How to Tear Down and Rebuild
From Someone Who Just Did It
Two of the Nuggets "core players" and the profile picture of the infamous NuggOlesk
From Someone Who Just Did It
Two of the Nuggets "core players" and the profile picture of the infamous NuggOlesk
When I took over the Nuggets at the tail-end of the 2017-18 season, I realized very quickly that I did not have an easy path to relevancy in front of me. We had a capped out roster, with a bunch of long-term contracts on the books, little in the way of game-changing talent, only one first round pick in the next three drafts, and seemingly no future. It has taken a long time to get here (longer than I'd like and probably longer than other GMs could manage to do it), and a 104-228 record over the course of 4 seasons (a 31% winning percentage for those doing the math at home), but we have finally found ourselves a playoff team, with a higher ceiling still in front of us. I hope.
So how did we get here? That is a fantastic question, and one I'll be answering here for two reasons. First, this serves as both a season review and also as a franchise review, as it is a really rewarding feeling to see my Nuggets in the playoffs. Even though we got bounced in the first round, we went up against one of the toughest franchises around and a true CSL dynasty, and gave them a hell of a run for their money. I'll take that any day of the week. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to me, we as a league find ourselves with a lot of GMs facing rebuilds themselves, some of which are new GMs and some veteran GMs. I've seen too many franchises screw themselves from getting impatient and ending a rebuild too soon, or not focusing on the important things in a rebuild, or just losing focus and making sloppy moves. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I'm hoping that we can all learn something from the experience I've gone through over the past 5 seasons. So let's get started.
The Commandments of Rebuilding
These are the guidelines I tried to stick to while rebuilding, and I think anyone going through a rebuild should follow these. In order of importance, they are:
1. Your #1 goal should be to acquire top-tier talent
It's true in the NBA and it's true here. Top level talent wins games. Now the NBA is a bit more star driven than the CSL, as you can look back on prior champions and see that most of them are built on the foundation of a strong top 5. You may not need that one top 10 player to put you over the top, but it sure as hell helps, and every contender has top-tier talent, no questions asked. If you don't have a player like that on your roster, or you're thinking about trading a player like that to kickstart your rebuild, you better make sure that you're going to get great chances to acquire a player like that. Don't trade away opportunities to get that star player unless it's in service of getting you one of those. Rebuilding teams should never trade their own firsts unless it's to acquire someone who already fits what you are looking for in the first place.
Just to be clear, when I say top-tier, I'm talking about a big tier. Probably a top 30 player is what I would consider top-tier. You want to have players at that talent level on your roster, because they can make a real impact. Obviously there's a difference between players like Paul George and players like Kawhi Leonard, but both make an impact for their respective teams.
2. Accumulate assets
Every single move you make should be in service of this goal. The reason why you're rebuilding is because you don't have a lot of assets. You don't have talented players currently on your roster and you need to get some. The best way to get talented players is to have the assets to acquire them. That can be draft picks, that can be good players, that can be players on value contracts, that can be cap space. You have to always be looking to accumulate assets. If you aren't getting an asset that can help you acquire a top tier player, you have to ask yourself if it's even a move worth making.
Now obviously you will have small moves along the way where you won't be acquiring picks or good players or anything like that. Those trades obviously will happen and there's nothing wrong with that. When analyzing my history for this article, I found a lot of trades that ended up being completely pointless. Did trading Tobias Harris for three 2nd round picks really amount to anything? No, but it didn't cost me anything either. That's the important part of making smaller moves. Make sure you don't cost yourself anything in the process, whether that's picks, or future financial flexibility.
3. Maintain financial flexibility at all times
This is a lesser goal, simply because having financial flexibility does not inherently help give you a brighter future. There's absolutely no guarantee that having this flexibility will help you land free agents, or make trades, or anything like that. However, I can attest to how helpful it is in servicing the goals of a rebuilding team. Having financial flexibility means you can sign FAs who are ready to compete now and can help a playoff team, that you can then trade during the season to a contender looking for that extra push. Having financial flexibility means you can afford to help take on teams' bad contracts and obtain assets in doing so. Having financial flexibility means that when it's time to pay your young players that you have managed to acquire, you are able to do so without losing out on anything. You never know when having cap space and being able to take on salary will come in handy, so you must be ready at all times.
4. Know Your Window
What I mean by window here is when are you going to be able to compete for a title? Like truly be a contender? It's hard sometimes to determine your window and stick to it, but nothing cuts a rebuild short and screws it up like not knowing your window. This almost destroyed my franchise, as I got too impatient after four seasons and traded for John Wall at the deadline. I fell well short of the playoffs, and my pick jumped to the #1 spot in the draft. If I had not protected the pick I had traded, I would have been absolutely screwed out of Tatum, and I would probably have delayed my contention chances by at least two more seasons. It is very important to define your window and understand when is the time to strike, and when is the time to continue to build assets for the future. To use some NBA examples, the Rockets struck at the right time when they traded for Harden. The Celtics struck at the right time when they traded for Kyrie. The Miami Heat did not when they traded future unprotected picks for Goran Dragic.
5. If You're Trading a Star, Identify the Assets You Want
Some people kickstart their rebuild by trading the star that they currently have on their roster. There have been a handful of stars traded over the course of the CSL for a handful of picks and young players and whatever else. When you are trading a player who's star caliber, don't just let teams come to you with their offers. There are going to be plenty of teams that just aren't capable of paying the price to acquire your star player, no matter how badly they wish they could. You need to sit down, look around at all the teams in the league, and identify who has the assets you want. Where are the best unprotected first round picks? Who are the young players with the brightest future? Don't settle for a trade because a team is offering two starter level players and a late first. Those guys aren't going to help your rebuild. Go find those assets, and approach those teams yourself.
The Denver Nuggets Journey
So now that we've defined what I think are the most important goals when rebuilding, let's do a bit of a review and see what the Nuggets have done over the past five seasons, and how well we followed our own guidelines.
Taking Over the Team (2018-19 Season)
Trades 1-4. Offseason.
DEN Out: Nikola Vucevic, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith.
DEN In: Alex Len, PHX 2020 1st, Chris Bosh, lots and lots of filler.
Right off the bat, these trades have to be looked at as mostly failures. I traded away four of my starters and got back not much in return besides financial flexibility. Almost everyone I received was on a 1 year deal, maybe some 2 year deals in there, which was a huge part in me clearing my books as I was looking at about 3 years of cap hell when I joined the team. My first and foremost goal at the time was to clear the books as much as I possibly could, and I did achieve that, but I think I focused too much on that goal, and not enough on accumulating assets. In fact, I think four of the filler players I received in these deals I immediately waived, which goes to show just how much value I really received in these deals (not much).
Trade 5. Mid-Season.
DEN Out: Chris Bosh
DEN In: Andre Iguodala, Monte Morris.
Bosh was an expiring contract, and so was Iguodala. The reason I agreed to this trade was because of Monte Morris, who I had identified as someone I thought was undervalued and not getting enough playing time. At the time, he had played a total of 19 minutes for the Rockets, and I thought there was a good bench scorer there on a rookie scale contract, making him (in my mind) a positive asset. Bosh for Iguodala didn't matter to me, as neither was going to stay with me beyond that season, so to get an asset in the trade was a no-brainer for me. Financial flexibility was maintained, and I had gained one asset.
Trade 6. Trade Deadline.
DEN Out: Alex Len, 2nd round pick, filler.
DEN In: DAL 2020 1st, salary filler.
This is where I really started getting into asset accumulation mode. The Dallas Mavericks were one of the top teams in the league at the time and odds were that this pick wouldn't be anything special, but I couldn't pass up on a 1st round pick for a player who was just there. Len was a quality big man, and obviously better than Plumlee, but that doesn't do me any good since losing him probably meant we went from 25 wins to 20 wins or whatever. Who cares is the point. I get the first round pick, and I think I took on one extra year of salary, but it wasn't atrocious and did not affect my books moving forward.
With my first year with the team, I knew that I didn't have a whole lot of value to trade way to get assets back. Once I made the decision that my main 4 players would be dumped to save money, that was going to be mostly it for me. For me to come out of this season with two extra 1st round picks (PHX and DAL in 2020) and a young promising player in Monte Morris was a win for me. It's a really slow process, but I was determined to do it right.
A Quiet Year with a Big Blunder (2019-20 Season)
Trade 7. Draft Day (processed during the season for complicated reasons, but agreed to on draft day).
DEN Out: #4 pick in the 2019 draft (post lottery, so I knew this was the 4th pick).
DEN In: Lance Stephenson, Tyler Ennis.
This was, by far, the worst trade that I made in my tenure as the Nuggets GM. Do not make this same mistake. I made the decision to trade out because I felt that this draft was a two player draft, with Karl-Anthony Towns and Kris Dunn at the top of the draft, and that I could get better value by turning the #4 pick into two rotation players. I WAS WRONG. I thought Ennis was my point guard of the future, because he could handle, pass, and play defense. He was not anything special and has bounced around the league as a backup guard ever since. In getting rid of the pick, I turned down the opportunity to have drafted D'Angelo Russell, Justise Winslow, Mario Hezonja, and the guy that I probably would have drafted, Jamal Murray, who has now turned into a solid starter for a playoff contender in Detroit. If you have a top pick in any draft, and you are a rebuilding team, DO NOT TRADE IT FOR MULTIPLE LESSER ASSETS. In these situations, four quarters don't equal a dollar, hell, six quarters don't equal a dollar. Trade up for the guy you want, trade (slightly) down to get two excellent assets (like when the Sixers traded down from pick 10 (Elfrid Payton) to pick 12 (Dario Saric) and a future first round pick), but DON'T TRADE THE PICK FOR MULTIPLE LESSER ASSETS. You will get these offers. Don't do it.
Trade 8. Mid-Season.
DEN Out: Jeremy Lin (signed in the offseason).
DEN In: Chris Paul, 2020 TOR 1st.
This is a perfect example the kind of asset accumulation that I'm talking about. I signed Jeremy Lin in the offseason not because I thought he would help me win games, but because I knew he was the type of guard that teams coveted. He played defense, he could handle the ball, and he was a good enough scorer. Toronto thought he was their man, and was willing to pay a first round pick for him. That's all I needed to hear, as CP3 wasn't going to do anything for me. Of course, I did have it in mind that there might be a team out there who would want CP3 for their playoff push as he still had something left in the tank. I was able to flip him later this season for Sam Dekker, a rotational player who was still under contract beyond this season.
Higher Level Asset Accumulation (2020-21 Season)
Trade 9. Draft Day.
DEN Out: Pick #29 (DAL 2020 1st)
DEN In: CLE 2021 1st (Top 20 protected).
I had a ton of picks in this draft (actually had picks 28, 29, and 30), and was willing to push an asset to a future year so I could better utilize that value. I'm sure I could have picked three rookies and been fine, but I know that teams tend to value picks more than the actual players picked in those slots, so I decided to keep one bullet in the chamber moving forward. A small deal, and I did lose out on Davis Bertans, but he's just a serviceable player who wasn't going to turn the Denver franchise around.
Trade 10. Mid-Season
DEN Out: Sam Dekker, CLE 2021 1st (Top 20 protected).
DEN In: Willie Cauley-Stein.
This is how you get rotational players while you are in rebuilding mode. Don't trade away good assets, as Cleveland was a title contender and that pick was sure to convey in the 26-30 range, but get players who can be a part of your next winning team. Even with me considering this trade a win in terms of value out and value in, look at my roster now. You don't see WCS there anymore. That's because getting these rotational players is the easiest part after the fact. This is proof positive why you shouldn't give up good assets to get rotational players during a rebuild. Even with the best intentions (I LOVED Cauley-Stein when I acquired him), these players sometimes don't make it to your winning roster. If we look at what I got in return for WCS later on down the line, which was DeAndre Jordan and Alex Caruso, I lost this trade in a vacuum. But it didn't cost me much, and that's why I was able to survive this type of a move.
Trade 11. Trade Deadline.
DEN Out: Lance Stephenson, 2nd round picks, filler.
DEN In: Julius Randle, Bruno Caboclo.
I was lucky enough to be able to turn around my previous trade where I gave up the #4 pick and got back Lance Stephenson, but this does not make that blunder I made last season okay. I got lucky, and found myself in a position where a team believed that Lance was the missing piece for their championship team, and Randle was injured at the time of the trade. Caboclo was a throw-in in the trade that I insisted on, much like in my Monte Morris deal. I found a player that I felt wasn't getting enough playing time and could be much better than he showed. I'm not going to pretend that he was some diamond in the rough no one else saw, but he had been labeled a bust and wasn't given a true chance to shine in Memphis. Randle, I felt at the time, was top-tier talent, and while he's probably a tier below that, he got me in the conversation to acquiring a top player.
Trade 12. Trade Deadline.
DEN Out: Al Jefferson (signed in the offseason), Monte Morris, 2nd round pick.
DEN In: Ivica Zubac, CJ McCollum.
I had enough time during the Monte Morris experiment to know that while he was indeed a good bench scorer, he was never going to be more than that, which meant he was expendable. In Zubac, I got a player who was on his rookie contract who showed average to above average skills in pretty much every relevant big man rating. I wasn't delusionally thinking that I was acquiring a star, but I did think that he could show out as a rotation player and he was cost controlled. That's valuable in this league. McCollum was well thought of throughout the league as he could shoot 3s and play defense, and every team needs that. Going from Jefferson to Zubac was an unquestioned step down in terms of current value, but again, who cares. I won 20 games this season, Jefferson wasn't going to change that.
Starting to Mold the Team (2021-22 Season)
Trade 13. Mid-Season
DEN Out: Fred VanVleet (drafted with the TOR 2020 1st), salary filler.
DEN In: Delon Wright.
This was the season where I felt I could maybe put together an 8th seed team, and I felt it was time to start putting together players towards that goal. However, I knew that we still weren't a contender, and I didn't want to pay high prices for a maybe 8th seed team, and I didn't want to acquire players who couldn't be traded again if things didn't work out. Wright was a low cost acquisition, as FVV showed little more than Monte Morris had done, just a bench scorer who could shoot 3s. Wright was also 28 at the time of the trade, and he's already been traded twice since I acquired him, so clearly he still has value. I wanted to strike while the iron was hot with FVV as I was worried he would start to lose his luster around the league, and Wright was the best player I could get for him at the time.
Trade 14. Mid-Season
DEN Out: Ivica Zubac
DEN In: Treveon Graham
As far as talent goes, this was probably an even swap. However, I knew that contending teams need 3&D players, and Graham is definitely one of those. He's on a rookie contract, so he wouldn't affect my cap situation, and with his size and skill set, I knew he could fit in next to anyone on any roster. Zubac I wasn't so sure about there.
Trade 15. Trade Deadline.
DEN Out: DEN 2022 1st, Julius Randle, Traevon Jackson (drafted with the PHX 2020 1st), salary filler.
DEN In: John Wall, Boban Marjanovic.
This easily could have been the dumbest trade I made. In fact, it should have been. This trade should have been worse than me trading the #4 pick in the 2019 draft. This is exactly what I'm talking about in terms of knowing your window. This season was not my window, yet I traded like it was. I was focusing on my #1 commandment, which was acquiring top tier talent, and I did do that with John Wall, no question. But it was the wrong time, and if I hadn't been lucky enough to protect my pick, I would have lost out on Jayson Tatum to acquire a player who probably would be too old by the time I put together a real contender. I got extremely lucky here, and while it did obviously all work out, I wouldn't recommend making this move.
This Season (2022-23 Season)
I want to highlight one trade from this season because it perfectly illustrates my point about not spending to acquire rotation players before you have your star. In the 2021 draft, I drafted small forward Josh Jackson, who was the BPA at my pick (DeAaron Fox has since proved that wrong as he is clearly better, but given the info I had at the time, I believed in Jackson). Jackson was by and large limited to SF, as he lacked the handle to be a guard and lacked the rebounding to be a big man. Bruno Caboclo, who I had acquired prior to drafting Jackson, was also pretty limited to SF, as he had the same issues Jackson did. When I got the #1 pick in the 2022 draft, I had to take my future franchise player, that being Jayson Tatum, a player who could probably play SG and PF, but is likely going to see SF as his best position for his career. So now I had three players who were best at SF, and not enough minutes for all three of them. Luckily for me, it hadn't cost me much to get Bruno Caboclo, so making the swap for another rotation player wasn't going to hurt too much.
Trade 16. Mid-Season.
DEN Out: Bruno Caboclo.
DEN In: Tyler Stone.
It is really that easy to make the pieces fit around your franchise player once you acquire him. Don't focus on getting the guy who can run the point for you moving forward (Tyler Ennis, blech) if you don't have a player to build around. Accumulate assets of any and all kinds, get the player to build around, and then build the roster around that player. You'll be surprised at how much your team will change during the rebuilding period, and that's completely normal. The Rockets have changed over their entire roster since acquiring James Harden. Get your star first, and you can do the rest after. You cannot do it the other way around, or if you can, it is much, much harder to do it that way.
Closing Words
I hope this helps teams with their rebuilding process moving forward. It was a really fun trip down memory lane for me, and I didn't even list half the trades I've made since coming to Denver. There were a lot of small, pointless deals, but everything led to this roster I have today that I truly believe will be a top 4 team in the West next season. It took me 5 seasons to get to this point, but I'm so glad that I went through this, and I promise to all you rebuilding teams out there, you'll be glad you stuck out the process too. There isn't a better feeling in sim leagues.
