Denver Nuggets Roster Now Complete, But After Losing Jerami Grant, A Little Less Whole

With NBA training camps opening on December 1, the Denver Nuggets have completely filled all 17 of their roster spots and are set to begin the 2020-21 season with seven new players in tow.

After swinging and missing this offseason on the two big moves they’d been heavily banking on – trading for Jrue Holiday and retaining free agent Jerami Grant – president of basketball operations Tim Connelly and his Nuggets front office staff were unable to gain competitive ground in an increasingly competitive title contention arms race.

There were some definitive bright spots in Denver’s offseason moves, notably the addition of their young, talented and athletic irst-round draft acquisitions Zeke Nnaji and R.J. Hampton, as well as the signing of Argentinian point guard Facundo Campazzo, a longtime professional in Europe with renown playmaking skills.

But the losses of Grant, Mason Plumlee and Torrey Craig to free agency, combined with losing out on the Jrue Holiday sweepstakes, produced a net result for the Nuggets which at least in the short term sees them taking a step back (or more charitably, sideways) at a time when they were counting on improving to keep pace with the league’s championship contenders.

Catching the Nuggets by surprise, the price the Milwaukee Bucks paid the New Orleans Pelicans to outbid them on Jrue Holiday vaulted Denver’s hopeful upgrade at shooting guard well out of their price range, leaving them with no realistically attainable trade targets of the same caliber.

More shocking still was Grant’s decision to rebuff Denver’s attempts to re-sign him – even after, according to the Denver Post’s Mike Singer, they matched the Detroit Pistons’ three-year, $60 million offer – in order to pursue a larger offensive role than he’s had with the Nuggets.

Left stranded without not only their best option for improving in Holiday, but also a player in Grant they were counting on as an integral part of their core going forward, the Nuggets faced an uphill climb in free agency.

The Nuggets were able, as they had planned to do with Grant, to use Bird rights to re-sign Paul Millsap. But as a team operating over the salary cap and Grant out of the picture, they were effectively left with only the $9.3 million mid-level exception (MLE), the $3.6 million bi-annual exception (BAE), and veteran minimum contracts as options for signing free agents.

That meant replacing Grant with another player at or near his pay grade was off the table, but Denver was able to land another capable, if not quite as versatile power forward in JaMychal Green, signing him using the MLE to a two-year, $15 million deal per The Athletic’s Shams Charania that softens, though doesn’t quite fully make up for the blow of Grant abandoning the Nuggets and leaving the high and dry.

Denver also found a serviceable replacement for Mason Plumlee at backup center, signing seven-foot, 22-year-old Isaiah Hartenstein to a two-year (presumably minimum) contract with a player option on the second year, according to Singer.

The Green and Hartenstein signings patched what might have been disastrously vacated holes in the Nuggets’ front court depth chart, but internal player development notwithstanding, these less-than-lateral moves leave Denver – at least for the time being – having taken a step back rather than forward this offseason.

At the same time, rival contenders such as the Milwaukee Bucks (who in addition to winning out on the Holiday bidding war also nabbed Craig) and the two Los Angeles powerhouses significantly bolstered their rosters through trades and free agency, putting increased pressure on Connelly and the Nuggets to find some way to make meaningful upgrades by the midseason trade deadline.

With Denver’s favorably-reviewed draft night sandwiched between the team missing out on Holiday and subsequently losing Grant, the Nuggets’ offseason was far from a total disaster in the bigger picture, especially when it comes to the high-upside talent they brought on board boosting their longer-term outlook.

But it’s hard to get around the cumulative offseason largely representing a disappointing setback which fell far short of Denver’s aspirations going into 2020-21. And while there should still be plenty of time for Connelly and his staff to regroup and make further moves, the present mood among many Nuggets fans is inescapably more bitter than sweet, knowing how close the Nuggets came to what might have been.

Be that as it may, with 15 players on the regular roster including Bol Bol, whose two-way contract was converted to a standard contract, along with two two-way players rounding out the total at 17 players, the Nuggets have their full roster set, and will enter the upcoming season leaning heavily on their maximum contract star duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, and hoping beyond hope that sophomore sensation Michael Porter Jr. makes a big enough leap on both ends of the court to compensate for at least some of what Denver lost with Grant’s departure.

Below is an overview of the changes in the Nuggets roster, with salary info via Keith Smith’s NBA Salary and Roster Sheets.

Who The Nuggets Kept

• Nikola Jokic, center, $29.5 million salary in the 2020-21 season
• Jamal Murray, guard, $27.3 million
• Gary Harris, shooting guard, $19.6 million
• Will Barton III, guard/forward, $13.7 million
• Paul Millsap, forward, $10 million*
• Michael Porter Jr., forward, $3.6 million
• P.J. Dozier, guard, $1.8 million (non-guaranteed)
• Monte Morris, guard, $1.7 million
• Vlatko Cancar, forward, $1.5 million
• Bol Bol, forward/center, $1.4 million

Who The Nuggets Acquired

• JaMychal Green, forward, $7.5 million
• Facundo Campazzo, guard, $3.6 million*
• Zeke Nnaji, center, $1.9 million
• R.J. Hampton, guard, $1.8 million
• Isaiah Hartenstein, center, $1.6 million*
• Markus Howard, guard, two-way contract
• Greg Whittington, forward, two-way contract

Who The Nuggets Lost

• Jerami Grant, forward (Pistons)
• Mason Plumlee, center (Pistons)
• Torrey Craig, forward (Bucks)
• Keita Bates-Diop, forward (Spurs)
• Troy Daniels, guard (unsigned)
• Noah Vonleh, forward (unsigned)
• Tyler Cook, forward (unsigned)

*Contract values inferred from reports.