How the Nuggets worked the margins to build a championship contender
The mighty Denver Nuggets, the Western Conference champions set to begin the franchise’s first NBA Finals on Thursday, were not feeling so mighty on the afternoon of March 25, 2021.
Denver’s traveling party was gathered on a charter bus, en route to the airport in Tampa, with wounds still fresh from that previous evening, thanks to a 24-point drubbing by the displaced Toronto Raptors. That quiet ride rolled toward a flight to New Orleans while precious minutes ticked away before the league’s annual trade deadline, delayed that season as yet another byproduct of the pandemic. And somewhere between the hotel and the “Departures” dropoff, coach Michael Malone received a bittersweet phone call.
The head coach learned his Nuggets were trading for a missing piece in versatile forward Aaron Gordon, but at a price that would rip out a cultural building block from a locker room they’d been fostering for the better part of a decade. It took Gary Harris to land Gordon, plus a 2025 first-round pick and rookie guard R.J. Hampton, but Harris predated Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray with this franchise. Harris helped establish the Nuggets’ lunch-pail environment that is admittedly dripping with cliches. “He was a big part of us kind of building our team into what it is,” Malone said Monday. So as news of the trade filtered throughout the Nuggets’ bus, player after player broke down in tears. A barrage of hugs awaited Harris before his itinerary diverted from the only team he’d ever known. “That was hard. That’s something that’s never really talked about when trades are made,” Malone said.
The roster reshuffling that’s required to shape a contender, in today’s calculated NBA, comes with plenty of moments not built for the faint of heart. The timing of certain transactions, certain players joining certain teams, at exact phases of particular regimes and careers, can win or lose titles and shift the arc of players’ lives. Drafting Jokić, Murray and Michael Porter Jr. has positioned Denver within striking distance of its first banner inside Ball Arena, but not without the optimal additions of Gordon, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown. The stories behind such pivotal acquisitions are never without their share of color — starting with the departure of Harris.
He wasn’t always that linchpin, and that’s what made Harris so integral to what Denver’s been developing since starting a rebuild in 2013. It once seemed like he’d be a footnote in franchise lore, when Harris followed being selected No. 19 in the 2014 NBA Draft with a worrisome first season. “Historically low numbers. And we started thinking, like, ‘Did we make a mistake?’” former Nuggets general manager Arturas Karnisovas once told Yahoo Sports. “But he spent so much time working on his craft that summer, that he improved the second year. And then another summer, he stayed [in Denver]. And then all the players picked it up.”
Jerami Grant followed suit. He was one of the many Nuggets who would hang around the facility with Harris, playing video games after logging long hours in the gym. But then Grant spurned Denver for Detroit in 2020 free agency, accepting the same three-year, $60 million contract to be the Pistons’ top scoring option, leaving the Nuggets with a gaping hole next to Jokić in the frontcourt. A hole Denver sacrificed Harris in order to fill.
Gordon was an obvious answer, but one with a crowded path to that outcome. Gordon stood as one of the biggest attractions of that 2021 deadline, with the Magic deciding to tear down a core that featured Nikola Vučević and Evan Fournier. Gordon had also requested a trade from Orlando, league sources told Yahoo Sports, with a large pool of teams, including Portland, Minnesota, Boston and Houston, pursuing his services from the Magic. Gordon had a known fan in Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard. The Timberwolves were kicking around potential frontcourt fits next to Karl-Anthony Towns. The Celtics were high on Gordon dating back to his own entry into the 2014 draft. The Nuggets, though, were able to include Hampton, an uber-athletic guard whom Orlando, sources said, had strongly considered selecting the previous year, when the Magic ultimately drafted Cole Anthony No. 15 in November 2020.
The deal was made, those tears were shed. And with Gordon in tow, the Nuggets rattled off eight straight victories during his first eight games alongside Jokić. Gordon’s athleticism added another dimension to a swirling offense around its MVP center. Gordon’s passing ability as a ball mover — not necessarily a ball handler, like much of his time experimenting in Orlando — was a welcomed addition from the start. The Nuggets walloped Atlanta and a top-seeded Philadelphia team at home. In Denver’s road win over the title-or-bust Los Angeles Clippers, Gordon was Malone’s answer to guarding Kawhi Leonard.
“They were healthy, we were healthy, and we beat them,” Malone said. “After that game, I felt we had a real chance to win a championship that year.”
They wouldn’t get that opportunity in earnest. Only a few weeks later, Murray tore his left ACL during a game against the Warriors, effectively sidelining Denver’s starting point guard for that playoff run and the next season altogether. Veteran point guard Monte Morris, the team’s trusty reserve, filled in admirably for Murray as the Nuggets tallied 48 wins and returned to the postseason. A dearth of wing depth, though, revealed itself to Denver’s decision-makers in Murray’s absence. And as the 2022 trade deadline approached, the Nuggets discussed a three-team deal with the Wizards and Thunder, league sources told Yahoo Sports, which would have landed Caldwell-Pope in Denver.
The framework, however, fell apart. The Nuggets fell to the Warriors in the first round. Connelly departed the franchise following a lavish offer to run the Timberwolves, and Denver elevated longtime executive Calvin Booth to pilot the front office. Booth had risen through the scouting ranks on his character as much as his player evaluation, but his tenure in that first chair, with a championship window propped open by Jokić’s heroic shoulders, calls for stealthy maneuvering every transaction cycle. Booth had taken Morris to dinner during the six nights that separated last June’s draft and the start of free agency, assuring the Nuggets’ floor general he’d be part of this year’s march to the Finals — only to go back on his word.
The Wizards were still searching for their own point guard to pair with Bradley Beal and were willing to part with Caldwell-Pope in order to do so, despite the marksman, with a 2020 title on his resume, working out at Washington’s gym throughout last summer. “I heard the rumor. I didn’t know how true it was until the next morning,” Caldwell-Pope said. “When I woke up and got on the phone with my agent, he said it could be possible, but wasn’t sure yet.” The talks from February’s trade deadline had resumed, this time rerouting Morris to Washington in addition to Nuggets mainstay Will Barton. “To get an impact player,” Malone said, “you have to give something up.”
This time, Booth surrendered Morris, breaking a promise to him to give Caldwell-Pope and Denver at large another chance to compete for a banner. Booth had a specific vision for the offensive weapons he wanted at Jokić’s disposal. “You have to have positionless guys, guys who can contain the ball and make shots,” Booth told Yahoo Sports. “Everybody wants two-way players, but [Jokić] likes to play with guys who know how to play basketball the right way.”
He saw that quality in Brooklyn last season, where Bruce Brown adapted his game alongside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, morphing from a backcourt ball handler to a pick-and-roll partner for the Nets’ pair of All-Stars. Brown emerged as Brooklyn’s third-most important player, with a long dossier of floating finishes in the paint, “But I knew after the season, the way I played in Brooklyn, it wouldn’t fit or people would question how I played,” Brown said. “So I kinda told my agent that I was gonna get effed this summer.”
Brown ignored the rumblings. He’d heard that too many teams to count were preparing to offer him a payday. But when free agency began, the Nets didn’t make a significant bid to retain him. Brown goes further. “Nobody really wanted me,” he said. “Because they didn’t know if I could be a guard or not. I kinda took it personal.” By Brown’s second day lingering on the open market, Booth felt his palms beginning to itch. Another complementary piece, whom the Nuggets boss also credits assistant general manager Tommy Balcetis for coveting, was just waiting for another competitor to snatch him up. “I was getting nervous. It was like, why do we wait?” Booth told Yahoo Sports. “We should have gotten this guy at the deadline.”
“Nobody really wanted me. Because they didn’t know if I could be a guard or not. I kinda took it personal.”Denver Nuggets guard Bruce Brown
Denver told Brown everything he wanted to hear. “I wanted to get out [of] that four-man, big-man role, floater game and show what I can do,” Brown said. “And the first thing they said, ‘You can come here and be a guard.’” He signed a two-year, $13 million agreement, with a player option for the 2023-24 season that league personnel expect he’ll decline and that Malone has even badgered Brown about. You can bet Denver will look to retain Brown after dealing second-year point guard Bones Hyland in February.
Brown, though, insists he hasn’t thought that far into the future, that he’s simply relishing a hand-in-glove opportunity that finally reaches the championship stage Thursday. “It’s been a perfect fit,” he said with a smile.
All the Nuggets pieces seem to align, snug and secure, rolling through a sweep of the Western Conference finals, while the Celtics and Heat fought and clawed through seven games in the opposite side of the postseason bracket.
“It’s really just finding a group of dudes that mesh in the locker room,” Porter Jr. said. “[That] is a big part of winning.”
