Very Available

Dropping off breakfast burritos at Bucks HQ. Making those follow up calls.

extremely funny from the outside looking in. like it would have been easier to just fire malone than shoot your franchise in the fucking foot

Zeke Nnaji is one of those rare dude along with Romeo Langford, Malachi Flynn, Dennis Smith and others who I look at immediately and know they are not NBA guys. They don’t have the drive, the maturity, the size, or the fire & hustle to make it.

Hated that Nnaji pick from day one.

I have to drag out his contract signing thread every damn time because people keep retconning this into a crazy signing. The fans were fine with it, they were calling it a steal. At 8M all he had to do was be a rotation player and it’s absolutely worth the money. He had to be completely unplayable to get to this point and no one predicted that

https://np.reddit.com/r/denvernuggets/s/SgqRVXrhxx

Wow you’re just blatantly wrong about a lot of stuff.

Firstly, he was drafter by Tim Connelly, 2 years before he left and Booth came in. He was there for 2 whole years before Booth!

To say Nnaji was bad is a total stretch, and Malone’s talent development or talent spotting is honestly bad. Nnaji was young and was a work in progress, but he wasn’t bad compared to other players in his age group. In (‘21-22) he ranked 7th among PFs and Cs under 21 and under in the NBA by Actual EPM while shooting 46% from 3. He was ahead of Day’Ron Sharpe, Jaden McDaniels, and Sengun in Actual EPM. If any of those players were on Zeke’s contract, the Nuggets would be very happy. According to Bb-ref, he played 71% of his minutes at PF that year. That would rank him 2nd among PFs 21 or younger. The EPM has a harsher view on him, but even still, he was ranked 8th among PF-Cs, just behind Santi Aldama, Day’Ron Sharpe, and ahead of Kai Jones. Aldama and Sharpe both have developed into good role players, while Kai Jones’ career was sadly derailed by mental health issues. To say he was horrible from the start is untrue.

“Deliberately traded away every asset”. Currently, the only two picks he traded away which haven’t been seen, are a 2029 1st, and 2031 2nd. There as a 34th overall pick which was traded away poorly, but other than that, I argue that the trades could have worked out better if Malone wasn’t abysmal at developing players (or sabotaging them), and was capable of finding out how to make a backup C work. He won a ring but if it wasn’t for the greatest offensive player of all time being utilized well by Adelman (who is the architect of the Nuggets offense btw), Malone has a highly questionable resume.

If you want, you can stop reading here. I’m just going to recap each trade Booth did, because they really aren’t all that bad in hindsight, but they required Malone to develop the young talent that they acquired.

He traded Will Barton and Monte Morris for KCP and Ish Smith. Great trade and won us the championship. He traded the 34th overall pick for Ismael Kamagate, which was a poor trade in hindsight. Then he was forced to trade Bones Hyland away. That trade ended up being Davon Reed, Bones, and their ‘24 2nd round pick for Thomas Bryant and some trade exceptions. Thomas Bryant was playing well for the Lakers up until the trade. That trade was fine at the time, and Malone’s poor management of backup Cs and poor development of young players is once again a possible fault here as well.

Summer 2023, Booth traded the 40th overall pick and ‘29 1st, for the 29th, 32nd, 37th overall picks, and a ‘24 second round pick (56th overall). Those 3 picks that year turned out to be Strawther, Pickett, and Tyson. Again, I argue that Malone had zero desire to develop these talents, and willingly harmed the organization’s trajectory. Booth would sign Collin Gillespie and Jay Huff to 2-way contracts. Both players have solid players in other organizations, but Malone couldn’t make them work somehow. Once again, I question Malone’s ability to judge and develop skills.

2024 offseason, Booth traded the 28th overall pick, the 56th overall pick, a 2026 second round pick (was later 56th overall), and a 2031 2nd round pick in order to draft Daron Holmes at 22nd, instead of sitting tight at the 28th pick. We’ll see how that second round pick in 2031 looks, but this is not a great trade unless DaRon Holmes works out, which is hard to judge because of his torn Achilles, and the current roster construction. This might turn out to be the worst trade, because Malone’s development isn’t responsible for Holmes not panning out.

The contract was presented under the impression that Nnaji’s ‘²²⁄₂₃ season was abnormally poor for him, as he was injured often, and we also know now, that Malone was actively sabotaging him. Had Nnaji been developed well, he may have been similar in value to Aldama and Sharpe are now. Aldama is getting paid \(17M per year, and Sharpe is going to make \)10M per year. If we paid \(8-\)9M for their level of production, that’d be a great contract. That’s obviously not how it turned out, and I think Malone had a lot to do with that.

I’d argue Malone’s inability to develop younger talent, stubbornness, and intentionally sabotaging team plans is far worse than Booth’s incompetence.

What? Zeke might be overpaid now but I can’t believe you’re absolving Mike and putting the blame on Booth. Malone is the real villain here. Coming out of college Zeke had everything he needed to become a prime NBA stretch forward then Malone

Insisted he was a center (he’s not).

Messed up Zeke’s silky three point shot.

Never played him.

He was good at trades (at first) but that Nnaji contract defined him as a lunatic. He also sent three second round picks to Charlotte for them taking Reggie Jackson and his 5 mil salary.

The Bucks will take on Braun’s contract for Cleveland’s 2031 Unprotected FRP and Denver’s 2033 Unprotected swap.

The CBA was agreed upon in April of 2023 and ratified in July. Zeke Nnaji’s contract was signed on October 22, 2023. The Nuggets knew what the second apron was when they gave him the deal

Salary matching contracts are always only one year contracts.

If it was partially guaranteed or had a team option somewhere or something like that, it would make sense as a salary matching contract, but instead Denver is just waiting for it to become an expiring

The most jacked up part of the contract is he has a player option. Wtf did he do to deserve that

Phenomenal?

I don’t even know where they get this stuff, dude isn’t even getting 8 figures a year

Imagine a contract eating up 5% of the cap costing you your job, what the fuck do people on here be saying

Not worth $30mil but now with 2nd apron around he is costing them in flexibility.

It wasn’t Malone’s plan, it was certainly Booth’s plan to force Malone to play him, and it was an ego battle thing. Poor Nnaji got caught in the middle and didn’t get any development time or attention. It’s too bad since he shows flashes of brilliance, but his confidence is in tatters.

MPJ was not a perfect fit. Jaden McDaniels would be a perfect fit.

He shouldn’t be in the league right now, he’s not even part of the team’s third unit.

No I just got the years mixed up, turns out the year where he was looking good when we didnt have mpj and jamal was his 2nd season not rookie.It’s been 4 years since then and he’s consistently been regressing every season.

He had a nice rookie season. Looked like a nice stretch 4. Stupidly tried to rework the hitch in his shot, backfired, fell 25% in 3pt%. Malone was convinced he’d be a better backup 5 and he got worked. Then the injuries. And more injuries. And then a fat ass extension. Then injuries. What a stupid albatross by two front office regimes and one coaching regime.

He looked ‘good’ because he was next to Joker. He was always ass

He’s so ass he doesn’t even get pt in blowouts, he looked promising af that one season when we were missing both mpj and murray but has been regressing since somehow

For a team in a complete rebuild, draft capital is more valuable than cap space. By the time the bucks will be able to compete at a high level and actually need the cap for talent, Nnajis contract would be long gone

Yeah and maybe they’ll snag someone good. Given their kinda recent track record I wouldn’t trust them to do much with that cap space. See: Gary Trent

Based on recent trades it’s about 1 2nd for every ~5m in salary. They just ate KPJ’s 5.4m this year instead of taking on about 2m extra this season and 7.5m next season for 2+ 2nds. That’s a pretty fair deal for cap space and I don’t think someone’s going to offer them more for it.

Who’s giving more than 2 2nds for their 7.5m extra cap space next summer?

I don’t think 2nd round picks have any value to a team like the Bucks. They were already in the roster crunch, had to cut some players to be at 15. They have a ton of your players that all need playing time. They’d love to add top talent but not 40-50th picks. They also have a bunch of those picks from Giannis’ trade. I’d rather have $7.5M extra next summer than Nnaji and two 2nds from Denver.

Teams can eat small expiring contracts at the deadline to facilitate a multi team trade and get seconds for free if a team like the Bucks wants seconds

Not when you’re positioned to have cap space next offseason. That flexibility can be used in much better ways.

It cost the Bucks 2 srps to dump an expiring Salary around that much the other year. Only getting 2 for a guy with 2 years left is shit value.

Because the assets didn’t reflect the return. Other teams will make comparable offers for players that DON’T involve dead money for 2028.

A multi-year deal usually requires giving up a first to get off. The Nuggets don’t have any to trade, hence why they came up with this.

Isn’t there some kind of mechanism in the cba that says only a percentage of a vet min deal counts against the cap? Maybe that was last cba