics. The large contract of 209 million has caused many fans and media to rate the Golden Nuggets as one of the teams with the worst operations in the off-season. They even bluntly said that this was a waste of the peak of Jokic’s career.
On the other hand, former Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly immediately created a terrifying Timberwolves with a suffocating defense and eliminated the Nuggets after he jumped to Minnesota. It is even more obvious that Calvin Booth seems to be of poor quality as a team general manager, especially after the recent rumors about the management of the Nuggets. After there seemed to be a rift between the team and the coaching staff.
How to evaluate Booth? And can his operations in the offseason this year help the Nuggets improve their combat effectiveness? I think this is worthy of a good discussion.
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On Booth’s merits and sins
If I want to briefly describe Booth’s management style, I think he is a manager with a conservative style and low emotional intelligence. Compared to Connelly, who always wants to bet on talent and is good at handling interpersonal relationships, the relationship is completely opposite.
Of course, I don’t think he is completely inferior to Connelly. At least he did what Connelly couldn’t do. He changed the previous strategy of accumulating talent, raised the team’s floor through trades and drafts, and seized the opportunity to Nuggets push for the championship spot.
Whether it was trading for KCP who has championship experience, or selecting Christian Braun in the draft who has both defense and ball intelligence, or signing the versatile Bruce Brown, in the end these people became the playoff rounds of that year. Substitute, he is an indispensable member in creating team history records.
On a good basis, Booth’s pragmatic operating style brought a championship to the Nuggets. This is a very important page in Booth’s resume. Even if he has various incomprehensible operations in the future, it should not be ignored. Booth is part of a glorious new chapter in Nuggets history.
After talking about Booth’s skills, it’s time to enter the uglier part.
Let’s talk about the minor parts first. Many people will regard the failure to keep Brown and Green after winning the championship as Booth’s mistake. I disagree with this. The 2023 offseason is the first year of the new version of the CBA. As a team with already tight salary space, Booth really has little room to operate. Needless to say about Brown’s situation, the two-year 45 million contract gold offered by the Pacers is indeed unmatched. The Rockets offered Green a contract of 6 million a year, which is slightly premium considering his age and decline. This is a reasonable operation.
Even if KCP is not retained in this offseason and is allowed to sign a three-year, 66 million contract with the Orlando Magic, I think it is a reasonable move. After all, if the Magic’s offer is successfully matched, then the salary of the gold nugget will be The second level of hard cap will be triggered, and the flexibility for subsequent reinforcements will be lost.
And can Christian Braun fill KCP’s vacancy as Booth said? I will find time to talk to you about this again.
As for why the Nuggets have so little room for reinforcements this offseason, this is where Booth should be criticized by the public. Last offseason, Booth did not look for opportunities in the free market to replace Brown and Green when they left the gap. Instead, he spent money on premium extensions for Reggie Jackson and Zeke Nnaji, who were not in the playoff rotation at all.
Renewing Nnaji’s contract with 32 million for four years and keeping Reggie for 10.25 million for two years is definitely Booth’s biggest crime since taking office. For these two rotation players who other teams may only be willing to give minimum salary contracts, Booth is inexplicably generous. The team must throw away a lot of assets this year to keep the team’s salary slightly below the second-tier hard cap.
If we look at what went wrong with these two signings separately, apart from the commonality of the premium, the second year of Reggie’s two-year contract is still a player option. It’s completely unclear that Booth is interested in Reggie, who is not good at defense and organization. Only after a certain amount of time would such a beneficial contract be issued to Reggie.
