By Christopher Dempsey
The Nuggets enter Thursday’s 1 p.m. MT trade deadline in as comfortable a position as they could have imagined. There’s nothing pressing that needs to happen for a team taking a long-view approach to team-building.
Nuggets brass isn’t into making short-sighted decisions, and management’s patience is especially pleasing to coach Michael Malone.
The Nuggets were one of the first out of the gate in deal-making when they acquired athletic forward Mason Plumlee from Portland prior to the All-Star break. Now? With a team sitting eighth in the Western Conference, a host of young players with bright futures, and veterans with experience to guide those players through a playoff race, the Nuggets will be picky.
“You don’t want to paint yourself in a corner and try to make deals just for the sake of making deals,” Connelly said. “We thought there was a need in our front court. If there’s something that’s good, we’re going to do it, but there’s nothing that we have to do right now.”
Players take a wait-and-see approach.
“Do I look worried?” forward Danilo Gallinari said, smiling. “It’s part of my job. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t I’ll be happier because I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Pressure to make the playoffs is no pressure when it comes to the trade deadline, Malone said.
“I love our ownership, and Josh said it recently: Everything we’re doing is a big picture approach,” he said. “If we just focus on this playoffs, that is a very small-minded approach, and I think we do ourselves a lot of damage if we kind of did that. I love where we’re at, we’re competitive, and all of our young guys are getting better with meaningful minutes.”
Lineup shakeup: Nuggets coach Michael Malone said he will stay with Jameer Nelson as the starting point guard when the team takes the court against Sacramento on Thursday.
“He’s our starting point guard for right now and he’s done a good job,” Malone said. “He has the trust and respect of his teammates, and he’s done a very good job while Emmanuel’s been out. Who plays behind Jameer, that’s a decision that we’re still trying to figure out.”
Nelson is having a solid season with averages of 9.1 points and 5.0 assists. In any starting lineup combination with Nelson in it, the Nuggets are 7-7.
Mudiay’s days of starting might not be completely over, Malone said.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Malone said. “We were playing good basketball with Emmanuel as the starter, so it’s not like we were bad with Emmanuel and good with Jameer. When we made the lineup change we were 9-8 with Emmanuel as a starter and maybe we were 7-7 with Jameer as the starter. But right now I’m going to stay with Jameer for the time being, and if we move back to Emmanuel, so be it.”