The Denver Nuggets just signed a six-time All-Star for the veteran minimum. Let me say the number again: $3.9 million, one year.
DeMar DeRozan averaged 18.4 points, 4.1 assists and 2.9 rebounds in 31.2 minutes across 77 games for the Sacramento Kings last season. He is 37 now, entering his 18th NBA season, and the Kings waived him last month after trade talks went nowhere.
He talked to the Miami Heat, the Washington Wizards and the New Orleans Pelicans in free agency before picking Denver. Two of those teams are not going anywhere and the third just spent its entire future on Giannis Antetokounmpo. DeRozan chose the contender with the actual opening.
Denver Needed Exactly This
The Nuggets have had the same problem for years, and it has nothing to do with Nikola Jokic. When Jokic sits, Denver’s offense falls apart. The bench units have no one who can create a shot out of nothing, which means every non-Jokic minute turns into a grind of contested jumpers and dead possessions.
DeRozan is the most specific solution imaginable to that problem. He does not need a screen or a perfectly timed pass. Give him the ball at the elbow, clear a side, and he will get to his spot and rise up. That mid-range game people spent a decade calling outdated is exactly what a bench unit needs when the shot clock hits seven.
He is also one of the most durable players of his generation. Seventy-seven games last year at 36 years old. Denver has been burned repeatedly by depth pieces who cannot stay on the floor, and DeRozan has been available for basically his entire career.
The Fit Question
Here is the honest concern. DeRozan does not shoot threes at volume and never has, and Denver’s spacing already depends on shooters standing still while Jokic surveys the floor. Stacking a mid-range specialist next to a big man who operates from the elbow could get cramped.
The answer is staggering. You do not play DeRozan and Jokic 30 minutes together. You play DeRozan with the second unit, let him be the primary option against backups, and overlap them for stretches where Jokic can post up while DeRozan works the weak side. Denver’s staff is more than capable of drawing that up.
Defense is the other issue, and it is a real one. DeRozan at 37 is not chasing anybody around. Denver will have to cover for him with the right lineup partners, and in a playoff series against a team with wing speed he might be unplayable in certain matchups.
But you are paying $3.9 million. At that price, the downside is that you have a specialist you deploy situationally. The upside is a former All-NBA scorer who takes the pressure off Jokic in the regular season and gives Denver a real half-court option when the offense stalls in May.
The second apron changed the math for everyone. Teams with money cannot spend it, and teams with cap space are rebuilding and do not want a 37-year-old. That squeeze is how a player of DeRozan’s caliber ends up at the minimum. It is not a referendum on his game.
Denver did not outbid anyone here. Denver offered the thing DeRozan actually wanted at this stage, which is a real role on a team that can win a title with Jokic in his prime.
The Nuggets got an 18-point-per-game scorer for less than what some teams pay their third-string center. Highway robbery is the right phrase.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.