Nikola Jokic has loads of accolades, together with three MVP trophies, an Olympic bronze medal and an NBA title. However subsequent season he might have one thing he is hardly ever skilled in his NBA profession: depth.
Denver signed Tim Hardaway, Jr. to a one-year contract on Tuesday. The 32-year-old guard began 77 video games for the Detroit Pistons final season and made 168 three-pointers, which might have ranked second on final 12 months’s Nuggets crew.
Hardaway’s addition follows Monday’s signing of one-time Nugget Bruce Brown and the Nuggets’ commerce for ahead Cam Johnson, and Tuesday’s swap of little-used Dario Saric for veteran middle Jonas Valanciunas.
None of those new Nuggets are superstars, however all 4 are dependable gamers with distinct NBA expertise. That is a marked distinction to final season, when the Nuggets struggled to seek out reserves who they might belief with enjoying time within the postseason.
Solely six gamers even noticed the ground in all 14 Nuggets playoff video games and the crew was pressured to depend on 36-year-old Russell Westbrook for 36 minutes per recreation.
Valanciunas can rating and rebound effectively sufficient to carry down the fort when Jokic rests, a time when the Nuggets typically get killed by opponents. Brown provides on-ball protection, rebounding and good slicing and passing. Hardaway and Johnson are wonderful outdoors shooters for the customarily three-point-averse Nuggets, and can assist take the stress off rising wings Julian Strawther and Jalen Pickett. These two could also be stretched because the seventh or eighth males on the roster, however ought to be strong because the ninth and tenth males.
And whereas this is not a signing, the Nuggets bought excellent news about 2024 first-round decide DaRon Holmes, who tore his Achilles in his first Summer time League recreation and by no means noticed the ground for the Nuggets. The Nuggets favored him sufficient to commerce as much as get him, and now he’ll have the ability to come alongside slowly and maybe present a brand new dimension as a shot-blocker and lob menace.
With these additions, the Nuggets are firmly within the Western Convention’s high three groups together with the Houston Rockets and the defending-champion Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder. Having Jokic provides the Nuggets the prospect to upset anybody. Having precise depth will vastly bump up their odds of pulling it off.
